-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
Is anyone only charging for free at a supercharger?
- Thread starter Right_Said_Fred
- Start date
What’s right / wrong:
I believe there’s nothing morally wrong with charging on a regular basis at a supercharger station, as long as you’re not blocking the last spot. I also believe that you have no obligation to move your car after it finishes charging, as long as there are other supercharger spots available. In fact, as long as there are other spots available, it might be nice to leave your car plugged in so that people see that they’re actually being used. This might help raise awareness of electric cars in general.
If upon plugging in, there are no more free spaces left, the right thing to do would be to only get as much charge as you need, and then move your car. You can monitor this via the Tesla app.
---
How to deal with people who don’t move their car, even when it doesn’t need to be there and is blocking someone who does need it:
First of all, while it’s certainly possible that there could be a line to charge your car, if Tesla notices that lines are forming often at certain locations, the best thing to do would probably be to put up more supercharges. That being said, a certain etiquette would be nice among Tesla owners since on holiday weekends, the possibility of waiting in line goes up a lot.
As for dealing with people who block spots, I don’t think a single solution is going to work across the board here. I think we need multiple “lines of defense”.
First line of defense: I like bollar’s idea, the instant your car finishes charging, send a text to the driver when their car is finished charging. Probably something along the lines of “Your Tesla charge is complete! If anyone is waiting to charge, please move your car.”
I honestly believe that’s going to get more than 50% of people who otherwise wouldn’t have cared to actually go move their car. It’s not rude, and it’s logical.
Also, signs should be put up that say “If others are waiting to charge, please move your car when your charge is complete.”
Second line of defense: If it’s still a wide spread problem (which I don’t think it will be) Tesla (the company) will be able to determine if all the spots are taken in a given lot. Let’s say all the spots are taken, your car is finished charging, and you don’t move your car after, say, 30 minutes. In that case, Tesla will “remember” that you did this. If it happens more than three times in a month, Tesla could send you an email. It would be worded kindly and simply notify you that you tend to take up spots when there’s a line, and you don’t move your car once it finishes filling up. Some people really will be clueless, and in general it better to assume stupidity than malicious behavior. People are dumber than you think.
Third line of defense: Let’s say it’s still a wide spread problem, even after the email (which I don’t think it will be), and these people continue to block other people from charging on a regular basis, even when their car is full.
I think this should be something that is dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Maybe someone from Tesla should give them a call or send a more personal email, asking why it’s happening. It could be that someone works right across the street and charges every morning, but doesn’t get a break from work until lunch time. Thus, if it’s a popular station, they’re often blocking others for more than 30 minutes. They might even actually feel bad about it, but they believe there’s nothing they can do.
In that case, talking to someone from Tesla might help them come up with a solution.
Fourth line of defense: Let’s say that on the phone, the person says something along the lines of “I don’t care if I’m blocking others from charging even when my battery is full. What are you gonna do about it?” Basically, how will Tesla deal with the real jerks?
Four ideas have come up in this thread to deal with the real jerks:
1) Do nothing.
2) Shame them into moving their car.
3) Punish the behavior by introducing a fine.
4) Punish the behavior by reducing or removing their supercharger access.
I think idea 4 might actually be something that could be challenged in court since supercharge access comes with the car, and I think idea 3 might be very difficult to enforce. How would they charge someone? It’s not like they have their credit card info… supercharging is free. If this becomes a wide spread problem, perhaps idea 2 would be the best idea… but really I don’t think it’ll become a major problem. So idea 1 is probably the actual best idea. In fact, I doubt Tesla will really even need to get to the second line of defense. The first line of defense, along with installing lots of superchargers per location will probably do the trick.
I believe there’s nothing morally wrong with charging on a regular basis at a supercharger station, as long as you’re not blocking the last spot. I also believe that you have no obligation to move your car after it finishes charging, as long as there are other supercharger spots available. In fact, as long as there are other spots available, it might be nice to leave your car plugged in so that people see that they’re actually being used. This might help raise awareness of electric cars in general.
If upon plugging in, there are no more free spaces left, the right thing to do would be to only get as much charge as you need, and then move your car. You can monitor this via the Tesla app.
