You'll Pay to Juice Up Your Model 3, Musk Tells Tesla Buyers

Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk plans to turn off the free electricity taps at his company’s Supercharger stations for owners of the upcoming Model 3.

Musk made the announcement last night during a question and answer session at the company’s annual shareholders meeting.

Paying to use the Tesla-financed recharging network isn’t something the roughly 373,000 reservation holders want, but the decision comes down to basic economics, said Musk.

Model S and X owners already pay for the privilege of fast (and free) roadside fill-ups, he said, because it’s built into the lofty purchase price of their vehicles. Having the network in place was key to making the models viable.

The Model 3 starts at $35,000, and that price doesn’t allow for many gee-gosh perks. We’re Tesla, but we’re not friggin’ wizards, people.

“I don’t want to make this some big news headline, but the obvious thing to do is decouple (the network) from the cost of the Model 3,” Musk said. “In order to achieve the economics, we must have users pay for charging stations.”

Model 3 buyers will be able to buy an option package for free Supercharger access.

Musk’s history-heavy speech, which was long enough to allow online viewers to cook and eat dinner, saw the CEO fire back at his critics.

For starters, Tesla is sticking with its plans to ramp up production to 500,000 units per year by 2018.

“We’ve made much higher leaps than this in the past,” Musk said. “It’s certainly going to be a challenge with the Model 3. It’s going to be hard … but it’s something we can make happen.”

All those government incentives? “(They’re) tiny in proportion to what Tesla receives from investors and people buying vehicles,” explained Musk, adding that the company doesn’t inflate vehicle prices to turn those incentives into profit.

The billion-plus dollars in tax incentives offered to Tesla’s Gigafactory by the state of Nevada amount to “a one percent discount for us,” said Musk. Those incentives are essentially equal to the sales and use tax on the battery factory’s equipment, he added.

Throughout the speech, Musk acknowledged the embarrassing problems faced by Model X owners, and said that imminent software updates should stop that model’s doors from going Maximum Overdrive on its owners. Going big on technology in the first version of the vehicle was a big mistake, he said.

“We should have taken those ‘awesome’ features and tabled them for a future version,” said Musk. “It was a case of being overconfident. The door system was complex and difficult to refine. I think we’re almost there in making the doors useful.”