Tesla launches Supercharger congestion fee at $1 per min at 90% charge | Hacker News Reader

Tesla launches Supercharger congestion fee at $1 per min at 90% charge

electrek.co

31 pointsmfiguiere53 comments

This makes complete sense to me. Where I live, an overwhelming majority of charging stations are occupied by cars that are plugged in, but no longer charging.

Officially, they can stay there indefinitely. The biggest charger network in the area worked on an unlimited plan model for a long time, so it makes sense that they wouldn’t have a problem with fully charged cars hogging the network because it means fewer cars would charge and cut into their profits, however they don’t implement extra-fees-when-done-charging even for pay-as-you-go clients, which makes no sense to me.

In response, the city is by and large limiting charge times to 3h. Which is great if you have a fast charger, and very annoying if you have a plug-in hybrid.

> majority of charging stations are occupied by cars that are plugged in, but no longer charging

Isn't that the point? Aren't they supposed to be parking spots reserved for electric cars so they can charge while you're off doing other stuff?

Seems silly that the solution is to make it time-limited rather than just adding more plugs. The people who are gonna be a while will be fine with a standard 120v line.

Assuming the density of superchargers and other comparable infrastructure can/does increase this feels basically fair. I assume this is a nose under the door for all other forms of junk fees and in and of itself will be abused long-term, but as is there does have to be some long term management of the long tail of charging.

Could not agree more. This seems pretty reasonable, but I scoffed reading this part of the article:

> Eventually this problem will mostly go away as they add more chargers.

Maybe the problem will go away but the fees will likely remain and be joined by others.

Electric vehicle fueling seems like one area to be absolutely principled about avoiding vendor lock-in.

Tesla has a monopoly on working electric car charging infrastructure. There are other chargers out there but all the others work poorly

So what is the key to Tesla's competence in maintenance, that the rest of the chargers (and most of the American economy) cannot seem to fathom ?

From a leadership point of view all it takes is someone at the top saying this will be done. Making Supercharger monitoring and maintenance a priority. As opposed to MBAs seeing it as a cost center to cut against.

Only one data point, but when I did a long road trip, I encountered a tech at an Electrify America station. He told me they tend to only make servicing a station a top priority when none of the stalls are working. Otherwise, broken stalls are put into a queue for service.

They Usally only have 2-4 stalls so it can happen pretty quickly

Is this based on anecdotal evidence or personal experience? There are charging stations that work poorly, but many of them work well. Bigger issue is cars/charger among non-Teslas.

“Monopoly” is a bit strong. They’re the market leader because they’ve excelled at it. What anti-competitive tactics have they used?

They are a natural monopoly; nothing wrong with dominating and providing the best value, but we note when monopolies occur because bureaucracies tend to naturally exploit them.

Monopoly by what metric? What’s the difference between being a market leader and a monopoly?

Investopedia defines a natural monopoly like this:

“A natural monopoly is a type of monopoly in an industry or sector with high barriers to entry and start-up costs that prevent any rivals from competing.”

But there are many rivals to Tesla in this space. ChargePoint, ElectrifyAmerica, and even a start-up called Volta that does free ad-supported EV charging. Shell bought them earlier this year. KBB lists a ton more, including regional ones:

https://www.kbb.com/car-advice/ev-charging-networks-list/

Tesla locked in most teslas into their own network for one. Its theoretically possible to use another one but it would be difficult and cumbersome

The J1772 Adapter is included with every Tesla vehicle delivery. It’s not just theoretically possible to use another one, it’s literally enabled by the manufacturer themselves. The adapter locks into place on the vehicle. You could leave it there permanently if you wanted to.

> There are other chargers out there but all the others work poorly

No. The best chargers are manufactured by Alpitronic and Kempower.

If you want to see EV infrastructure done right you need to look at Europe. North America's EV infrastructure is a basket case in comparison.