---
How to deal with people who don’t move their car, even when it doesn’t need to be there and is blocking someone who does need it:
First of all, while it’s certainly possible that there could be a line to charge your car, if Tesla notices that lines are forming often at certain locations, the best thing to do would probably be to put up more supercharges. That being said, a certain etiquette would be nice among Tesla owners since on holiday weekends, the possibility of waiting in line goes up a lot.
As for dealing with people who block spots, I don’t think a single solution is going to work across the board here. I think we need multiple “lines of defense”.
First line of defense: I like bollar’s idea, the instant your car finishes charging, send a text to the driver when their car is finished charging. Probably something along the lines of “Your Tesla charge is complete! If anyone is waiting to charge, please move your car.”
I honestly believe that’s going to get more than 50% of people who otherwise wouldn’t have cared to actually go move their car. It’s not rude, and it’s logical.
Also, signs should be put up that say “If others are waiting to charge, please move your car when your charge is complete.”
Second line of defense: If it’s still a wide spread problem (which I don’t think it will be) Tesla (the company) will be able to determine if all the spots are taken in a given lot. Let’s say all the spots are taken, your car is finished charging, and you don’t move your car after, say, 30 minutes. In that case, Tesla will “remember” that you did this. If it happens more than three times in a month, Tesla could send you an email. It would be worded kindly and simply notify you that you tend to take up spots when there’s a line, and you don’t move your car once it finishes filling up. Some people really will be clueless, and in general it better to assume stupidity than malicious behavior. People are dumber than you think.
Third line of defense: Let’s say it’s still a wide spread problem, even after the email (which I don’t think it will be), and these people continue to block other people from charging on a regular basis, even when their car is full.
I think this should be something that is dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Maybe someone from Tesla should give them a call or send a more personal email, asking why it’s happening. It could be that someone works right across the street and charges every morning, but doesn’t get a break from work until lunch time. Thus, if it’s a popular station, they’re often blocking others for more than 30 minutes. They might even actually feel bad about it, but they believe there’s nothing they can do.
In that case, talking to someone from Tesla might help them come up with a solution.
Fourth line of defense: Let’s say that on the phone, the person says something along the lines of “I don’t care if I’m blocking others from charging even when my battery is full. What are you gonna do about it?” Basically, how will Tesla deal with the real jerks?
Four ideas have come up in this thread to deal with the real jerks:
1) Do nothing.
2) Shame them into moving their car.
3) Punish the behavior by introducing a fine.
4) Punish the behavior by reducing or removing their supercharger access.
I think idea 4 might actually be something that could be challenged in court since supercharge access comes with the car, and I think idea 3 might be very difficult to enforce. How would they charge someone? It’s not like they have their credit card info… supercharging is free. If this becomes a wide spread problem, perhaps idea 2 would be the best idea… but really I don’t think it’ll become a major problem. So idea 1 is probably the actual best idea. In fact, I doubt Tesla will really even need to get to the second line of defense. The first line of defense, along with installing lots of superchargers per location will probably do the trick.
Kipernicus
Model S Res#P1440
+1 JRod, agree with your assessments.
IMO, Tesla did themselves in by promising "free forever". What happens when they do indeed sell 500,000 cars?
Without fees, they just cannot fairly manage supply and demand on a mass scale.
IMO, Tesla did themselves in by promising "free forever". What happens when they do indeed sell 500,000 cars?
Without fees, they just cannot fairly manage supply and demand on a mass scale.
bollar
Disgruntled Member
But there is a fee -- $2000 for the 60 kWh and included in the price of the 85 kWh. They can change that at any time for future sales -- maybe for Model Year 2014, it becomes $2,250...
I already posted this before, but my post was deleted for some reason.
The 2000 USD fee required covers only 125 charges, way less than an average costumer will charge over the years.
(80kwh*0,20c/kwh)=16 USD per charge
2000/16=125 charges. In europe electricity costs 0,40c/kwh, resulting in only 62,5 chrges.
Some people wil say that solar will offset the electricity consumed, lets do some simple calculations:
Every supercharger draws 90KW, so assuming there are 2000 Superchargers all over the US, we will constantly draw 180MW of power (full utilization). So we will need at least twice of this power to cover day AND night. Thats a 360MW plant. Plus margin we need (when its rainy: 400MW). 3$ per watt costs a PV plant at least! Thats 1.2 to 1.5 BILLION $!
2000/5=400 Supercharging stations. Realistic.
