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Comment by stephenhuey | Hacker News Reader

Without spending a cent! I know there was speculation about using solar to power the superchargers eventually, but until then, are they hoping to forever give free fuel to Tesla owners with the hope of recouping supercharger energy costs by selling access to other brands of cars? Any idea how much it will cost Tesla on every free Tesla fill-up?

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Typical US electricity rates are around $0.10/kWh, and a baseline Model S having a 60kWh battery, so if I totally guess at a charging efficiency of 50% then a full charge should cost somewhere in the vicinity of $12. On the 60kWh model, it costs $2000 to enable the supercharger hardware, so I can't imagine they'd lose too much money off these.

Keep in mind that these aren't really intended for frequent use: they generally have been placing them on highways in between large cities, with the intent to enable the occasional long-distance road trip that would otherwise be outside the car's battery range. Even if Tesla loses a bit of money per car on average, it's probably worth it just for the value it adds to the cars in peoples' minds.

Except they are feeding the electricity back into the grid, so I don't think it will cost them more than the installation and maintenance of the charger itself.

I was under the impression that the superchargers already had solar power. Tesla partnered with Solar City (another Musk company) to accomplish this.

EDIT: Looks like they're not all solar at this point. Last question in the FAQ at the very bottom: http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger

Very cool--the last I remember reading was that they were going to see about using his Solar City canopies. Anyone know what the risks are of the solar canopies not keeping up with demand?

I imagine that they would also have a connection to the grid, so that in the case that the solar capacity is insufficient to charge the cars, they could just switch over.

Also, with net metering becoming more wide spread, they could sell back any excess electricity produced from their solar installation back to the grid, which could possibly offset some of the costs of purchasing electricity during periods of high demand.

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