Tesla tries to get owners to give up ‘unlimited free Supercharging for life’
electrek.co
electrek.co
Asking because I am curious to see this take, not to dispute it.
And it's indisputable that Twitter is in serious trouble.
By Musk's own admission the company is worth less than half what he paid for it. Revenue has plummeted, toxicity is rampant, lawsuits are increasing and Twitter Blue has been a disaster that will likely be researched for years.
And so all of this chaos has dragged Musk's reputation down which in turn is affecting Tesla.
Eventually it gets old when everyone has the same looking car.
Is this a crisis? Too early to say, but nevertheless this all happend while competitors are catching up and latest offerings from German manufacturers looks very promising. There is a very real chance Tesla can loose the luxury EV segment.
I agree there will soon be more choices, but that's going to be a problem in 2 years, especially in the luxury segment.
This year everyone from Mini to Royce Rolls are selling EVs. Some such as BMW and Polestar are on their 3rd generation.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/12/elon-musk-is-no-longer-the-r...
/pedant
I have no doubt that hubris is a longstanding character defect in his case.
It sounds like a very long shot, though.
Seems like a brand in crisis to me.
If he'd stuck to running Tesla and SpaceX to the best of his ability, without picking stupid internet fights, and keeping his Twitter addiction in check, he'd still have all that respect, and not just wasted $44B.
The way he mismanaged Twitter makes pretty clear he doesn't really know what he's doing. Even if the decision to buy was made after too much wine, he's had plenty of time to sober up since then, but he just keeps doubling down on all the worst decisions.
He's a great salesman. Or was, at least. He was like Steve Jobs who could sell the amazing work of Woz and other Apple engineers. But that charisma has gotten seriously dented now.
Well if he has bad habits, like a lot of us do, then its not just a matter of sobering up like it's a one time event.
> But that charisma has gotten seriously dented now.
The guy never had natural charisma in my opinion - a kind of glamour perhaps, from the wealth and achievements. I don't see the comparison with Jobs though, who was a natural salesman - Musk is a terrible public speaker, and should probably let other execs in his companies do the presentations.
Regarding the Stark comparison - IMO it doesn't matter how involved he really was with the engineering, or that he bought tesla etc - isn't it impressive enough that he made stuff happen? Can you nominate a better candidate for that comparison?
I don't mean to be confrontational though, and I respect your points.
But he didn't make stuff happen, he just paid for it. Why should we consider "Have enough money to pay for someone else to do good things" an impressive trait? Maybe we should stop deifying management for just doing a useful thing once in a while in between all the milking franchises and wealth extraction.
People who haven’t tried to run a company often fundamental misunderstand the nature the extent of the job, but claiming Musk is just “doing a useful thing once in a while in between all the milking franchises and wealth extraction” comes off like sour grapes.
I think it’s a truly bizarre smear to claim he nor Jobs “didn’t invent any of the stuff he sells” when they are perhaps the two most notable technical visionaries of our time.
I guess you can make that argument if you tilt your head and squint a certain way.
But he did become involved in Tesla when the company had only 3 employees, and contributed >85% of the series A funding (and also led the B and C rounds). He's been there for 19 of the company's 19.5 years of existence... hardly a new kid on the block.
To unpackage this further: a big part of Tesla's "cool" was that in allowed customers have luxury and performance while not trading off being "green", and by implication being pro-social. It was a have-your-cake-and-eat-it deal, for those who could afford it. People who had to accept tradeoffs bought a Nissan Leaf.
Now there are more EV options, and Musk's behavior has done irreparable damage to the pro-social brand associations that Tesla had. It's now more associated with the tech-bro archetype, and all the baggage that carries, similar to how Wall St guys were associated with Lambos a few decades ago.
That said, I still see plenty of new Teslas on the road in liberal areas, but they are often rationalized in practical terms, not with the religious zeal that customers used to have.
A gossip campaign of an improperly predicated assertion is called a “wrap-up smear” in some circles. What’s your basis?
I think the offer they've made is a decent one. Looking at my charging habits I would actually have preferred the $5k rebate over 6 years of supercharging. I wouldn't want to spend 30 minutes every week at supercharger, and charging over-night at home is dirt cheap.
This limitation is not based on the vehicle model you drive but based on the age and condition of the battery. Certain high-milage battery packs that have been supercharged frequently during their life tend to be the ones affected.