So will this seal tesla's bankrupcy in a few years when they do indeed sell 500,000 cars?
Last edited:
I already posted this before, but my post was deleted for some reason.
The 2000 USD fee required covers only 125 charges, way less than an average costumer will charge over the years.
(80kwh*0,20c/kwh)=16 USD per charge
2000/16=125 charges. In europe electricity costs 0,40c/kwh, resulting in only 62,5 chrges.
Some people wil say that solar will offset the electricity consumed, lets do some simple calculations:
Every supercharger draws 90KW, so assuming there are 2000 Superchargers all over the US, we will constantly draw 180MW of power (full utilization). So we will need at least twice of this power to cover day AND night. Thats a 360MW plant. Plus margin we need (when its rainy: 400MW). 3$ per watt costs a PV plant at least! Thats 1.2 to 1.5 BILLION $!
2000/5=400 Supercharging stations. Realistic.
So will this seal tesla's bankrupcy in a few years when they do indeed sell 500,000 cars?
This assumes full utilisation of the network, and with 2000 stalls (each serving 2 cars per hour), that's ~100,000 cars per day. With an install base of only 500,000 I think those numbers are a bit unlikely.
I already posted this before, but my post was deleted for some reason.
The 2000 USD fee required covers only 125 charges, way less than an average costumer will charge over the years.
(80kwh*0,20c/kwh)=16 USD per charge
2000/16=125 charges. In europe electricity costs 0,40c/kwh, resulting in only 62,5 chrges.
Your math is flawed. Here in Norway, Teslas largest European market, $2000 worth of electricity will get you at least 15000kWh. 15000kWh is enough to drive 80.000km. I will take my Model S on quite a few long trips and expect to fill up no more than 5000km worth of driving at SCs every year, probably a lot less. Remember we start our day with a full tank anyway. So that is 20 years for me to "use up" the $2000 and most people will probably use the SCs way less than me.
And each charge will probably be around 40kWh, not 80. I expect to arrive with 25% left (margin) and charge up to 75% or so (after that it is much slower). 50% is enough to go to the next SC.
Very, very few places does the electricity cost 40 cents per kWh. And those places will probably have a low density of Teslas anyway, since there is small fuel savings to be gotten. Even Denmark is only around 25 cents or so. I paid around 9 cents last year.
(all references to cents are euro cents)
BTW, I'm putting 5.7kWp of PV on my roof now. Cost for complete system is less than USD $1.50 per Wp including inverter and mounting. Panels were only $0.52/watt (235W Topoint).
deonb
Active Member
You would only ever charge 80kwh once... (it takes WAY to long).
So the actual per-incident charge will be smaller, but actually that's irrelevant. There is a different way to do the sum:
For $2000 you can buy 12'500 kWh of charge at 16c. (Nationwide average is 12c. Not sure where you got that 20c.). So on 12'500 kWh, at 360wh/mile (which is high), you can drive for 34'722 miles.
Now, according to the fhwa,
"trips of 100 miles or more account for less than one percent of all vehicle trips, but nearly 15 percent of all household-based vehicle miles."
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/pubs/pl08021/fig4_5.cfm
That's a very cool number for us. It tells us that if a car is driven for 200'000 miles, 30'000 miles of those trip will be spent on trips > 100 miles. Those are our SuperCharger trips. So 34'722 is enough to cover those.
Now only do you get to add solar generation + revenue from grid storage. But it already starts of positive just at $2000. Solar and grid storage is just a further revenue enhancer.
However, let's say a bunch of bad stuff happens. Electricity more than doubles, solar panels are found to be killing the endangered pink pelican, and utilities decide they rather want to continue paying 5x more per kWh for peakers rather than using grid storage cause they don't like immigrants. Now suddenly Tesla is on the hook for effectively $5000 per car instead of $2000. That STILL does not bankrupt the company. It just retroactively brings the gross margins down from 25% to 20%.
I think they'll live.
Thank you for this response. Yes on the second thought the numbers are not THAT bad. But still, I think you will all agree that with the Model X or the 3rd gen model, they will HAVE TO charge people per KWH. ONLY Model S owners will be fortunate enough to benefit from this system. Their system seems to work in the US and in Norway (they are among the countries with the lowest electricity prices in europe). In austria i am charged 34ct EUR/KWH. 40ct take into account future price increases. However, I'm still not sure whether they can ever set up a system like in the US in europe or at least switzerland/germany/austria/hungary . There is currently 0 demand for EVs in the switzerland/germany/austria/hungary area. "As long as a german manufacturer doesnt produce an EV, noone does." This seems to be the general opinion here.
