Tesla increases Supercharging prices to the point that gas might be cheaper
techspot.com
techspot.com
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-...
Look up engine knock.
The M3 has knock sensors, like everyone else.
https://www.google.com/search?q=bmw+m3+knock+sensor
If you look up engine knock on wikipedia, it will tell you the same
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_knocking#Knock_detectio...
"Due to the large variation in fuel quality, a large number of engines now contain mechanisms to detect knocking and adjust timing or boost pressure accordingly in order to offer improved performance on high octane fuels while reducing the risk of engine damage caused by knock while running on low octane fuels. "
That doesn't necessarily mean it reduces the risk of engine damage to zero. The engine still has to knock for the sensors to detect it and adjust unless it uses flex fuel sensors. Yes modern engines CAN cope with lower octane fuel than they were designed to use, but you would lose performance and run an increased risk of damage. If the manufacturer states a minimum octane rating you would likely be voiding some parts of your engine warranty by running the incorrect fuel.
Cars in the US are required to be able to run on 87.
Look up engine knock sensor.
You will just end up losing some fuel efficiency or power.
If you're paying for a higher-end car, it makes no sense to cheap out $.30/gal. Fuel costs, especially the difference from regular to premium octane, are so little in relation to everything else. While anti-knock sensors should avoid short-term damage, the long term effects aren't known [1].
[1] https://jalopnik.com/why-putting-regular-gas-into-a-car-that...
I included the cost of regular gas because even that showed the article was being disingenuous about cost even using those numbers.
Per a 2017 jalopnik article[1], any short term gains by using cheaper gas are likely to be lost because of decreased performance. While any short-term problems will likely be addressed by anti-knock sensors, long term problems aren't known. If you're that price-sensitive, buy a car designed for regular octane fuel.
[1] https://jalopnik.com/why-putting-regular-gas-into-a-car-that...
Our baseline fuel here is called "Premium Unleaded", despite it being the standard fuel and is 95 RON, which should equate to about 90-91 AKI meaning it lines up with your Premium gas.
We also have "Super Unleaded" at the pumps, which is 98 RON and should equate to 93 AKI in the US.
I guess that means we have no equivalent of your regular gas.
FWIW I've never managed to detect any benefit of using the 98 octane fuel, either in performance or fuel consumption. I've never owned a really high performance car, beyond a tweaked Saab 9000 Turbo running a higher boost, and that seemed to be happier on the Premium. I always assume that the 98 octane stuff is just a way of extracting extra money from gullible people, but I have no more proof of that than the anecdata from all the people who buy it and swear by it (probably because of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choice-supportive_bias )
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.
There may have been seasonal price changes with dumb meters, but they couldn't have done weekday/weekend without them.
Smart water meters seemed to have decent distribution. Perhaps because of the droughts?
I wonder if there's a better cost/benefit for rolling it out to a sparsely populated (or dense pockets with large areas in between)? Where LADWP may favor new construction or something?
https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/rate-plan-o...
I've had "smart" water meters in a couple states. I doubt water has the same day/night load concerns electricity does, but they only varied price between summer and winter. I assume this was to discourage watering lawns.
Example prices (probably a bit outdated, but to illustrate the difference): Flat rate metering: 0.55PLN / kWh, split metering: 0.71PLN / kWh peak, 0.26PLN / kWh night & weekends.
A house might have things that uses more power but doesnt have to be running at peak hours. Examples i can think of are pool pumps and ev charging. Pool pumps need to stay on for 3-5 hours but doesnt matter really when exactly. Same for ev chargers. These "devices" use more in the day than everything else combined.
This sort of tariff would be ideal if you also have solar and/or a storage battery, as you can avoid paying the peak rate and take maximum advantage of the off-peak one.
Due primarily to surplus solar power, later this year, the "peak" period changes to 4-9 PM and "Summer" changes to July-Oct.
I can understand it not being cost effective to subsidise the full fuel cost for a significant proportion of vehicles.
