[RAS550]

Elon's recent decision to offer either $ 5K refund at the cost of giving up free supercharging implicitly values the latter at $ 5K.

Many people think its being overvalued, which some feel its a good deal.

What would you pay for free lifetime supercharging for life?

 

[HappyDad]

Too much supercharging is not good for your battery health anyway. I personally feel free supercharging is more a marketing gimmick than good value. For me it is something I would use *only* if necessary like long trips, but definitely not a daily, weekly, or even monthly use if I don't need it.

As for potentially higher resale value of a Tesla with free supercharging, that's kind of a double-edge sword. Do I want to buy a car that may have been supercharged a lot because previous owner had that for free so likely used it a lot?

 

[PNWmisty]

I voted $2000 but only because you didn't offer a $1000 value. I have free Supercharging on my P3D and I supercharge whenever I need or want to. I would be hard pressed to use over $100/year. It's much more convenient to charge at home and the Model 3 has excellent real-world range so Superchargers really only start to pay if I do a lot of multi-state trips.

 

[RAS550]

Too much supercharging is not good for your battery health anyway. I personally feel free supercharging is more a marketing gimmick than good value. For me it is something I would use *only* if necessary like long trips, but definitely not a daily, weekly, or even monthly use if I don't need it.

As for potentially higher resale value of a Tesla with free supercharging, that's kind of a double-edge sword. Do I want to buy a car that may have been supercharged a lot because previous owner had that for free so likely used it a lot?

I personally would use supercharging for only long trips. Even so, I take many of them and can justify a $3k price. My daily/weekly/monthly charging would be at work (free).

As for resale value, supercharging on the 3 does NOT transfer upon sale.

Everyone's situation is different which is why it will be insightful to see how much people actually value the perk. Thanks for voting!

 

[RAS550]

I voted $2000 but only because you didn't offer a $1000 value. I have free Supercharging on my P3D and I supercharge whenever I need or want to. I would be hard pressed to use over $100/year. It's much more convenient to charge at home and the Model 3 has excellent real-world range so Superchargers really only start to pay if I do a lot of multi-state trips.

Fair enough although Tesla will never offer it below $2000 which is why I didn't add it as an option.

 

[SoFlaModel3]

Lowest end of your poll is too much in my case. I take 2 road trips a year with a max usage of say 4 supercharges at $15/each tops. $60/year is my maximum benefit...

 

[RAS550]

Based on the feedback, I added $1000 as an option. Sorry it's not in ascending order - the site doesn't allow me to edit that.

 

[GDN]

Consider adding an option for "Wouldn't purchase". Our car is a daily driver. I'm all about convenience and tech. With the ability to charge at home, there is no way I'm stopping at a charger during the week to charge. I'm not sure I see a time in the near future it will go on a long road trip and need any SC. I drive about 200 miles to see family and have a way to charge there. Compared to gas savings I'll do what I can to charge at home, it's about convenience even paying for the juice myself.

This isn't my situation, but if I had a need to drive a lot more and covered a several state area in a sales job or something like that, my answer would change. I'd likely be dependent on the SC quite a bit. In a case like that I could see lifetime being worth maybe $2000. I'd have to think really hard about it though.

I'm sure Tesla has many number crunchers working the numbers to know how much a car will use over several years and they know how to price this, I kind of wish they wouldn't sell it like this though. There is no way to truly control future costs of building SC's and the price of electricity, so just continue to build SC stations and charge accordingly to what it costs to run them to break even.

 

[Oregon47]

To make the poll complete, consider adding $0. I have a Tesla wall connector and do most of my charging at home. My cost is $0.12 a kW. That’s $0.10 cheaper that the going rate here in Florida. Most of our driving is under 20 mile a day. We have so far planned our road trips leveraging free chargers at hotels. So I would vote zero.

 

[MelindaV]

Elon's recent decision to offer either $ 5K refund at the cost of giving up free supercharging implicitly values the latter at $ 5K.

Many people think its being overvalued, which some feel its a good deal.

What would you pay for free lifetime supercharging for life?

funny how things come full circle... back in 2016, when it was being debated if the Model 3 would have the option to pay for unlimited like the S/X, people were all upset about it being as much as $2000, and begging for a pay-per-use option. Now we have pay-per-use, and people want to pay upwards of $5000 for unlimited?

 

[Ed Woodrick]

I'd probably think about it at $500. At purchase time, I would have probably paid $1000

 

[MarkB]

I've always been opposed to the concept of "lifetime free supercharging" -- not because it's a poor choice of words (it's more like prepaid or included -- definitely not "Free") -- but because it would create a situation where people COULD charge at home, but choose to save a few bucks on something they've already "paid for".

Even Elon has tweeted that the "Free supercharging" offer was not sustainable, long term.

Idle fees helped free up the superchargers (a great idea) and "Free supercharging" does just the opposite.

Perhaps an option where the free supercharging only applies when the location is at less than ______ % capacity, to change the demand curve of the existing locations?

 

[FRC]

How surprisingly uninformative this poll is turning out to be. The lower you set the $ options, the more votes that option gets. I have a feeling that the lowest price option you allow will be your winner.

 

[PNWmisty]

How surprisingly uninformative this poll is turning out to be. The lower you set the $ options, the more votes that option gets. I have a feeling that the lowest price option you allow will be your winner.

Some truth to that. And it's not because Supercharging is not valuable, it's that most people find it more convenient to charge at home. Supercharging is very valuable to have when you need it, but you can pay per use.

 

[Derik]

I'd be OK with $2500.
I don't use it much now (total of 5 times) mainly because it is easier and cheaper to charge at home. I've got a few close by with more being built. If I could use it once or twice a week I could see paying for it up front. I'd be more concerned on how it effects the battery life long term at that point.

 

[evolution2147]

I would love free supercharging but I don't think I would ever pay for it. There is something about the idea of free supercharging that makes people go crazy (including me) but from a monetary standpoint its almost laughable that someone would choose free supercharging instead of a $5000 check.

 

[Karl Sun]

The Referral program (not too long ago) offered $100 in free SC for new purhcases and now it's 6mo free SC. Wouldn't that make it equivalent to $200/year??

 

[Silvermagic3]

I have a coworker that goes back and forth from SF to LA 2 or 3 times a month and was saying the other day that he's paid $600+ in Supercharging over the last 6 month (he also has 20K+ miles on his model 3 already). So say that's the high end of usage, over 5 years he would get $6000 worth out of "free" supercharging. But that a pretty extreme case.

I voted $3000 because there's some value to me about not having to fracture in power costs for a road trip. It might not make much logic, but when a trip is "free" its easier to justify a weekend trip somewhere.

 

[Jasonh4451]

Really depends on your use case. I've had the car since June and have about $5K miles on it. (really should get out more). I've only supercharged twice and the 1st time was just to check it out. So for me there's no case that would be worth it. I charge at home, and for free at my office.

 

[Nikola]

$500. We do a lot of cross-country driving but Supercharging is cheap, and we only use it when we can't charge at home, so our Supercharger budget will probably average $100/year over the long run.

$500 would still have a five year payback period, and there's a possibility that we might trade the car in (for another Tesla) in that time. The privilege of free Supercharging is seriously overpriced at $2000-5000, unless you have no other way to charge.