Tesla owners at busy Superchargers will soon be paying a fee if its state of charge crosses a certain threshold.
Tesla has recently announced that it will soon be rolling out what it dubs as congestion fees at certain high-traffic Supercharging stations across the United States. In a move to likely deter its users from hogging a supercharger when their EVs are nearly fully charged, the going rate for this new charge is currently set at $1 (RM 4.70) every minute the vehicle remains plugged in after has reached an SoC (state of charge) of 90%.
Rather scarily too, the Tesla support site did reference for there to not be a limit on the amount of congestion fees that may be accrued by the user. The American EV manufacturer did however note for its its mobile app to notify users when their vehicle has passed the charge level threshold or when charging is complete. This newly-introduced congestion fees also replaces the present idle fees at Tesla Superchargers too, which means owners won’t be double-billed for leaving their EVs plugged in and hogging the charging bay.
Now speaking further regarding this newly-introduced fee, Tesla has stated that it intends for this change to help ‘reduce wait times and ensures that everyone has access to Superchargers when they need it’. Being entirely fair to the EV manufacturer too, batteries tend to follow a charging curve in which charge slows down exponentially as it nears its fully charged state.
It is currently unclear however on whether these SoC or fee rate will vary across Supercharging locations, and also the likelihood of this change in fee structure making its way over here. Users in the United States are presently charged an idle fee of $0.50 (RM 2.35) per minute once the vehicle reaches its desired SoC or 100% with said figure doubling if every bay is occupied. The going rate in Malaysia meanwhile is currently RM 4.00 per minute.
Just playing the petrolhead advocate here too, the notion of being fined for leaving the petrol pump in for too long sounds almost laughable. But hey, this is the reality of the EV future that everyone has been hoping for/warning about.
