A Tesla Supercharging station in China had a bug that resulted in an unpaid fee of $608,708 (3,846,306 CNY) for a customer. The news comes along as the Chinese media, CnEVPost stated that a customer received a statement from the Tesla app that his vehicle will be banned from Supercharging network because of the unpaid fees.
Such a high amount for charging sounds weird, especially since the user had some free Supercharging credits. CnEVPost’s article includes images that show 1,923,720 kWh (almost 2 GWh) of energy, at 2 CNY per kWh. According to the estimations – it would be enough to fully charge the 2020 Tesla Model 3 Standard Range Plus (0-100%) about 32,000 times. The extreme bill happens to be an obvious mistake and according to further info, the user received a response from Tesla customer service, saying that “there was an error in the back-end systems of some vehicles.” It will be fixed.
Nonetheless, it means that there might be more than one user that faced a shocking notification and was mistakenly banned from Supercharging. We don’t know what caused the issue, but according to the article, Tesla was tweaking the Supercharging idle fee to improve the utilization of the charging stalls. The new idle fee in China is 3.20 CNY per minute (6.40 CNY if the station is 100% occupied). For reference, in the US, the idle fee stands at $0.50 per minute ($1.00 if the station is 100% occupied). In many European countries, including Germany, the numbers are the same but in euros (€0.50 or €1.00 per minute).
Supercharging
The charging history he shared shows he is from Shanghai and has been enjoying free charging miles since at least September 6 of last year. Then the February 27 record shows that the user used the remaining 2,285 free km on that day. On top of that, he had to pay RMB 3,846,306 for 1,923,720 kWh at the rate of RMB 2 per kWh. This is obviously a bug because based on the 60-kWh pack in the 2020 entry-level Model 3, that’s enough power to charge 32,062 packs from 0 to 100 percent. Weibo user @滤镜粉碎机 cited a response from Tesla customer service saying that there was an error in the back-end systems of some vehicles and that technicians were fixing it.
Tesla previously had a referral program to boost demand, offering 1,500 km of free overcharge credit in China for both referrals and buyers, and 1,000 miles in the US. On September 18, 2021, Tesla canceled the program. Yesterday, @科技新一, a well-known tech blogger with over 6 million followers, expressed surprise to see Tesla charging an idle fee of up to RMB 6.4 per minute in China, saying that means RMB 384 per hour.
Credits – CnEVPost
