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

electrek.co

21–30 of 56 posts

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

#21
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.

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.

[deleted]

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

#23

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

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

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

#24

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…

>would be very frustrating

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

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

#27
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

#29
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…

> 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.

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

#30
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.
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