Tesla’s new Supercharger strategy allows the company to monetize its competitors’ customers by collecting charging fees from them. (Price varies by region, time of day, and whether an EV is made by Tesla, but it generally costs between $10 and $30 to charge a car.) And if more automakers follow Ford and GM and choosing to use Tesla’s connector standards could future-proof Tesla vehicles by guaranteeing that owners always have easy access to public charging. “Tesla’s walled garden was great in the short term, but it was a losing strategy in the long run,” said Tom Narayan, an auto research analyst with RBC Capital Markets.
In this way, Tesla is a bit like Apple when it founded its App Store and positioned itself as an intermediary between app developers and their own customers, says Daniel Schlagwein, a business professor at the University of Sydney who has written about Tesla strategy. More EV owners will likely have to go through Tesla to keep their cars running. “Conceptually, the auto industry has been a competition for car sales — seeing it as a competition for power supply to those cars is a whole new way of looking at it,” he says.
One potential downside to Tesla’s newly beefed-up charging strategy is that its own customers will have to share Supercharger custody with other EV drivers. Some early adopters are already feeling pressure from the company to use the network less.
For years, the electric carmaker offered free, unlimited Supercharging to people who bought Model S sedans and Model X SUVs before officially ending the promotion in 2018. Now the automaker appears to be trying to reclaim the benefit.
In offers emailed to customers, the company suggested exchanging the free juice benefit for $3,000 off a new car and three years of Supercharging, after which the discount increased to $5,000. Until the end of this month, Tesla is offering six years of unlimited Supercharging to anyone willing to trade in their old S or X with unlimited years of unlimited charging.
No deal, says Kagai Kinyua, a Model S owner who lives between Maryland and Georgia. He does not charge at home because he was not allowed to install his own charging station in the parking garage of his apartment building. So Kinyua charges most at local Tesla fast charging stations. He estimates the benefit saves him nearly $3,000 a year.
Tesla’s attempts to entice customers to give up free charging for life have left drivers puzzled by the company’s motives or strategy. “I think they are realizing that legacy owners are sticking with their old cars,” says Kinyua.
Or maybe Tesla fell into a trap that seized other tech companies that offered a perk to entice early adopters, like unlimited calling minutes or cloud storage, only to realize it was too good to give away for free. Musk said the same thing in 2018, stating that unlimited, free Supercharging “wasn’t really sustainable in volume production and didn’t drive optimal behavior.” He concluded, “We probably should have ended this sooner.”
Tesla’s latest steps to increase the power of its charging network suggest another motive for ending unlimited free charging: The automaker is trying to free up charging stations to make way for hordes of paying customers. Tesla, which is reported to have disbanded its press team in 2021, did not respond to a request for comment.
Vicente Perez, owner of a 2014 Model S, says he only uses the Supercharger network on road trips or when the battery is low when he’s far from his home in Los Angeles. But he won’t easily give up his unlimited, free Supercharging, or the car the perk is tied to. “We still intend to keep it until the wheels fall off,” he says.
