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Comment by OldSchool | Hacker News Reader

He certainly presents a calm and thoughtful reply to dealerships, which they will certainly ignore. I can't see how Tesla can expect to afford free supercharger stations forever though.

Maybe there are more failures that I'm not aware of, but generally I've noticed that full-size franchise automotive dealerships tend to last forever and are somehow tremendously profitable for their owners despite what looks like a tiny margin between "factory invoice" and what people pay for a new car.

These are wealthy, highly profitable legacy businesses and no doubt they're going to go out fighting any disruptors in court.

Next up, someone please give us the killer app that disrupts and dismantles the real estate racket and their 6% commissions...

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> I can't see how Tesla can expect to afford free supercharger stations forever though.

Because they sell more power back into the grid than they use up. I'm guessing they'll just add more solar panels (a fixed cost) as the number of charging stations at a given Supercharger goes up.

This might be impractical but I'd love to see standardization across different car companies so all the different electric cars from different auto manufacturers can share the same / similar charging facilities.

Sort of like if I have a smart phone and I go to a friend's house it would be nice to be able to charge my phone on their charger. Phone chargers are cheap. Car chargers are not so much.

There's a standard in North America: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J1772

I'm fairly certain that is for standard charging. The super chargers probably push too much current for this standard. I don't know if it can use the same "plug" format though...

This can happen in 2 ways, they are forced to or they do it out of the kindness of their hearts (monetary incentive). So the smart play is to do this because it will increase sales for all the electric car companies. Then a Tesla would have to figure out a way to limit the supercharger or charge non tesla cars.

Because they sell more power back into the grid than they use up.

That doesn't make sense. The breakeven point for a solar panel is around 10 years (assuming you're using it solely for your own power generation purposes, that is how long it takes for the panel to "pay for itself" in offset electricity costs).

The charging stations are there to charge vehicles. To keep them breakeven on power (forget about land/rent/taxes/maintenance) they would need a field of solar panels.

Hardly seems like a logical approach.

My guess is more that they will sell "upgrades" to the vehicles, they mentioned the large touchscreen and upgradability in the article. Perhaps certain future software enhancements will be paid, in order to generate some residual revenues.

There are more ways to generate solar power than with solar panels. Presumably, they could invest in solar power plants. Heck, the highly illuminated towers of a solar power plant can be seen for miles, and could even be used for publicity: "Free power beacons on the road for Tesla cars..."

Solar concentrating thermal plants only work in direct sunlight, and their mirrors don't like to be dirty. They're not terribly commercially attractive outside the Mojave.

Musk has a startup (SolarCity) that specifically deals with solar panels and is providing the panels for the Tesla supercharging stations, so he has deep knowledge of the field. He's clearly managed to make the numbers work out, or he wouldn't have made it free to charge.

Do you have to pay that fee even if you self-list on mls? I thought it was only a flat fee if you went that route. (I've never sold a house so this is from stuff I've heard)

I've only ever sold a few properties myself but as I understand it, yes you can discount-list or even flat-fee list a property but the agent that represents the buyer typically still expects to get 3% from you.

It has amazed me that we have been in a technological age for a long time now where buyers can pre-select what they want to see and don't need more than someone to open the door for them at a property, and sellers don't need anything more than a way to get their property on the MLS yet they continue to give up a total of 6% of the sale to an agent.

That 6% amounting to $10K or so on a "median" house in the US seems not incredibly out of range given how much effort along the way results in no sale, but in a major city it can reach $100K or more for the same amount of work. The competition to be a selling agent must be fierce.

Overall it makes local moving relatively costly and can chew up a disproportionate share of any investment gain if that's your angle.

My understanding is that one the big $ houses, $1M+, they don't typically go with a 6% fee, but rather have a "6% on the first $500K, then 1% thereafter".

It makes sense if you think about it, in San Francisco, many neighborhoods have 80% of the houses priced close to $2M (i.e. these are not atypical homes). If everyone stuck to the 6%, then agents would be getting $60K for each house sold (I know they give up some of that to the brand they work for).

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I did sell one in the LA area and got them to go 5%. I hope what you describe is more common now.

The superchargers are free for the Model S, which implies that they may not be free for future models.

Are the chargers really that smart? Do they communicate with the car and know the make/modle/year etc?

Which brings up something else. Could a company potentially build a step-down converter to use to charge my Leaf for free? I'm not really sure how much hardware it takes to step down voltage that significantly.

SAE J1772 has a data pin, yes. It's how the car communicates rate-of-charge.

The Supercharger uses a different plug, though, which I don't know anything about. The voltage (440v) and speed indicate DC charging, which J1772 doesn't support. (The Leaf uses the CHAdeMO connector for DC charging)

Yes, the Tesla charging port has a data link that allows Superchargers to speak directly to the battery's firmware. There is almost certainly "Tesla DRM" built into the handshake between the S and the Supercharger, although like all DRM it could probably be reversed engineered and compatible systems created. That's a lot of fun when you are trying to copy a Blu-Ray, less fun when you are dealing with 100kW.

In a standard charger, the car has to negotiate a power level before there is any voltage on the charging pins at all. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J1772#Signaling However while the Model S comes with a J1772 adapter, I'm sure your Leaf doesn't have a "Tesla" adapter.

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