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Would you give up free supercharging for life?
- Thread starter Nepats
- Start date
Correct. Charging while sleeping always trumps driving someplace and charging. So home and destination chargers are preferred. SCs are for daytime stops while traveling.
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The 100 miles was because that is within range of a charged car. If the distances traveled in a lot of Europe is less than 100 miles, a fully charged car can go out and back and not need supercharging. Still, maybe 50-75 miles has merit. That’d be a question for Tesla to address should the non-free charge within a perimeter be actually addressed. There are other issues, suppose one’s supercharger is is 95 miles away and the next one is much further, then the next one along might be outside the comfortable driving range of even a fully charged car. In that case, the 95 mile supercharger should probably be free even if within the 100 mile circle. I don’t claim to have all the answers here, I’m just looking for a solution that encourages people to charge at home but also offers free long distance travel.
Some people have objected to this concept because they use a local charger, one fellow because he charges at the base of a mountain, presumably he lives well up this mountain. Others feel their use of local superchargers is necessary. All that is fine. There’s nothing that says one cannot use local chargers, they’ll just pay the same as what they pay now. No one is being hurt by this, they just have additional options.
Driving 100 miles, at 300WH per mile is 30KWH. My home rate is 0.12 or so, that’s $3.60 in energy cost to drive 100 miles. The most costly supercharger rate I’ve seen I believe is $0.28 per KWH, that puts cost at $8.40 per hundred miles driven. That’s significantly more. Average gas prices for me are $2.07 per gallon (today, local average, regular grade). If one gets 20 MPG, 100 miles takes 5 gallons, the gasoline cost is $10.35, so the use of electricity at $0.28 per KWH is 19% more cost effective than using gasoline. If one has a vehicle that gets over 23.8 MPG, it is more cost effective to use gasoline. We have an ‘04 Honda Odyssey, it gets about 26 mpg on a trip. If I was to pay $0.28 per KWH for supercharger use on a trip with my S, I’d pay less for fuel taking the Odyssey and using gasoline. With gasoline prices at the current low and the relatively high supercharger rates, the fuel cost advantage pretty much disappears.
This ignores many factors, oil, maintenance, depreciation, initial car cost, insurance, electric car tag surcharges, etc. The current high supercharger rates pretty much wipe out the $5500 in “fuel savings” part of Tesla’s claims on their new car design page. Gasoline prices fluctuate, cars get more fuel efficient, Tesla should probably be very careful about these expensive supercharger rates. If paying $0.28 per KWH for supercharger use on a trip, there’s probably no advantage to traveling long distance in a Tesla. Gasoline is available pretty much anywhere, superchargers, not so much. With travel around town using a home charger, there are fuel savings. If going long distance and paying high rates for supercharging, the balance tips in favor of the gasoline engine.
In Europe where gasoline prices are much higher, electrically powered travel makes more sense, even with high supercharger rates. In the US, at today’s fuel prices, unless the superchargers are free, or perhaps equal to local utility rates, the use of a Tesla for long distance travel doesn’t make much sense from a fuel cost point of view. Since Tesla relies heavily on this fuel cost savings for their marketing, even to the point of preferentially listing the car prices as including this fuel savings, this should cause Tesla some real concern.
The 100 miles was because that is within range of a charged car. If the distances traveled in a lot of Europe is less than 100 miles, a fully charged car can go out and back and not need supercharging. Still, maybe 50-75 miles has merit. That’d be a question for Tesla to address should the non-free charge within a perimeter be actually addressed. There are other issues, suppose one’s supercharger is is 95 miles away and the next one is much further, then the next one along might be outside the comfortable driving range of even a fully charged car. In that case, the 95 mile supercharger should probably be free even if within the 100 mile circle. I don’t claim to have all the answers here, I’m just looking for a solution that encourages people to charge at home but also offers free long distance travel.
Some people have objected to this concept because they use a local charger, one fellow because he charges at the base of a mountain, presumably he lives well up this mountain. Others feel their use of local superchargers is necessary. All that is fine. There’s nothing that says one cannot use local chargers, they’ll just pay the same as what they pay now. No one is being hurt by this, they just have additional options.
Driving 100 miles, at 300WH per mile is 30KWH. My home rate is 0.12 or so, that’s $3.60 in energy cost to drive 100 miles. The most costly supercharger rate I’ve seen I believe is $0.28 per KWH, that puts cost at $8.40 per hundred miles driven. That’s significantly more. Average gas prices for me are $2.07 per gallon (today, local average, regular grade). If one gets 20 MPG, 100 miles takes 5 gallons, the gasoline cost is $10.35, so the use of electricity at $0.28 per KWH is 19% more cost effective than using gasoline. If one has a vehicle that gets over 23.8 MPG, it is more cost effective to use gasoline. We have an ‘04 Honda Odyssey, it gets about 26 mpg on a trip. If I was to pay $0.28 per KWH for supercharger use on a trip with my S, I’d pay less for fuel taking the Odyssey and using gasoline. With gasoline prices at the current low and the relatively high supercharger rates, the fuel cost advantage pretty much disappears.
