Tesla Has Revealed How Much Supercharger Access Will Cost Future Owners

The whole free Supercharger access thing with Tesla always seemed a little good to be true. And sure enough, we found out last year that the Model 3 wouldn’t come with the same unlimited access enjoyed by Model S and X owners, and back in November Tesla announced that all future owners would be charged.

As it turns out, it’s not as simple as that. If you order a Model S or X after 15 January 2017, you won’t get unlimited access, but you will get a 400 kWh ‘credit’ that renews annually on the anniversary of delivery. Tesla said that it “carefully considered current Supercharger usage and found that 400 kWh covers the annual long-distance driving needs of the majority of our owners.”

So it should remain free for most. But how much might it cost if you go over? That’s where it gets a little complicated. In most places you’ll pay per kWh, but the amount charged per kWh is going to vary, being fixed for each state/province/county (as detailed by Tesla here). In some places it’ll be necessary to charge by the minute due to regulations.

Happily, Tesla has attempted to put the extra costs into context with a few examples, in the form of four hypothetical road trips:

San Francisco to Los Angeles - around $15
Los Angeles to New York - around $120
Paris to Rome - around €60
Beijing to Shanghai - around ¥400

So in most cases it still works out a lot cheaper than taking a conventional internal combustion powered car, although it’s worth pointing out a particularly economical diesel car wouldn’t cost more on the Paris to Rome trip.

Despite the new charges, Tesla says it will never make money from the network, saying that the intention is to merely “recover a portion of our costs”. Any Tesla ordered before the cut-off point will retain free charging for the life of the vehicle.