Attention, would-be Tesla Model 3 owners: Expect to pay up for access to the company’s Superchargers.
Hundreds of thousands of people (373,000, the company said last month) have plunked down $1,000 reservation fees for the yet-to-be-made electric sedans they don’t know much about. Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk gave out a little more information at Tesla’s annual shareholders meeting Tuesday at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.
“Free Supercharging fundamentally has a cost,” Musk reportedly said. “The obvious thing to do is decouple that from the cost of the Model 3. So it will still be very cheap, and far cheaper than gasoline, to drive long distance with the Model 3, but it will not be free long distance for life unless you purchase that package.”
Model S and Model X owners have free access to Tesla’s 632 Supercharger stations worldwide. But those vehicles cost a lot more than the Model 3’s starting price of $35,000.
Superchargers allow for fast electric-car charging — giving about 170 miles of range in about 30 minutes, according to Tesla’s website. There are more than 3,700 Supercharger stations from coast to coast, plus in Europe, Asia and Australia.
The Model 3, Tesla’s cheapest vehicle to date, is scheduled to begin deliveries late next year. Musk did not elaborate on how much Model 3 owners would have to pay for the Supercharger package.
Also at the company’s shareholders meeting, Musk reportedly talked about the history of Tesla and the mistakes he’s made throughout the years. Here are some excerpts, according to reports from USA Today, Bloomberg and Fortune:
The early days: Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin got test drives of the Tesla Roadster, but a bug in the prototype Roadster caused it to run at a mere 10 miles per hour. Still, Page and Brin invested in the company after Musk reassured them the real car would go faster.
Musk and CTO and co-founder JB Straubel also talked about how risky it was to start Tesla, with Musk saying they had “no idea what we were doing” and Straubel saying early Tesla employees knew it was risky but wanted to change the world.
Hubris: Musk again cited his own hubris — as he’s done before — as the reason for the Model X’s issues. The Model X has falcon-wing doors that have caused the Palo Alto company headaches, including that some of the doors won’t open. Musk reportedly said the company is working on it, is “almost there” and that “if you buy one now or soon, you will love the doors because the software will be right.”
Batteries: Musk said he expects the company’s battery-storage business to one day have “roughly similar” revenue as the vehicle business.
Photo: Tesla Motors unveils a Supercharger station at its factory in Fremont, Calif., on Aug. 16, 2013. (Anda Chu/Bay Area News Group)
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