This ignores many factors, oil, maintenance, depreciation, initial car cost, insurance, electric car tag surcharges, etc. The current high supercharger rates pretty much wipe out the $5500 in “fuel savings” part of Tesla’s claims on their new car design page. Gasoline prices fluctuate, cars get more fuel efficient, Tesla should probably be very careful about these expensive supercharger rates. If paying $0.28 per KWH for supercharger use on a trip, there’s probably no advantage to traveling long distance in a Tesla. Gasoline is available pretty much anywhere, superchargers, not so much. With travel around town using a home charger, there are fuel savings. If going long distance and paying high rates for supercharging, the balance tips in favor of the gasoline engine.
In Europe where gasoline prices are much higher, electrically powered travel makes more sense, even with high supercharger rates. In the US, at today’s fuel prices, unless the superchargers are free, or perhaps equal to local utility rates, the use of a Tesla for long distance travel doesn’t make much sense from a fuel cost point of view. Since Tesla relies heavily on this fuel cost savings for their marketing, even to the point of preferentially listing the car prices as including this fuel savings, this should cause Tesla some real concern.
Would I?? I already have, as did my wife.
Frankly, I wish they would end it for everyone as I believe the existence of it is the biggest single reason for lines at some superchargers.
In general, people give far more value to free supercharging than it actually has.
Frankly, I wish they would end it for everyone as I believe the existence of it is the biggest single reason for lines at some superchargers.
In general, people give far more value to free supercharging than it actually has.
Mostly I agree with this, but if you have a 20 mpg car, you are not likely purchasing regular gas, so it should be based on the cost of premium gas. Also on a trip, there is a distinct advantage to driving a nice car rather than an econobox.
My discussion was based on fuel costs. Only fuel costs. You bring up other factors, they are valid but they do muddy the fuel cost picture.
I don’t think 20 MPG directly infers a requirement for premium fuel. The nice car aspect is good to consider. On the other hand, there’s more room in the Odyssey. Ours isn’t really an “econobox”, not in my view anyway. Taking the other side of your argument, the Odyssey doesn’t need to stop every 1.5-2h for half an hour to an hour of refueling. It can go anywhere without any need for concern about available charging. I took the Tesla to rural Indiana this weekend, I got a warning about being too far from known rechargers. That doesn’t happen in the Odyssey. It charged at 120V all weekend, we didn’t go out in the Tesla because charging was a concern, not a problem, but a concern. We wore jackets in the Tesla to decrease electrical use, that’s not really a distinct advantage of a nice car.
Overall the Tesla is great, I like driving it, I like using the “autopilot”, I love the torque. Twice people passed me in other makes, pointed to the Tesla and gave me a wide smile and a thumbs up. No one does that when I’m in the Odyssey. I love my Tesla.
So there are plenty of reasons on both sides to justify use of the Tesla or the Odyssey. We won’t get far arguing all those other points. That’s why I stuck to the fuel usage aspect. Tesla relies very heavily on this fuel savings aspect and yet they’re seemingly single mindedly defeating it. I’d like Tesla to be around for a long time. They need to be careful.
This seems incorrect. We take a lot of trips, and typically the stops are 2-3 hours apart, with 15 minutes of charging time (not counting the extra time we spend eating at lunch stops). I don't recall ever taking an hour to charge at a Supercharger.
Gasoline prices of only $2.07 per gallon are, by historical standards (when accounting for inflation), very cheap. This partly follows from allowing fossil fuel emissions to be spewed into our atmosphere for free, analogous to everyone dumping their trash on public lands at no cost, but that's a larger issue than the topic at hand.
The great majority of new Tesla buyers, I think, will be powering most of their driving by charging at low rates at home or work. As a result, I don't think the cost of Supercharging significantly undermines the "fuel savings" argument that Tesla makes. It seems reasonable to tell people that they are going to spend much less money to "fuel" their day to day driving while possibly paying more on long trips.
Installing and operating Superchargers is not cheap, especially where utility companies charge "demand fees" for the privilege of drawing high levels of power from the grid. As nice as free Supercharging may be, Tesla as a company needs to control its costs. Not only does charging more than overnight utility rates better reflect the costs to Tesla, it encourages people to make more efficient use of the infrastructure and charge at home or destinations whenever feasible.
