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Comment by CydeWeys | Hacker News Reader

Seems totally reasonable. Gas-powered cars cost a lot to fill up and electricity isn't free either, so this totally makes sense. I'd rather go the "pay by the kWh used" route than the "pay the entire expected lifetime cost of charging built into the up-front cost of the car" route, because I know I drive significantly fewer miles than average.

This charge also changes the economics of rolling out Supercharger stations, to the point where they might actually become profitable (rather than being loss-leaders). This means that more of them will be built. That's a great thing.

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> our Supercharger Network will never be a profit center.

That said, certainly earning something from supercharging stations helps the economics of expansion significantly.

Those next to service centers are likely to be on Tesla-owned land lots, but there's a bunch located in outlet malls and third-party parking lots. I'd expect the landlords to want their piece of the pie or some semblance of rent once there's a profit motive.

Perhaps not. You get a rich guy with 100k to blow on a car locked in your place of business for 30 minutes. Most companies would kill for that problem.

Then maybe it works the other way. Can Tesla charge business owners? It would be surprising if the correct pricing is zero, not positive or negative.

Zero is magic. People will try lots of things for zero they won't try for a small cost.

Circa late 2017 (or let's get real, mid-2019) that gets diluted by median income guys with 35k to blow on a car.

The Tesla charging station where I live is located at traditional style shopping mall, which is in deep decline. I'm certain they are appreciative of any captive customer, and I wouldn't be surprised if they preferred increased quantity at the expense of 'quality'.

This argument could be applied to a gas station, though, and gas stations don't typically get free rent.

It only takes 30 minutes to fill up a gas-powered vehicle if it's an RV. Plus, you need to babysit the RV while it's filling and can't really wander off to go shopping for 30–60 minutes.

If they're charging more than cost for the electricity, they can just re-invest the extra money, and it ceases to be profit.

It doesn't really come as a surprise either, see this article from beginning of September: https://electrek.co/2016/09/02/tesla-supercharger-credit-sys...

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