Elon recently Tweeted that he is aiming for 30% gross margins and a 10% overall margin in Supercharger operations.
One variable is the utilisation of the Supercharger stall, say it makes $0.20 per kWh.
How many kWh per day on average?
If it was averaging 200 kWh, then it makes on average $40 per year $14,600 assuming the stall has a 10 year operating life, that should more than recoup the capital cost of the charger.
For busy holiday seasons the challenge is peak capacity, but for most of the year utilisation might be the challenge in some locations.
For Supercharger V3, batteries are included, and a 20 year, operating life for the batteries and stalls is much better than 10,
For the Semi, Solar LCOE is in the $35-$50 range, low enough to suggest charging at $0.07 kWh ($70 MWh) is at least break even.
LCOE includes seasonal variation, in some US / Canadian locations the average monthly solar production in the worst month in winter might only be 5-10% of the best month in summer. This varies with latitude.
For Megacharging with solar there are 2 options:-
- Contract it - probably at best around $70 MWh.
- Build it - possibly around $50 MWh - but significant capital is required and they need to sell the excess at least 9 months of the year.
In the early days of Megacharging the challenge will be low utilisation and significant capital costs due to the need for several MWh of battery storage.
Contract it, rather than build it, makes more sense, but break-even seems hard to achieve.
If I was doing "build it", some Supercharger stalls in the same location is worth considering., Megacharging might be $0.07, Supercharging at this site $0.25, Supercharging elsewhere $0.45 I would offer Supercharging at a discounted rate to drive customers to this site, especially during busy holiday driving seasons. The higher margin on Supercharging helps while Megacharging ramps up.
The caveat here is I have no idea what they are actually planning, these are just some of the variables I think need to be juggled,.
