from Hacker News

Tesla increases Supercharging prices to the point that gas might be cheaper

by harshulpandav on 1/22/19, 5:22 AM with 100 comments

• by pfranz on 1/22/19, 6:17 AM

  It's funny that the article it references for the price hike says, "First off, yes sure it’s a bummer that prices are going up, but it’s still significantly cheaper than gas."[1]

  They're also trying to compare NYC an LA Supercharger/electricity prices to "national average price" of gas including, "several regions seeing prices under $2 per gallon." Their comparison is $32-36 to fill up a 100kWh battery back versus 12 gallons at $2.85 for $34.20. I'm not really familiar with that class of car (or electric cars), but I'd assume anything comparable would take premium gas. I found a gas station in Westminster, CA (shown in one of the pics) and a local Chevron is currently charging $3.49 for regular and $3.69 for premium. The gas station I used to go to in LA that's only a few miles away is currently $3.09 for regular and $3.39 for premium. It would have been nice if they're going to make a comparison, try to do an honest apples-to-apples comparison.

  The rate hike and how the cost compares to gasoline is worth noting, but the electrek.co article it linked to had much better information.

  [1] https://electrek.co/2019/01/18/tesla-increases-supercharger-...

• by mdeeks on 1/22/19, 5:56 AM

  For those not familiar, Superchargers are the exception not the norm for charging your car. You use it to travel long distances, but not typically during your day to day commute. Superchargers are meant to be a convenience to rapidly charge your car on the go if you need it.

  If you regularly charge at home, like most people do, you can get extremely low rates at night during off-peak hours. It only costs ~$0.12/kWh for us in SF. Something like $9 to charge the car from 0-100% for ~300 miles of distance.

• by cameldrv on 1/22/19, 6:26 AM

  This is probably a good move for Tesla. The reason Superchargers exist is to enable road trips, which are a tiny fraction of most people's driving. For anyone with enough money to afford a Tesla, if you need to use Superchargers often, you're better off with a PHEV or a conventional car, because even with Supercharging, you just waste so much time charging relative to gassing up. Even so, there is a certain profile of person that buys a very expensive car and then can't resist the allure of free electricity or the cool Supercharging tech. With so many new Model 3s, these people will clog up the Supercharging lanes, and make roadtrips in a Tesla even more painful. Simply increase the price ten bucks or so, and the cheapskates and tech enthusiasts will disappear and leave the Superchargers to the roadtrippers that have no other option.

• by puls on 1/22/19, 6:33 AM

  This article lost me at "Most homes are not wired to handle 120kW chargers, which are likely not cheap to set up."

  If the author had done any research, he'd realize that there's no such thing as a 120 kW home charger. (The weasel word "likely" only confirms the lack of research.)

• by Reason077 on 1/22/19, 7:56 AM

  Electrek are reporting that Tesla have now partly rolled back the price increase in response to the backlash:

  https://electrek.co/2019/01/22/tesla-cuts-supercharger-price...

• by joering2 on 1/22/19, 7:03 AM

  A friend of mine owns a scrapping yard. Surprisingly he makes very good money (business is all about logistics and knowing what you should accept (profitable) and what will cause you troubles)

  He says he hasn't accepted Tesla battery for 2 years now, because how complicated and expensive recycling is. According to him, there is not a single person that knows exactly how to properly secure used batter how to de-assemble and then properly recycle. He says its a nightmare ready to come true. He said eventually he can imagine some country will allocate yards of lands just for a sole purpose of storing old dead Tesla batteries altogether, just like we store dead nuclear plant rods under sea or high in mountain's caves.

• by pfortuny on 1/22/19, 7:39 AM

  Honest question: where I live (typical Spanish small/medium city 300.000 inhabitants) most (like pretty much everybody) people live in flats and lots of people do not have a way to plug their cars at night. Anybody knows how this can affect the use of purely electric cars? Even small ones, I mean (yes, neither I nor most people will buy a Tesla).

• by dawnerd on 1/22/19, 5:56 AM

  I always hated how Tesla used gas savings as part of "how cheap" their cars were. It felt dishonest. Just give me the damned msrp without tax credits or gas savings.

• by jedberg on 1/22/19, 6:29 AM

  That's not entirely surprising. My BIL got a model 3 a few months ago. When he takes it on trips, he's never found a supercharger that can charge at full speed, because they're either overcrowded or broken or both.

  Maybe by increasing the rates they hope to get people to use them less often and they'll have more money for repairs.

• by Robotbeat on 1/22/19, 6:09 AM

  They charged about 20 cents per kWh in Virginia, and gas is about $1.92/gallon, so that was already the case.

  This is caused primarily by extremely low gas prices, though, not just Supercharger pricing.

• by tedk-42 on 1/22/19, 6:50 AM

  <disclaimer>i don't own a tesla</disclaimer>

  Wow. No-one pointed out that they strategically need to force people off their super-charging network. Raising the prices and removing the 'free' for their early adopters is an excellent start.

  The fact is too many people were using it incorrectly and it's causing them grief as the people who need to use it must queue up to do so.

• by sfopdxnonstop on 1/22/19, 5:46 AM

  Eh, so I still get to drive the best car ever made, and I'm supposed to be upset that it's only cheaper than other cars by a little bit? No, not upset about that.

• by IgorPartola on 1/22/19, 5:52 AM

  Rent seeking? Probably rent seeking.