The Surprising Reason Why Supercharging Is More Expensive Than Gas Fill-Ups in Canada

This might be a moot point for Canadian Tesla owners, who started to complain about increasing supercharging costs since a new fee structure has been introduced last month. One Tesla owner wrote to Elon Musk about the situation and he promised to find a solution.

Tesla does not have a customer relations department, so it’s hard to get a solution when you encounter a problem. Luckily, Elon Musk is very active on social media, and between writing some quite controversial messages, he takes the time to answer customers' questions. This is rather unheard off in the corporate world, where CEOs are oblivious to the people who pay for their yachts and planes.

One Tesla owner in Canada took to Twitter to complain about the huge supercharging fees. According to Harsimran Bansal, supercharging in Canada is now just as expensive as filling up with gas. Surprisingly, Elon Musk replied the very next day and said he’d look into this issue. Three hours later, Musk identified the problem and promised to change the situation. It’s unconventional but no less impressive.

“Will find out. Our aspiration is just to make a modest return vs the fully-considered price of Supercharging,” Musk replied to Harsimran Bansal’s tweet. And immediately followed: “Canada requires charging by the minute vs kWh. We’re working to get that changed.”

The supercharging bills tripled in the past month after Tesla introduced a new fee structure with four price tiers, depending on the power drawn from the charger. This works in the regions where the pricing is per minute rather than per kWh, and Canada is one of them. This is the reason behind the huge supercharging bills, as Musk indicated.

Hopefully, the problem will be addressed, especially as Measurement Canada promised to make changes to how EV charging is billed. The government agency overseeing the selling of measured goods announced in December 2020 that it was working towards transitioning to a per-kWh billing system. At that time, the transition was supposed to take 18 months to implement. Hopefully, it won't be long.