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Comment by ijijijjij | Hacker News Reader

when I rented a Tesla, by mistake, because they didn't have any other cars available, charging was definitely the problem. They charged me the same price as their cheapest cars, but it still ended up being more expensive because of charging (I paid about $900 for 3 weeks of charging at Tesla's stations, and it would probably would have cost me $300 with a small gasoline car)

In other words, you gotta be stupid to rent a Tesla unless you do it just for fun.

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> I paid about $900 for 3 weeks of charging at Tesla's stations

Huh. Did you rent a Tesla and then have to pay separately for the privilege of using Tesla's charging network?

I've had a Tesla for years and what you paid for 3 weeks is comparable for what I've paid at superchargers the entire time I've owned the car (I mostly charge at home). It seems you did get ripped off, it just seems like it would be difficult to pay that much in three weeks at superchargers alone. There must have been some special surcharge (as it were).

Not OP but you do have to pay separately. Although as you say, that's a crazy amount for just 3 weeks. In my experience I was charged about $100 for two weeks of regular use + one roadtrip from Miami to Orlando and back.

Maybe it was just idle fees, that seems like it could go up by a lot if you leave the vehicle on the station:

>For every additional minute a vehicle remains connected to the Supercharger, it will incur an idle fee.

https://www.tesla.com/support/charging/supercharger/fees

I only checked a few countries, but it does appear that the UK is getting a really bad deal on those idling fees.

I always charged at Tesla's stations because I never was home, and the charges was a surprise at the end of the rental because they charged me only once when I returned the car... no clue if they ripped me off because it was the first time I used electric car chargers and didn't pay close attention to the receipt.

I know it would have been a whole lot cheaper if I had my own charger though.

"I mostly charge at home"

That's kind of a key point. It may not be possible with a rental.

Did they charge you idle fees somehow? Unfortunately that's the other mistake that we've seen sometimes.

Not that you actually incurred them necessarily. There've been cases of them billing hundreds in idle fees by mistake.

$900 of supercharging would typically be >6k miles. Possibly a little less or a _lot_ more depending on the exact costs in your area.

Assuming $0.48 per kilowatt, that's 1875kW. At 7 km per kW that is 13 thousand kilometers or 8 thousand miles. That is about 400 miles per day every day in 3 weeks. Wow.

A hypothetical Toyota Camry, btw, would have consumed more than $900 worth of fuel.

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