In Palo Alto, this requires also accepting much higher rates during the rest of the day. When I looked into it, I was told that it would raise my daytime rates up as high as 45¢/kWh during the day (nearly double my current rate). Since I work from home and need to use AC/heat, this was not an attractive trade off.
The daily meter charge comes out to ~$1.50 a month right now.
It’s just a chicken-and-egg problem if your parking is controlled by a council or building management, etc.
Need enough EVs to justify spending money on installing plugs. Need enough chargers for people to buy EVs...
But we’ll get there.
I haven't yet had to wait for a supercharger, but I have seen full superchargers that I haven't needed to use. With the huge increase in vehicles from the 3's being sold, I expect congestion to increase before it's counteracted by more charging options.
I'll be pretty bummed the day I have to start waiting. Waiting might tip the scale for me from electric being a better roadtripping experience to gasoline. On the other hand, autopilot is pretty sweet.
I hope they don't fuck up supercharging like they've fucked up service. It's a necessary ingredient to a great overall experience.
In the longer term, gassing up will end up not so much the norm. Has to. (well, technically not until we find ourselves in a state of extraction where the cost exceeds the returns, which may not be all that long)
Right now, my commute fits roughly into many EV ranges, but the savings is dubious. I can get 40+ MPG in my second economy car.
The first one was an older Corolla. 89, and it got 35 to 40Mpg, if I was careful with it. The newer one is an 01 Honda Accord, and it's roughly the same performance, but I need to be a little bit more careful as that one can actually perform a little. Fine, nice option.
In terms of dollars per mile? No contest. Both cars cost 2K, and I'll get 100 - 200K miles out of them with few hassles. I do most of the work, and will get stuck with the odd thing I need to have a shop do, or want to have them do.
Gas will have to go up a lot to unbalance that equation. And as for environmental... it's still a mixed bag. Lots of ugly rare earths going into those newer cars, right along with all the production energy use.
I predict we will continue to see a decline in new gasoline / diesel car sales as people wait for EVs to gain cost advantages. Used vehicles, perhaps modified some to improve emissions / performance (I do that now mostly myself), will prove increasingly compelling due to the very solid, production proven engineering paying off very nicely right now. It's insane just how long a car can go with a little maintenance and such.
We may see cool things like hydrogen. Toyota is working on that big time right now.
There already is alcohol, and both have advantages and disadvantages, with alcohol basically being a drop in, pretty friendly, reasonably performant, reasonably cost effective drop in replacement for gas. Same stations, infrastructure, etc... all just works.
Many cars can be converted reasonably.
There will be a considerable time where people will own cars longer, modify, refurbish, and trade while EV infrastructure continues to ramp up, and competing tech enters, all the costs get sorted.
My point here is we are entering a more turbulent time. Many of us will have more options. They may be offered up and see some scale, and in some cases, may just be things people choose to do. I could put my wife on a moderate range EV and she may never actually need anything else. Can always use the other car, or rent, for example.
That "anti-salespitch" won't really be seen that way here soon. Picking some options and matching that up to life requirements / needs / wants will seem increasingly ordinary.
One thing I do really think will prove useful a bit too late is how GM chose to implement the Volt.
The Volt is an actual EV, and works like one for short ranges. Too short, just a bit too short. However, it can recharge on it's internal fuel engine, or plug in, whatever.
It's not a hybrid, more like an EV with it's own self-contained recharging option.
Volts, converted to use something very friendly, such as alcohol, may well prove out to be seriously great options for people who have a wide, or dynamic range of driving requirements.
I kind of want one, while I can get one reasonably. Modify it...
We may also see a secondary industry pop up. Take great cars, add on, modify, convert, whatever to make them more receptive to more energy options.
In any case, I don't see it as an anti-salespitch. It can be seen that way by those of us fat 'n happy on whatever fuel we are using right now. That's me for sure. I've got my costs waaaaay down.
