Tesla Motors Inc. announced that the company will charge new customers fees for using the Supercharging stations if they exceed to an annual limit, detailing its price structure to help pay for the expansion of its network of stations.
Tesla Motors Unveils Pricing System For Supercharging Stations
Tesla Motors announced Thursday the company's first attempt to monetize a service for their electric-car owners to have long enjoyed for free as it prepares to launch the more affordable Tesla Model 3 sedan later this year. The company which is led by Elon Musk stressed that Tesla Motors is “only aiming to recover a portion of our costs and set up a fair system for everyone; this will never be a profit center for Tesla.”
According to Yahoo News, Tesla vehicles ordered after Jan. 15, 2017, those cars will receive roughly 400 kilowatts per hour of the free Supercharging credits, that is about 1,000 miles, annually on the anniversary of their delivery.
“If customers travel beyond their annual credit, they will be charged a small fee to Supercharge,” Tesla said in a blog posted on Thursday. “In North America, pricing is fixed within each state or province; overseas, pricing is fixed within each country.”
Tesla also said that the cost of the Supercharging fee would be about $15 for a road trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles and about $120 for a cross-country trip from Los Angeles to New York. "We carefully considered current Supercharger usage and found that 400 kWh covers the annual long-distance driving needs of the majority of our owners. As a result, most owners will continue to enjoy the benefits of Supercharging on road trips at no additional cost,” Tesla posted.
Tesla's Supercharging Stations
Tesla's Supercharging stations are typically located in malls and on highways between major cities. It aims to ease car owners' anxiety about running out of battery capacity while driving and enable long-distance road trips using Tesla's vehicles. The company has 795 Supercharging stations around the world. Typically, each station has 6 to 8 spots for each car to park and charge. The Superchargers currently deliver roughly 130 miles of range in 30 minutes.
According to an Investopedia report, BMW, Daimler AG, Volkswagen AG and Ford Motor Company are also planning to build 400 next-generation charging stations all around Europe. These stations will take minutes to charge an electric vehicle, instead of an hour or more.