While I'm not advocating it or think its in good form, if someone is daily charging at a SC -- maybe if that's just during the weekdays when Tesla has said usage of the SC is not at its peak (weekend use gets the most), they might get away with it without annoying everyone, at least they likely won't be preventing anyone from being able to get to the charger. If they are also hitting peak time, then it seems more wrong -- and if they're weird enough to drive to a SC everyday, I guess waiting in line won't be enough of a deterrent.
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
Not necessarily. They can still just simply raise the one-time activation fee. The inconvenience of dealing with payment at the charger (and the cut that credit card companies take out of a transaction) is probably worse than simply charging an activation fee.
As for the math, currently $2000 will give you 10MWh-20kWh of electricity (using $0.10/kWh and $0.20/kWh). EPA rates Model S at 38kWh/100 mile, so good for about 26k-48k miles of travel.
The gen III will have a smaller battery and will travel further on the same kWh so it's actually going to use less electricity per car.
Also this whole discussion depends on how Tesla's plans for solar panels and energy storage work out. It may be that the stations are revenue generating even with demand from car charging at it.
Another factor is if Tesla really opens up their network to other manufacturers. If so, they probably will have to charge a per charge or kWh fee (for the other cars if not Tesla cars).
Yes, with their plans to add up to 4 plugs to each SuperCharger (up from the current 2) it seems that they in fact plan on a couple ports being idle in busy locations.
Lots of other good points here in this thread - great discussion.
I guess I just don't see this as becoming a problem any time soon, if ever. It's certainly not a problem now. If EVs become that widespread, then there will be other fast charging solutions that will also work with the MS. Certainly the SAE DC charger will happen. Maybe even, gasp, a CHAdeMO adapter. Yeah, it won't be free but I seriously doubt that many EV owners will be so cheap as to go out of their way to save a couple of bucks. (yes, there are some clowns that drive around trying to find the absolutely cheapest price for gas, thus saving $.50 or so but they aren't driving pricey cars, either.) And, as many have said, charging at home is the far and away preferred solution.
There have been many documented cases of Volt/LEAF owners (neither really cheap cars, either, though still a lot cheaper than a MS) abusing free public charging - even going to great lengths to do so. Worst case I've heard of was a Volt owner who plugged in at the Mitsubishi HQ in Cypress daily overnight to charge and then rode their bike home from there.
Given the popularity of Gilroy and already documented cases of people charging at Hawthorne daily it seems to be proven that once things are free people start doing crazy things to "save" a couple bucks.
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
How much is "many" compared to the total population of Volt/Leaf owners? I imagine it's less than 10%, so doesn't matter that much from an infrastructure prospective.
And most supercharger stations will be in places that do not make such freeloading practical (Gilroy is the only stop right now where it makes sense to do so given it's located near the outlets and on a common daily commute route).
At 34-40 cents per kWh you can produce electricity MUCH cheaper with solar panels. So I assume they will build out big solar arrays in those areas, with half megawatt storage at the charger. The system might even make money. Solar panels can be had for $0.5/watt nowadays. That's $500 or €390 per kWp, one of which will produce around 800-1000kWh per year. 1000kWh at 40 eurocents per kWh is €400, in a single year. Now, you need mounting and inverters too, but payback in 3-4 years seems sure at those prices.
Also, with storage they can export the solar in the daytime at high prices while charging cars from storage. The storage batteries can be recharged at night with much cheaper electricity. Thus you can leverage the investment.
Also I heard there were quite a few Model S reservations in Switzerland.
Please forget solar! The prices you have mentioned are "homebuilt" prices. The general installer will charge you 2-3EUR/Watt peak at least for a solar system. Installation is very expensive. And for the payback period: energy companies in Austria will only pay you 7ct/KWH for photovoltaic power as a feedback tariff. I have been talking with a specialist on this issue last year and he said: photovoltaics doesn't ever pay off (you will effectively loose money), people only buy rooftop solar stations to sell their homes more easily (renewable energy is trendy in europe) .
Similar threads
