I guess it will take Elon to break my silence. I wonder if it my thread prompted Elon himself, or some concerned shareholder to contact Elon, to address this issue on his latest press release. If it did, great! I am glad he is reading or at least having people monitor this forum. Hopefully all for the betterment of EV and his tesla cars. This forum is all about helping Tesla make better cars through technology, user experience, promoting EV community, etc.
To those who are wondering, all the comments beforehand are rehashing of the same thing. Hence why I didn't respond to those comments. In light of the new statements from Elon, I figured this warrants me breaking my silence just this one time. Then I will be back to silent as usual until the next good comment or some new directly from Tesla or Musk himself regarding free supercharging.
After reading some post on Elon's stance, watching, and listening to his answer at the shareholder meeting on free supercharging and its abuse, here my take on it:
Great we now know Elon has TWEAKED his stance on the supercharging. He is probably being proactive about it before it becomes a problem. Hopefully this is a harbinger of what is to come for the Model 3. Hence why I was a firm believer that the Model 3 will probably not have free supercharging for life, but more of a pay per use deal or maybe free for x amount of times per month or some other scheme of limiting supercharging use to those who really need them however they want to implement it. This is not the point of this thread and I think another thread foster that discussion much better.
Here is why I know they have changed their stance on the matter. Free Supercharging for life of the car is definitely a selling point of the Model S. Without it, I know their sale numbers will be lower or they would have to lower the price of the car to generate the same level of sale. Implementing some system to charge user per use is definitely easy. Think of how Blink, ChargePoint, GreenLot, etc have done it. If those companies can do it and find a business model that works, I am sure Tesla can do this so much better. Therefore this is definitely NOT the reason why they didn't implement a pay per use scheme. It is about about convenience and easy of use. No need to worry about cost, etc.
However that being said, ultimately Elon is saying is free supercharging is not scalable the way they have sold it. In fact, I don't think it was ever scalable they way he sold it. Tesla is definitely rethinking the free and how it will affect their bottom line because the cost of building and maintaining these stations to support the ever increasing number of cars will hurt profits.
Now to the sticky point everyone want to know. What will I do now? Simple. I will do what I have profess to do. What Elon has said doesn't affect what he is still being advertised on the Tesla website. Musk has sold the Model S with free unrestricted supercharging. Does this mean I would change my ways just because now Elon thinks he oversold me on something?
Here are some analogies to help understand where I am coming from:
1) Would you stop accepting social security just because you know the government oversold you on it?
2) Would give up your pension pay just because you know the city or state oversold you your pension?
3) Would you decline insurance payout when a natural disaster like fire or earthquake destroys your home and countless others just because you know the insurance company oversold you on their policies?
Point is this is how Tesla initially sold the supercharging and this is how I intend to use it. Free supercharging for life and charge as much as you want. I guess the point is until they remove this from their advertising I will still do what I stated I plan to do before this press release. If I get the notice, fine I get the notice. Here are the ways Tesla can deter me from doing what plan to do:
1) Change the rules on free supercharging for the Model S. (Definitely a class action lawsuit coming if they do)
2) Change the rules for NEW Model S, and keep the current one on the "old" plan. Since I don't have the car yet, I will not be on the "old" plan and would not be able to charge for free. This is totally fine with me, though I would prefer they remove the cost of supercharging from the cost of the car.
3) Congestion at my local supercharging station during the time I plan to charge. At which point, I will install the NEMA 14-50 at my house and be done with it.
4) Move the supercharging station somewhere else where it does not favor me to detour and charge. (highly unlikely for tesla to do and a total waste of money)
Here is what it really comes down to and brx140 have made the only argument I think is ultimately valid in EVERYONE's view including Elon's. I suspect if Elon say what brx140 is saying or something similar it would not be a good response for shareholder because this problem of congestion and electricity usage might sneak into their bottom-line. It just means they will need to every expand their stations.
I can't put it any better way.
What is really comes down to is that nobody wants to wait at a supercharger for a stall, especially if they're waiting for someone that's just trying to save $3.85 in electricity that night...and who could blame anyone for getting peeved at that kind of situation? The moral of the story is and has always been to use a little bit of common courtesy when charging locally...even if you're the only one extending that courtesy.
This has been and always been my stance on this topic.
And for all those too lazy not to read what I plan to do here is my older post:
Here is what I plan to do once I get the car. I hope others who plan to follow suit will do something similar:
1) Charge for 15-30 minutes every other day on my way to work ideally. Occasionally on my way home.
2) Balance charge at home on the 120V once a month to maintain the battery, supercharging first, of course, to higher SOC beforehand.
3) If the supercharging stations are full, I will skip the charging for the day. If not, I will charge there for 15-30 minutes.
4) During charging, if ALL the stalls are occupied and someone shows up, then I'll unplug and leave regardless of how long I've been there.
5) If the stations gets more congested in the future, I'll look into installing NEMA 14-50 and maybe solar once I build my funds up again.
6) If I ever move or work at a different place where it doesn't favor me to supercharge every other day for 15-30 minutes anymore, then I'll install the NEMA 14-50 and look into solar.
Thanks for all the feedback.
Hopefully you can all see what I plan to do will NOT affect anyone who need it for road trips. Use EV charging etiquette and no one will have a problem... except maybe Tesla and their shareholders.
