I still think that the endgame results in a rather significant infrastructure burden that Tesla has to maintain.
Already we have seen upgrades, expansion, repair, and support costs that Tesla has to bear.
I haven't done the math, but $2k per new car sounds like a wobbly pyramid that eventually will not be able to support the number of superchargers required to fulfill the "free for life" promise when there are millions of Teslas on the road.
Well, maybe doing the math would help.
Right now, I believe Tesla has around one stall for every forty cars - and aside from s couple specific locations in California, even travel holidays apart to be nowhere near capacity limits based on what I've read on the forum.
If they keep that rate, that's about $80k per stall of budget (which has to cover the hardware, installation, and electricity for the average life of the funding cars - 10 years?)
The hardware clearly costs Tesla less than $15k (we've been told on various occasions that it is basically 12 Model S on board chargers ganged together, and they sell the second charger option for $1200 with 25% gross margin on the car.)
Installation, electricity, and repair will undoubtedly vary greatly, and the only one I have a way to estimate is the electric bill. If you take the 90% assumption from another post, and combine it with a 200k assumed average life, 3 miles per kWh, and the national average $.11 per kWh, you get 20k supercharger miles per car, 7MWh per car, 280 MWh for the initial budget, and a little over $30k in electricity (unless they install solar to offset it.)
So the two big dollar items that should consume most of the cost are only half of the held budget with fairly conservative life assumptions for the cars. I'm thinking Tesla can manage it pretty easily and continue to add new stations as they build more cars.
Walter