Tesla Model 3 Owners Will Be Denied Free Supercharger Access

The whole Supercharger deal with Tesla always seemed a bit too good to be true. Free, unlimited charging for life? Really? Well, it turns out it is - to an extent - too good to be true, as it seems Model 3 owners won’t be given the same free, unlimited access as Model S and Model X drivers, despite Tesla CEO Elon Musk suggesting to the contrary in the past.

Venture Beat quotes Musk as saying the following at a recent shareholder meeting:

“To date, we wanted to keep it really straightforward and easy. So that’s why the Superchargers are set up, at least to date for people who bought the cars, as free long-distance for life. Obviously that has, fundamentally, a cost. I don’t want to make this some big news headline, but the obvious thing to do is decouple that from the cost of the Model 3. So it will still be very cheap - and far cheaper than gasoline — to drive long-distance with the Model 3, but it will not be free long distance for life unless you’ve purchased that package.”

While this is a shame, we can see why. With hundreds of thousands of deposits put down for Model 3s, accommodating all of those cars on the Supercharger network - even bearing in mind the rate at which it’s expanding - would have no doubt been very difficult and costly. We’ll have to wait and see just how “very cheap” the access ends up being…

Source: Venture Beat via Jalopnik