But if you replace an old, rate-limited battery with a new (or newer) one, you get back the full charging speed.
Today it is, but "energy crisis" headlines are pilling up.
Apple didn't get away with slowing down iPhones for this stated purpose, what makes Tesla think they can get away with it?
btw Android is not an end product like a car and Google doesn't really "provide updates" for Android phones, but I'll let they pass.
Yes, they update the maps every now and then when you take it to the service and when they remember to plug the laptop in for the map update. But an actual update that adds new features is next to unheard-of.
Actual new features beyond map updates for a 10+ year old car? Never been done before by any brand ever.
(I generally think the "all out-of-date devices must be burned" mantra is a tad overblown, but they are at least somewhat dangerous in a way that non-networked computers are not.)
Traditional have cars and they are trying to shove computers into them.
The traditional model of upgrading infotainment software has been "lol, buy a new car" for a good quarter of a century now. But now Tesla is changing the expectations with Joe mode and Dog mode starting as someone requesting stuff from Elon and the feature appearing OTA in a matter of weeks.
Dog Mode, is still a rarity in EVs for some reason. It's a dead simple feature: "allow the heating/ac to work while car is locked, optionally display internal temperature on infotainment display so that people don't break the windows to 'rescue' the dogs".
The few that have it (Polestar and Mercedes I think) limit the usage to max 30 minutes.
Trouble starts when the computer is networked and therefore vulnerable to more attacks. And for networked computers, security updates are table stakes. Feature updates are merely nice.
To compare apples to apples, you need to compare Tesla to another brand of networked cars.
Toyota lives in the 90's from a cyber technology perspective. It is so bad that I wonder how the engineers who work there can say to themselves "I did something great".
I do not know other cars but I guess this is similar.
I think that's preferable. That Teslas are "computers with a car built around them" that phone home to the mothership and get automatic updates is the main reason why I will never buy a Tesla.
Huh? So what happens after 30 minutes? The car heats up and the dog cooks?!
There are no technical reasons not to have the ac/heating run longer, they just decided to cap it to an arbitrary 30 minutes.
It doesn't sound impressive so much as excessive and dangerous. I would not want to purchase a car, which drives at high speeds on the road, the functionality of which depends on regular software updates from a company. I want a car that runs, won't kill me, and is easily and cheaply repairable. As far as I can tell, Teslas don't satisfy any of those concerns even if you spend a lot of money to service them.
Even the juicero couldn't kill you because of a software error...Tesla increasingly seems to me to be a piece of Silicon Valley fluff, and a dangerous one at that.
My Dad had a 2019 Model X, which I think was one of the last to be offered with unlimited free supercharging. He loved it but unfortunately someone crashed into it and it was written off. A double blow because the Model X is not currently sold in our country, so he's had to wait a long time (and is still waiting) for a replacement, and secondly he's lost the unlimited free supercharging.
The people who buy new cars are different from folks who buy used cars. They are less price sensitive and are likely to trade in their car every few years.
They are the ones that keep the gravy train running.
And now they can't get the "Free Supercharging" option, and aren't buying. So telsa is trying to help them out, while ending the free supercharging.
Personally, I think one other thing telsa ended is individual controls for functions like turn signals, headlights, wipers, PRND - that sucks more than losing free supercharging. (I'm not talking about touch controls)
Cybertruck and Roadster were supposed to be here by now. What do they expect? ZIRP allowed them to cruise along till now.
Wait what? Teslas have these all mapped to the same button?
Which reminds me that most positive stories about companies are probably due to the PR department.
It should be obvious really that a Tesla with unlimited supercharging would need a higher trade-in value than one without. If you want those owners to buy a new car you need to offer them more than those without the unlimited supercharging.
Really hard to see this as anything other than at worst neutral.
If I wanted to trade in my Model S with unlimited supercharging, I'd sell it on the used market and use that as a premium to get more for it.
For three thousand charger at net of 0.29 per kwh would mean that you have to sell 100 00 kwh of energy. And 3000 is probably bit low for these type of installations in total cost.
In Germany, we already pay taxes for this exact thing, so that shouldn't be factored into the cost of the charging itself.
Although I don't think the price has to be exactly the same as regular consumer electricity price, it should cover some maintenance.
