is generally considered unpleasant, especially when you consider the ease of gassing up at a pump. An EV is great if you can charge at home and/or work every day, but the thought of public charging tends to cause customers to seek more range, or consider buying something else instead.
Tesla has been popular, largely because of the charging experience. Tesla has Superchargers all over the place, making them easy to find, and they’re more likely to work, too. Charging still takes a while, but Tesla is launching its V4 Superchargers with rates up to 500 kilowatts, which will make it even faster for those cars capable of higher speeds. Now, prices have gone down, meaning less pain in the wallet, too.
Rates Decrease Around The Country
An X.com user called Maik has been charting the price of Supercharging, and has spotted a downward trend in the price per kilowatt at the largest Supercharger locations in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. For the week ending on December 6, Maik graphed these price changes, and they show most of those locations dropped slightly. Only a handful, including Washington, D.C., Virginia, Maryland, Florida, Montana, Wyoming, and Washington went up.
Tesla’s charging boss, Max de Zegher, took note of Maik’s post and added some context to the price drops. He said the intention of the reduction is to increase EV adoption. Indeed, if Tesla can convince consumers that even public DC charging provides a significant monetary advantage over gasoline, they’ll be more likely to buy an EV — and probably more likely to buy a Tesla, specifically. If it costs about as much to charge your EV as it would to fill up on gas, that’s much less enticing when you consider the drawbacks, and it’s one less thing you can feel smug about.
Good For More Than Just Tesla Owners
Tesla’s price cuts don’t just benefit Tesla owners.
, and many are adopting the NACS charging standard Tesla developed. And if a non-Tesla EV owner purchases a Tesla Supercharging Membership, they won’t pay a premium on charging rates, instead paying what Tesla owners are charged per kilowatt-hour (well, plus about $13 a month). But, to Tesla’s advantage, a customer is more likely to pay for that membership if Tesla’s local energy prices are lower than, say, Electrify America.
Tesla also hopes to serve as a trendsetter. In a reply to another X user commenting on his post, de Zegher said that Tesla lowering its prices also helps to keep industry prices low. It just might work. After all, Tesla has historically shown an outsized influence on the EV industry at large. Setting trends is kind of its thing. Let’s just hope this trend of decreasing prices continues.
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