Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

electrek.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 56 posts

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

#11

Post by slau »

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.

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

#12

Post by PopAlongKid »

browningstreet wrote: post #9

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.

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

#13

Post by bdcravens »

notyofriend wrote: post #5
plagiarist wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

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

#14

Post by bdcravens »

supportengineer wrote: post #10
euroderf wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

#15

Post by bdcravens »

PopAlongKid wrote: post #12
browningstreet wrote: post #9

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 suc…

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

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

#16

Post by bdcravens »

beardyw wrote: post #4

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)

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

#18

Post by fnordpiglet »

sklargh wrote: post #2

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.

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.

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

#19

Post by plagiarist »

bArray wrote: post #6
plagiarist wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

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

#20

Post by cmmeur01 »

bdcravens wrote: post #15
PopAlongKid wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 suc…

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.
Post reply on HN