Edit: And though my scenario is seriously cheap, it doesn't have to be. I'm just that way, because I can use the dollars for other things. When EV or other options get in the ballpark, or I can get used vehicles, I may well switch over for a lot of reasons. Won't be buying new though. I will modify, or get used and go from there when it makes sense. New vehicles make so damn little sense when it's just about transport. (driving experiences, status, pleasure all that are not to be dismissed! Just not a priority for me at all right now.)
I see it as a little glimpse into the not so distant future. And where there are options, it's gonna get more complicated, but the planet will likely benefit, and people will likely be able to find something that works for them better than gas eventually will not work so well for them.
It's just early man. :D
Wait... are you saying the future is not here yet? ;-)
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.)
https://electrek.co/2019/01/22/tesla-cuts-supercharger-price...
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.
And most probably those countries/regions would not be the rich ones which now purchase Teslas like there's no tomorrow (think Norway, the Bay Area in California), but instead the toxic dump will be passed on to relatively poor areas of the world like the Campagna region in Italy [1] (with the added benefit of generating some extra business for the local Mafia) or the seashore of a sub-Saharan country [2]
[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/mafia-toxic-waste-and-a-d...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Ivory_Coast_toxic_waste_d...
That is, in my opinion, what the future should look like. As long as charging poles are expensive, they're not going to be everywhere, yet they need to be.
For devices that require more power than that, there's three-phase current, also called "krachtstroom" (= "power current") in Dutch, which, from what I understand, can deliver up to 19kW (though intuitively I'd expect it to deliver 3 x 3.5=10.5 kW). We have this for out induction stove. Getting it was a bit involved, because it turned out our house had only a single 35A connection, whereas 3 (usually 3 x 16A or 3 x 25A) is more common, so we had to have our electricity connection upgraded.
Still cost less than $6000, though, and many Dutch houses already come with a connection that can handle this. Though that might not be true for other parts of the world.
Similarly, a few years ago I went with my mom to buy a basic necklace chain for my sister. We went into a few department stores and my brain kind of melted at the mental gymnastics required. Our budget going in was like $30-50 for example. The sticker price would be $80, but the whole store was 40% off! And this rack was an additional 20% off today only! Trying to compare prices between different stores was really annoying and my mom pointed out this was normal. I think the older generation like the gamesmanship of it and younger people are really turned off by the whole idea.
For Germany: Go to a dealer, price including all taxes etc. will be listed on the car. Talk to them and you can typically get a little bit off, even some solid discount if models are about to change or whatever. But you will not pay any more than stated (if you don't get tricked into some dubious credit).
In the end, I thought their pricing and buying process was a breath of fresh air compared to my experience with my Audi. By the time I walked out of the Audi dealership I had spent about $6k more than the original quoted price they gave me on the floor. I had about 3 pages of papers that look like excel sheets "explaining" it all. Tesla gave us a half page sheet with maybe 6 line items that clearly explains the costs.
The gas savings really do add up though. One of my previous comments I did a rough TCO between the Model 3 and my Audi A4 and found we saved about $1500 a year in fuel costs. After 5 years the car ended up being about $10k cheaper than my Audi despite it having a higher sticker price
This would imply a really huge running cost on the Audi over the Tesla in addition to gas - what's that cost? Assuming it's a new car, I assume repairs etc are covered under warranty?
My original comment with more details is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18773680
Also my Audi doesn't have any Autopilot equivalent so I probably should have left that additional $5k out of the cost of the Model 3.
To clarify, I think you're not comparing "electric car" with "petrol car", you're comparing it with "petrol car for which I happened to pay a $20k premium because it's a status symbol".
Changing oil in an Audi, past a free service period, adds up, though.
Must've been very loaded A4, too.
I wouldn't say it was "very loaded". I got the Premium Plus with Black Optics package.
Gas is SF is very expensive, though, but then so is electricity.
Maybe by increasing the rates they hope to get people to use them less often and they'll have more money for repairs.
After 50%, the charge rate starts to taper pretty quickly.
If the battery is cold then you may also see reduced charge rates. In cold weather, it’s better to supercharge after a long drive, as the battery will be warm.
This is caused primarily by extremely low gas prices, though, not just Supercharger pricing.
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.