Alpitronic 400 kW charger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4ZWN_-a2j4

Alpitronic 300 kW chargers two years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TVohXHjLro

Kempower 400 kW charger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR2M5W6saAk

Europe's plan to further improve EV charging: https://www.fleeteurope.com/en/new-energies/europe/article/f...

> Maybe the problem will go away but the fees will likely remain and be joined by others.

It will only get worse as more people switch to electric vehicles. Currently the only real limitation is physical chargers. At some point it will also be the electrical grid, and other issues.

Oh, like the grid would get overwhelmed? Yeah could be like you get charged peak rates based on time of day instead of based on wherever oil futures are at.

> Oh, like the grid would get overwhelmed?

As one of the problems yes. There could be quite a few others too.

> Yeah could be like you get charged peak rates based on time of day instead of based on wherever oil futures are at.

Sure, but also system load, temperature, energy production method used, some form of green energy tax, etc. Before you know it your "cheap to fill up" is filled with a lottery of micro taxes.

At least in the seattle area it doesn’t feel like the supercharger density is keeping up with sales of cars. AFAIK there have only been super chargers built around the periphery of the region in the last few years and many existing chargers are older lower power chargers. The east side (Bellevue, Redmond, etc), which has a HUGE EV following, with Teslas everywhere, has precisely zero super chargers.

We happen to live near one of the few high power super chargers in the entire region. Three years ago there were always charge spots. Now there are often 6-10 cars waiting for a charger in a parking lot not designed for queuing. I see anger and rage regularly, and I would wager sooner or later there will be fights and maybe worse.

The $1 fee feels fine to me, though. It’s a rare need to go to 100%, it’s not great for the batteries themselves, and that last 10% can be the majority of the charge time. I do wonder how they will handle cars like mine with free supercharging for the life of the car. We don’t even have a credit card registered with Tesla.

> The east side (Bellevue, Redmond, etc), which has a HUGE EV following, with Teslas everywhere, has precisely zero super chargers.

What are you talking about? I literally used one yesterday in Bellevue downtown, iirc it was built at some point during the beginning of Covid. Just checked the supercharger map to confirm, and there are also superchargers in Issaquah and Bothell available.

Oh I didn’t realize the Pay 2 Park location was a supercharger. It’s pretty low power (72Kw) and the label (Pay 2 Park) confused me thinking it was a destination charger. However bothell and issaquah are a good 20 min drive, and 8 72Kw stalls for the entire Kirkland, Redmond, Bellevue, Mercer, New Castle region is crazy. It’s not like there’s no lack of parking lots in these areas, and there’s absolutely a critical mass. I’d note Bothell and issaquah are also 72Kw chargers, Lynnwood and Northgate are the only north east seattle metro area 250 chargers.

Edit:

https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/forums/northwest-supercharge...

Looks like quite a few new locations breaking ground including in Kirkland and Bellevue.

> supercharger density is keeping up with sales of cars

I thought most Tesla owners were rich enough to have charging at home?

Well, considering it comes with a normal wall adapter, anyone with a home is rich enough I guess. But the key is when traveling it’s useful, and if you have a condo or apartment, you won’t have home charging. Some, like me, got a promotion for lifetime super charging - so I never charge at home, which saves me thousands of dollars a year.

I would also note you can get used teslas, even higher end ones like model s, for $20k or less, which isn’t unaffordable. Because the batteries can last decades and the mechanics are so simple they effectively last forever it’s a pretty good care 10 or 15 years later.

If there only was a system that could automatically disconnect a charged Tesla's and move the to another spot. You know something like a autopilot in a plane.../s

The fact that the charges still can't automatically connect and disconnect like it was demod with this snake thing so many years ago and that the Vegas loop still has drivers leaves me with very little believe that Tesla will ever have an actual working and safe FSD.

> If there only was a system that could automatically disconnect

Or just use wireless charging, then there are no cables.

