Tesla has launched its new Supercharger congestion fee at select stations in an attempt to shorten charging session times.
Back in 2019, Tesla introduced a new feature at Supercharger stations to help shorten charging sessions during busy times. The automaker started to limit owners’ state of charge (SOC) to 80% at select high-traffic sites.
Most people don’t charge all the way to 100% anyway, and the last 20% is much slower to get to, so this would have the potential to greatly reduce the average charging session time.
However, many owners were concerned by the limitation, as you sometimes do need to charge more than 80%. What can you do in those cases?
Tesla quickly modified the feature to automatically set the state of charge of vehicles at those stations at 80%, but owners could manually increase it back to 100% if they wanted to. This has been the solution for years and quelled most owners’ concerns. But now, Tesla is seeing the need for a more drastic approach.
We knew it was coming last month, thanks to Tesla hacker Green, but now it is official.
The automaker officially announced the new congestion fees, which it says replace idle fees when in effect: