It appears that Tesla is testing out ways to drive its customers to charge their cars when electricity demand isn’t so high. In an effort to offset the costs of providing power to Superchargers during high energy demand hours, Tesla has sent out messages to some of their California customers trying to incentive them to charge during off-peak hours with a Supercharger discount.
A Reddit user posted their message to the Tesla subreddit, which read:
Planning to travel this weekend? Avoid the rush and charge for $0.09/kWh before 9 a.m. and after 9 p.m. at select California Superchargers on October 31 and November 1. This weekend, tap the Supercharger map pin from your in-car touchscreen to find a participating location or view charge rates.
It’s no secret that Tesla, or any other charging network, would like to have as much of their charging be done during the hours of the day where electricity rates from energy suppliers are at a low. Tesla has tried to counteract these costs by installing Powerwalls to supply energy during peak hours, as well as solar panels in future V3 stations so that they can be even less reliant on the power companies.
Not only can something like this help by allows customers to pay less, but it might also help with the congestion that we see at popular Superchargers, especially around the holidays. While I am doubtful that many people will change up their itinerary just to save some money on charging, it might entice a few people who otherwise would have contributed to the afternoon charging congestion.
This dynamic charging scheme is apparently not the first time that Tesla has done it, as it looks like some Superchargers have been having their per kWh prices be cheaper during off-peak hours starting over the Summer. This is however the first time that Tesla had brought people’s attention to it, and there is a bigger discount this time than the prices we see from the regular off-peak pricing.
Will a Supercharger discount that brings the price down to a third of the original cost enough to get you to change your travel time plans around a bit? Do you think we will see more of these discounts in the future? Let us know what you think down in the comments below.