There were great marketing benefits in telling people that they could drive across the country for free using Superchargers. This was wonderful when there were relatively few Tesla vehicles on the road and when the average selling price was close to $100K per vehicle. The problem is that it doesn't scale well. Perhaps it might be helpful, even today, for Tesla to offer free Supercharging, for the initial owner only, on their highest margin vehicles - though I fear that could be a slippery slope for Tesla.
I was objecting to the concept of free Supercharging more than 100 miles from home primarily because it would still incentivize inefficient use of the Supercharger network. In our case, we don't routinely Supercharge at the base of our mountain unless we're returning from long trips. My point was that, if we had to pay to Supercharge close to home but not further away, then that would incentivize us to spend more time at more distant Superchargers.
For example, suppose we were to take a trip to California's Eastern Sierra, along US-395. On the way home, we could stop at the Lone Pine and/or Inyokern Superchargers for just long enough to continue to the San Bernardino Supercharger, where we would stop for a short time, just enough to finish the drive home with an okay margin. This would minimize our dwell time at Inyokern and Lone Pine, which have lately been congested owing to all of the new Teslas on the road. On the other hand, if Inyokern and Lone Pine were free because they're far from our home, but we had to pay in San Bernardino, that would incentivize us hang out longer in Lone Pine, get a full charge, and skip San Bernardino. Sure, that would take 30+ minutes longer at the Lone Pine Supercharger, but Lone Pine is a nice town where the car is normally finished charging before we're ready to leave anyway, and who doesn't like free electricity? Some might suggest resolving this by limiting Supercharging to 80%, but that would be a terrible idea at Lone Pine (for example) because it's also a very rural area and sometimes people have "legitimate" needs to charge to full. I will confess that we actually have charged above 95% at Lone Pine on multiple occasions, but only when I've been nearby and able to be sure there is no one else waiting to charge - others might not be as considerate.
I pay 16 ct per kWh at home at night. 24 ct to 42ct during the day. On the road, that price doesn't mean anything, though. Hard to put a number on that as you would have to find alternatives to Superchargers. There really wasn't anything in the first 3 years of my ownership. Now some DC stations are starting to pup up along major interstates. That's why I put a higher number for electricity into my calculations.
The original question was, would you give up free supercharging. That means the official price for supercharging would the price I'd have to pay going forward. Let's do the numbers.
I drive 45k miles a year, 70% of that on road trips using superchargers. That's 34 k miles. On those trips I get 2.8 miles per kWh (355 Wh/mile). Energy at the supercharger in California (where I drive the most) is $0.28 per kWh.
34,000 / 2.8 * $0.28 = $3,400 per year.
I had my car for 5 years now. Using these numbers, over 5 years I saved $17,000 by having free supercharging.
Another thing worth pointing out. The energy consumption the car shows you is not what the car really uses. The trip meters don't count energy used while the car is parked. Based on my measurements, the car uses 5-10% more (depending on how much you precondition your car). The onboard charger has an efficiency of about 88%, so there is another 12% loss. In other words, charging at home uses aprox 20% more than you might think by looking at the energy consumption shown by the car.
Oldschool496
Member
Varies greatly, I'm not sure where you would find the rate of each. Anybody else know where to find rate of each?
I'm still in free Supercharger mode now, but that goes away on May 21. So, it would be handy to know then.
GoBlue88
Member
I leased a P90D back in 2016, and just traded in for a 100D. No longer free supercharging. This feels more like a discussion that Nissan Leaf owners would be engaged in. I would remind everyone that you drive a Tesla - which is an incredible piece of technology that even 10 years ago was unthinkable. Help them grow. Supercharging is like doing your laundry at a laundry mat instead of at home. It was less than $800 to have an electrician set up a simple RV charger in my driveway. My energy costs are around $50/mo to keep my car running.
I didn't get through all of the comments, but one of the main reasons to not upgrade for me is the loss of free supercharging. I charge 98% of the time at home, but when I'm on the road the inconvenience of the time to charge (just a statement, I think the supercharging and speed is awesome, but it still is an inconvenience) is offset by the free supercharge. I would upgrade IF I could transfer my free supercharge to my new vehicle. Otherwise, I'll hold off and not buy for a few more years. My 6 year old S is doing great! Want the new stuff but unwilling unless I could transfer when I trade in or keep free supercharging on both (wouldn't trade the old S if could get on both)
Reading through the comments here it seems there are quite a few who rather hold on to their car than buying a new one partly because of losing free supercharging. I think the other point is, it isn't much of an upgrade. The Model S/X has not seen any significant upgrades that makes owners really want to get the new one.
I would consider an upgrade definitely. I have a MS60. When we go for trips.it is very useful to have more range and acceleration is a plus. But also the safety aspect of a passive safety of an AP software is a great long time investment. AP as a full self driving has a 2-3 years before fully matures in my mind.
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