Tesla has recently taken another step that would free up some of the busy Supercharger stations for a few more users- whilst simultaneously making some extra cash in the process. The company recently updated the explainer page of its Supercharger Fees portal, where they pushed out a new kind of fee, called the congestion fee. The explainer read that at certain Supercharging locations around the country, the congestion fees would be replacing idle fees. A congestion fee, for someone wondering, is a fee that one pays when a Supercharger is busy, and the battery of the vehicle is above a certain level.
Tesla Has Levied A Supercharger Congestion Fees
Tesla has stated that this fee would only be applied when the Supercharger is busy, and the vehicle battery is already at or above the congestion fee level. When this happens, the users will be alerted about the increase in payment through the Tesla app, and will subsequently have a five-minute grace period to disconnect the vehicles before the congestion fees would start to apply. The company stated that this fee would encourage drivers to charge only as much as needed for any trip, rather than 100%. This, subsequently, increased the availability of the Superchargers so that everyone would have access to them when they needed them.
Currently, it is understood that the congestion fees implemented by Tesla are only charged in the United States, at a rate of $1 per minute when charging above 90%. Nevertheless, this does leave space to introduce congestion fees for other battery charge levels. Congestion fees are quite different from idle fees, which are usually charged when users end up leaving their vehicles connected to the charger after the battery’s been charged fully.
