Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Elon Musk wants to cover the country with charging stations that are free to use so that you can travel forever, for free. No more gas refills. Nine stations now provide free electricity for Model S owners, and the company has said it wants 100 along U.S. and Canadian highways by 2015.


I thought the free electricity was only for people who bought the most expensive model of the Model S?


All existing Tesla vehicles that can use the superchargers can use them for free. Unfortunately that means no Roadsters, for reasons involving AC-vs-DC charging (c.f. Q&A at the 2013 shareholder's meeting). You also only get the supercharger gear for free with your car if you buy one 85kWh models (which does necessarily not mean the most-expensive... 85kWh models start at $72.4k but go up from there, into six-figure territory). If you buy the cheapest Model S, at $63k, you can pay an additional $2k to buy the equipment necessary to use the superchargers.

Model Xs will have a similar situation, I think.

I haven't yet seen a commitment that the "third-gen" cars (currently touted as aiming for a $30k price-point, though we shall see in a few years), but it's certainly how Elon talks about it. He's also said that OpEx on the supercharger stations is very very low: little or no rent, little or no power costs. And it's obvious that a major goal for him is moving personal transport off of fossil-fuel; charging at home off the grid doesn't _actually_ achieve that, but giving away solar-powered juice at stations does. So we'll see.

<snark> If only there were a way, on the internet, to spend half a minute researching one's uncertain theories, before posting comments on HN. Yes, half a minute is all it would have taken to learn that your claim was mistaken. </snark>


If only there were a way to contain one's snark.


This is what comments are for! Now I know.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: