Tesla rolls out live Supercharger pricing to avoid peak rates and lower congestion

Tesla is moving away from the peak charging rate payment structure that only depends on the time of day, and introduced dynamic Supercharger pricing at more than 550 stations across the US.

There are more than 550 sites in Florida, California, New Jersey, Illinois, and New York, where Supercharger pricing is live and dependent on the congestion rate rather than what time it is. Many people prefer charging at home and only use Superchargers when they travel, which makes time-of-day rates less useful than Tesla would like them to be.

The dynamic Supercharger pricing pilot that Tesla brought to a limited number of stations earlier this year has apparently been a success. According to Tesla, asking more per kWh at a Supercharger when the station is busy encouraged drivers to go to other stations, and lowered the congestion rate. This distributed Supercharger pile load more evenly and reduced waiting times in the process.

With dynamic pricing, fewer people are paying peak charging rates, informs Tesla, while the average rate at a participating Supercharger station has remained the same. Tesla says that it will keep experimenting with live Supercharger pricing and adjusting it when necessary if people start complaining they are paying more than they used to.

Dynamic pricing doesn't mean that the rate can change while the person is charging if there is an influx of customers arriving at the station during that time, though. The price of the session is determined when one plugs in, and stays locked throughout the session.

This also means that if one would like to benefit from a lower rate that has appeared at that particular location in the meantime, they'd have to unplug and then plug the EV back in to get charged less. Tesla is still collecting customer feedback, which it should amass quickly given that dynamic Supercharger pricing has now expanded to more than 550 locations.

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