[JanSolo]

> I still struggle to see how this ends up favorable for Tesla in the long run.

They're expanding their customer-base by maybe 2x or more. Those new customers will be be giving recurring payments to Tesla. For vehicles that Tesla didn't build. How is that not favourable?

[losvedir]

Tesla doesn't break out the details, but I think it's generally understood among investors that they just break even on Supercharger. Their profit comes from their cars, and the Supercharger network was a competitive advantage to get people to buy the cars.

I think they opened up the Supercharger network to ensure that the US didn't establish CCS as the standard and overtake Superchargers, such that Teslas have a competitive dis -advantage, but I don't think they're particularly thrilled to have all these other companies using their chargers.

People seem to think they're raking it in with the Superchargers, but distributing electricity is a low margin business. Same with gas stations where the money mostly comes from the convenience store part of it and such.

[bluGill]

Gas is lower margin than the other things in a convenience store, but they sell enough more gas than anything else that much of the money is there. I haven't checked in 10 years, but at one time I did read the share holders information from a convenience store and for that brand it was about 1/3 gas, 1/3 tobacco, 1/3 everything else. Tobacco is very high margin but very few people buy it. The everything is is a nice high margin, and most people buy, but they don't buy every trip. Gas is what gets people in the doors and often is all people get.

[BurningFrog]

> they just break even on Supercharger

So far, sure, but that can change. When most customers are non Teslas, it makes no sense to keep prices low.

[cbhl]

This goes both ways -- historically the other charging networks were J1772 or CCS (with a few CHAdeMO to support Nissan Leafs), but now Electrify America, EVgo, etc. have been retrofitting or newly installing a mix of CCS and NACS cables onto their L3 chargers. This increases the available charger footprint for Teslas as well.

[metal_am]

Where I’m located, Supercharger prices are ~4x business electric rates. That’s something like $15 profit per charge. No idea on infrastructure costs or usage though.

[kwhitefoot]

Tesla chargers are CCS. It's just that in the US they use a different plug, in Europe Tesla chargers uses CCS-2 connectors.

[wlesieutre]

The downside is that when people are considering which car to buy, Tesla has enjoyed their charging network as a strong selling point that other automakers don't have

[aniviacat]

But they gain the selling point that charging Teslas is cheaper.