Tesla owners to pay extra for charging above 80% at select stations as free lifetime Supercharging can now transfer to Model Y

At this week's conference call, Elon Musk mentioned that Tesla still expects to hit the 1.8 million unit sales forecast for the year. This means that it has to sell quite a lot more electric cars this current quarter than in Q3 and Tesla is seemingly doing everything it can to spur demand.

After the Model 3 and Model Y recently got their umpteenth price cut for the year, Tesla also updated the tax credit eligibility wording, urging future owners to take delivery before year's end if they want to qualify for the full US$7,500 amount. It has now found another way to push customers into delivery by December 31 to pad those Q4 sales numbers, free charging for life.

There are many thousands of Tesla car owners that still enjoy the free lifetime Supercharger sessions benefit that Tesla was doling out as a purchase incentive years ago when its fleet was still rather small. It later reneged on that offer as it became "unsustainable" and it complained that the costs to maintain it are running into the tens of millions.

Those who upgrade to a Tesla Model Y or S or X by year's end, however, will be able to transfer their old lifetime charging perk to the new vehicle. Here are the free charging transfer conditions:

• Delivery must be taken before 11:59 PM on December 31 and the offer is valid for pending orders.
• The older vehicle and the new VIN have to be on the same account at Tesla.
• Excludes salvaged titles or vehicles gotten with price adjustments like loyalty bonuses.
• One-time only transfer that doesn't require a trade-in.

In short, there might be quite a few new Model Y and other Tesla vehicles on the road with free lifetime Supercharging next quarter.

As Tesla's NACS connector becomes the de facto industry charging standard adopted by major automakers  like Toyota, however, Supercharger stations may become quite busy at peak times. It seems that Tesla is aware of that and may be fighting Supercharger congestion with a new fee.

Tucked in the source code of its latest 2023.38 software update that brings Supercharger wait times forecast, is a way for Tesla to make those who remove the 80% charging limit pay extra. Currently, the 80% threshold at busy Supercharger stations can be easily overridden without any penalties.

In the future, however, Tesla may decide to apply something like its per-minute idle fees if the owner removes the limit and lingers on after 80% while charging at peak times. The ability seems to now be embedded in the software and it's just a matter of Tesla deciding when to flip the switch on the eventual Supercharger congestion fee.

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