A Tesla Model S charges at a Tesla Supercharger station in Cabazon, California. - Reuters
SAN FRANCISCO: Tesla Motors Inc is pulling the plug on lifetime free use of its Supercharger network for vehicles ordered after Jan 1, as the electric-car maker prepares to start selling its mass-market Model 3.
Vehicles ordered after that date will come with credits for about 1,600km annually of free Supercharger use, Tesla said in blog post Monday. Beyond that, users will pay an unspecified “small fee” that the company said will be less than the price of filling up a comparable gasoline car. Details will be released later this year, Tesla said.
The Supercharger network, designed to allow long road trips without “range anxiety,” has been a perk of owning a Tesla. But chief executive officer Elon Musk said at the annual shareholder meeting in May that free Supercharging “fundamentally has a cost” and that “the obvious thing is to decouple that from the cost of the Model 3.”
Tesla plans to start delivering the Model 3 late next year and reach total production of 500,000 of all its vehicles in 2018.
“We’re announcing a change to the economics of Supercharging â“one that allows us to re-invest in the network, accelerate its growth and bring all owners, current and future, the best Supercharging experience,” Tesla said in today’s blog post.
Vehicles ordered by Jan 1 have to be delivered by April 1 to avoid the change.
The company has 734 Supercharger stations in North America, Europe and Asia; the Superchargers typically deliver 274km of range in 30 minutes, according to the company’s website.
