Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s antics polarize society, and make it very difficult for folks to feel confident handing him money, but annoyingly, his company does produce some of the most efficient and affordable EVs that have access to the largest fast-charging network on the continent. Tesla’s first mass market vehicle, the Model S, was introduced to a vastly different world way back in 2012, and it was sold with the promise of free Supercharging for the life of the vehicle, an incentive that Tesla stopped doing in 2018. Fast forward past an array of unprecedented events to the very end of 2024, and Tesla is now offering free Supercharging on its oldest model once again, but with quite the caveat.
Since last week, every newly purchased or leased Tesla Model S comes with free Supercharging. Unlike the original offer that was linked to the vehicle and transferable between owners, this deal is linked to the owner’s Tesla account and cannot be transferred to another vehicle, person, or order. The promotion also cannot be applied to business orders or vehicles used for rideshare or delivery services, and owners are still responsible for Supercharger fees like idle and congestion fees where applicable. There is no stated expiration date for the promotion at the moment, and the fine print also states that Tesla reserves the right to remove free Supercharging “in the event of excessive charging or unpaid fees related to Supercharging.” Given how Tesla operates, we wouldn’t be surprised if Tesla takes this away liberally for seemingly stupid reasons.
Around the same time that the promotion was unveiled, Tesla quietly applied a $5,000 price increase to every new Model S, bringing the price up to $79,990. Our friends at InsideEVs crunched the numbers using the assumption that average EV owners charge 80 percent at home and 20 percent at public charging to determine if the promotion is really worth it given the price hike, saying,
Tesla doesn’t list its average base rate for Supercharging, but a quick look around its map has rates ranging from $0.25 to $0.60 per kWh. Let’s average that out to $0.43/kWh. For 749 kWh of electricity, the average owner would spend around $322 per year on Supercharging. This means that it would take 15.5 years of driving to fully realize the $5,000 cost hike with the lifetime of free Supercharging. Anything after that would be a net positive, as long as you don’t take depreciation into account.
Now, let’s talk about that in miles. For the drivers who adhere to the 80-20 charging split and travel the national average, the cost savings start to kick in when the car hits around 210,000 miles on the odometer. Can a Model S do that? Sure—and then some. But the real value here is for those 14%-ers who don’t have access to charging at home. That $5,000 price hike starts to pay for itself in just 42,000 miles of Supercharger-only driving.
Now, sure, there are going to be some folks who decide that they’ll use this perk to exclusively Supercharge their car. According to the DoE’s projections, that could account for as much as 14% of owners right off the bat. If these owners would charge all 3,743 kWh from Superchargers, it would mean a savings of around $1,610 per year, which achieves cost-neutrality in just over three years. Over the same length of 15.5 years, someone who charges their 2024 Model S AWD would have a savings of around $19,950 after the $5,000 price hike.
So is it a good deal? Not unless you plan to exclusively Supercharge your new car, and even then Tesla reserves the right to revoke your free charging in the event of excessive charging, so that might land you with no promotion at all. Want to know the best deal on a Tesla Model S? Buy an early Model S on the used market that still has free Supercharging for life with no caveats. Plus you won’t be paying Elon any money; in fact, you’ll be actively siphoning money from him, not that he will ever notice a measly thousand bucks here and there.
