Tag Archives: Elon Musk

Tesla Users Are Penalised Left and Right

Tesla is really wringing its customers wallets dry, recently a change from a FREE Unlimited Supercharge to a Pay Per Use Model, and as some point soon they will charging a camping fee for blocking a supercharger port once your car is fully charged.

Tesla Supercharger Stations

Tesla Supercharger Stations

Tesla supercharging stations charge with up to 145 kW of power which is distributed between two adjacent cars. Each individual vehicle can take a maximum of 120 kW per hour. This is up to 16 times as fast as most public charging stations. Superchargers are able to take a near empty vehicle up to 50% in about 20 minutes, and up to nearly 80% in just 40 minutes, and just over 75 minutes to get to full charged (100%). 

Tesla will be introducing a idle charge of approx £0.30 pence per minute (£18 per hour) for overstaying their welcome at the supercharge stations. This is to stop people leaving their cars blocking the Supercharger Stations for hours beyond their charge time, as many appear to use them to park their car for free. 

A Growing UK Concern

This doesn’t appear to be a UK Problem at this point, certainly not for Tesla owners but I believe it is a growing concern as the number of electric cars on Britain’s streets grows. In Manchester are a few public access charging points, these usually come with a free parking while you charge.

On a recent visit to Manchester, the street near the drop off point charges approx £3 per hour to park. I arrived at 10am-ish and there was an advertising wrapped BMW i3 I think, parking the only Electric Charge point. When I left at approx 5pm this same BMW was still parked and still plugged in.

Manchester Council as far as I know are in the partnership which offers free parking to charging electric vehicles, so hogging already occurs, and I can only see it getting worse. 

Image from Wikipedia.