Why would that make more sense? You'd need to raise the cost of the cars, which would decrease sales. Also, people who charge at home would be paying for super chargers they might not use. Usage-based charges seems totally logical here.
Large users pay $0.06 per kW-h and then a demand charge of $10 per kW based on their max draw for the month. So if you do a bit to smooth out demand, the resulting cost isn't going to be wildly different than residential.
Beyond all that, Supercharger outlets are arguably a business of sorts. Which means it needs to make a profit and not just sell at cost.
I'd guess it depends very much on the power available to Tesla at the location. In some locations there will be plenty of power with little additional cost from the electricity company (e.g. near an industrial area), in others the opposite (isolated motorway rest area).
If you want cheaper charging, you can use a schuko plug at home or a 22kW charger at a store or parking garage.
You're paying for a service.
> Earlier this year, Tesla made a first effort to try to get those vehicles off the perk by offering owners an extra $5,000 discount if they trade in a Model S and Model X with unlimited free Supercharging.
> Now Tesla is doubling down on this effort by launching what it calls a new “Ownership Loyalty Benefit.”
> The automaker is offering those owners six years of unlimited Supercharging when buying a new Model S or Model X by the end of the quarter.
In the article How much does it cost to charge a Tesla? [1] the Cost to charge a Tesla Supercharger/DCFC is in the range of $5.28 per 100 miles (Model Y) to $5.97 per 100 miles (Model 3) to $6.37 per 100 miles (Model X) to $5.88 per 100 miles (Model S Plaid).
Lets take a blended average of $5.80 per 100 miles.
Average miles driven per year (CA) is 14,435 miles. [2]
That gives a supercharger charging cost of $837.23 per year. For 6 years, that is a cost of $5023.38 without considering time value of money. If we use the national average from [3], Tesla Model Ys are driven 13,500 miles and at the average Model Y charging cost of $5.28/100 miles that is $712.80 or $4276.80 over 5 years.
And customers did not bite the $5k offer in expected numbers to surrender the free supercharger perk. Perhaps, Tesla should look at upping the offer.
[1]: https://electrek.co/2021/10/27/how-much-does-it-cost-to-char...
[2]: https://www.caranddriver.com/auto-loans/a32880477/average-mi...
[3]: https://insideevs.com/news/587352/tesla-modely-average-annua...
Shocking. How much does it cost if you are paying? I'd be curious to see the math behind these offers.
They're competing with a ton of operators on cost, the margins are very small. When they start offering retail services on supercharger locations, then you know they're serious about making this a profit center.
But ... in Norway at least, Tesla was seemingly very keen on expanding their supercharger network fast, so they partnered up with everything from gas stations to fast food places.
Companies offer foolish lifetime packages all the time. I think it was American Airlines offered lifetime unlimited first class flights. They can’t claw this product away from the few remaining die hard users, and they only sold a few dozen of the things.
I expect the reason for wanting out of the deal is the same.
Airline seats and supercharging time share a scheduling problem. Having even a few customers with unlimited rights to a limited resource creates intractable scheduling conflicts.
Could you elaborate on what you mean by "scheduling conflicts"? I'd assume the problem simply that these people are using the free things more or longer than anticipated: Tesla has to pay more for the power usage, the airline has to give seats it won't receive extra money for. What does this have to do with scheduling, or how does some other scheduling problem have an even greater negative effect, as you seem to suggest?
The same offer might be hugely in favor of one customer and to the disadvantage of another. Who's favored overall depends on who accepts the deal (which both sides can try to influence)
For instance in the mid 70s exchanged the few “GS Birotor” it had sold for CXs, which was higher in the range.
The deal was very much in Citroen’s favour, but not to the client’s loss: the birotor was effectively pretty crummy (outside of being a collector model, which is how a few survived), and it was launched just as the oil crisis started powered by a gas-guzzling (and unreliable) rotary engine, as well as being almost double the price of a standard GS.
As a result it sold extremely poorly (847 units were produced) and was quickly pulled. Citroen tried to buy / exchange them back (and did get most of them) so it didn’t need to support the car and keep spare parts through its network.
That said, 5k discount on a new car could make a lot of people happy too.
I’d say this is one of the really good handling of how to end a ‘lifetime’ offer instead of just revoking it once you don’t like it anymore. Of which we have plenty of examples.
Does anyone intentionally make a habit of conducting dealings that are not in their favor?