Wireless charging for EVs can be efficient: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AE1gaNO9nj0

And wired charging is not as efficient as you might think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLmIIe9N_aI

Charging past 80% is a waste of time. The fuller the battery the slower it charges. It’s much faster to stop twice to charge half of the battery than to stop once to charge 100%.

Ah, but charge to 100% gave us time for a quick lunch while charging on road trips. Now slackers like me don’t have enough time to finish before we need to come back and move the car.

It depends on the situation as usual.

When I'm charging the day before to start with 100%, it makes a lot of sense.

It depends on your battery capacity. With a 50-60kwh battery, you will get less than 200 km from 80% to 20% at highway speed, which could render necessary to charge to 100% to get safely to the next charger in a situation where the charging network is not dense enough.

As someone who road trips their Tesla pretty frequently I consider this a massive non-issue. Whatevs.

Why is it a non-issue for you?

A comment in the article indicates otherwise:

>In the summer of 2022, I took an 8,000-mile road trip across the United States. Most of the time an 80% charge limit would be fine, but there were a few places where we needed to charge to 100% when going off the Interstate. Fortunately those were mostly not in high-density areas, but it would be very frustrating to hit these charges in such a case.

Seems similar to having to pay higher gas prices in rural areas.

In the US it’s typically opposite of this. Rural areas have cheaper fuel.

That has not been my experience. Maybe rural, but certainly not remote, and the two overlap a substantial majority of the time. The cheapest gas is usually in the outer suburbs of major metro areas.

>would be very frustrating

It doesn’t sound like this a problem they actually encountered.

How would they already have experience with a new fee that just got announced?

Can someone please quantify for me, approx how many minutes from 90-100% for a given Tesla model?

No idea. Have never had to do it in many trips spanning from California to Texas and Montana.

Charging to the top slows down your trip and there’s no need for it in most Teslas.

This is probably aimed at those who ignore that fact and insist on charging to the top, or people with non-Teslas, which typically tend to have lower range, as they start using the network in the future.

I get the time efficiency issue. I read the article and the “top comment” is from a guy who says he has needed to go 100% for certain legs of his USA road trips. I’m just wondering what the surcharge for this corner case is.

In the past surcharges for the arguably adjacent, but even more inconsiderate, case of staying past full have only applied when the station has more than 50% of its plugs occupied.

So if one chooses off-peak travel times the charges could be avoided in some cases with luck and planning, if the policy works that same way.

But the infamous travel legs like Kingman to Flagstaff are quickly being remedied with network buildout, so soon the people doing this kind of top of the range charging will be only the most inconsiderate folks… who therefore should pay.

Just a guesstimate but such a person should probably be prepared to cough up an extra $15-25 if he really insists on charging to the top.

If lower efficiency cars like VW ID4 start using the network, it will be a money printing machine for Tesla.

Fantastic news. This will help reduce the few people who cluelessly occupy plugs for longer than needed at hardly any benefit to themselves and at some cost (time cost) to others. And make people who foolishly bought low range cars “to save money” help pay for any impact their choice has on others.

>And make people who foolishly bought low range cars

That has absolutely nothing to do with this subject.

Sadly, it does. For example, if you’re trying to make it from Kingman AZ to Flagstaff in a low range car, you’re going to have to charge up pretty high.

Does this just go into Tesla's profits?

Of course, in the same sense, a cancellation fee goes into any other company's profits. The idea is that if you aren't taking up a spot, someone else can the resource and ostensibly pay for the service (those with free Supercharging notwithstanding)

Of course. It's making up for the people who don't buy electric cars because the supercharger lines are too long.

I assume it's mostly an incentive not to dawdle, though.

Where else would it go?

I would imagine it’s immediately reinvested into further expanding the supercharging network.

Wait for the lawsuit by people with free supercharging

A lawsuit based on what?

Lack of free supercharging! Or that the supercharging is no longer free enough.

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