20,000 km of Supercharging offered by Tesla. Gift or smoke and mirrors?

For every purchase of a new Tesla, the manufacturer offers 20,000 km of Supercharging. Let’s see if it’s a nice gift.

Tesla has resurrected an old sales tool that we thought was forgotten with the advent of all-electric cars. Seeing a manufacturer offer its new customers kilometers of fuel is indeed not new, but offering kilometers of charge is certainly rarer. It’s never easy to know right away if such an offer is interesting or not. Well, the calculation isn’t complex, but you still need to know how to set it up.

You first need to know how much the car consumes and the cost of the energy unit, here the kWh. This is not easy because this cost varies depending on the location of the Supercharger, demand, time of day, and a host of other factors, thankfully excluding the captain’s age… though that’s still debatable. Tesla customers know that the range is between 0.10 and 0.50 euros/kWh. To be as precise as possible, we looked up a fixed number on Tesla France’s own website. In order to calculate the savings you make by driving electric instead of thermal, Tesla sets the price of the kWh at 0.26 euros. This is in the average range, so in our view, it’s a good baseline for calculations.

Next, let’s talk about consumption. This is easier as you just take the figure announced in the WLTP cycle. For the Model Y, it ranges from 15.7 kWh/100 km for the Propulsion to 17.3 kWh/100 km for the Performance. For the Model 3, it starts at only 13.2 kWh/100 km for the Propulsion, which is truly a formidable contender in this regard, and goes up to 16.7 kWh/100 km for the Performance. Thus, we will take an average consumption of 15.5 kWh/100 km, which seems reasonable.

So, how much is Tesla’s gift worth? 20,000 km represents 3,100 kWh consumed in the average WLTP cycle. At 0.26 euros per unit, Tesla is offering you… 806 euros.

That’s not a trivial gift, but Tesla has accustomed us to much better. Moreover, you now know how to verify if the “free kilometers” offers are interesting. As a fun anecdote, a French brand tried to offer liters of fuel, and it didn’t work at all. Simply because the number of liters consumed is less significant than the number of kilometers traveled, thus the impact is weaker.

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