Money Won’t Buy You Happiness, But It’ll Fully Charge Your Tesla

A Tesla hacker, known only as Green, recently a “congestion fee” for charging beyond 80% at busy Supercharger locations.

• Green discovered the feature while examining the 2023.38 code.
• The update also includes object-on-road detection and autodial emergency services features for improved safety.
• The price is yet to be announced.
• Tesla’s market doesn’t seem like it will be negatively affected by the change despite the confusion customers are feeling around the implementation.

Tesla’s latest EV software update introduced a new “congestion fee” for charging beyond 80% at busy Supercharger locations.

A Tesla hacker, known only as Green, discovered the update as he was looking into the 2023.38 code. Green is not the first of his kind. There are many savvy hackers out there who aren’t malicious but instead want to hold companies accountable for their wrongdoings. Doing what they do best, breaching systems, they access sensitive corporate data and expose fraud, corruption, and other unethical practices.

You can call them modern-day white knights. We’ll allow it.

Other than the fee, Green also found object-on-road detection where if other Tesla cars detect an object on the road, it will show up on the map for all cars and autodial emergency services features.

Once the battery hits 80%, charging slows down. So, you can see the mass inconvenience in “filling up the tank” when there is congestion at Tesla’s supercharger locations. To counter that, Tesla set the state-of-charge (SoC) at 80% at busy Supercharger sites. However, after backlash from Tesla owners, they made it possible to manually increase it.

Apparently, that was counterproductive. So, now, they set a yet-unknown price for when you need more than 80% to get to the next Tesla Supercharger location. It is important to note that this fee only applies if there is congestion at the sites.

Based on the responses to Green’s X post and on a relevant Reddit post, the majority are happy with it. They are, however, are confused about the implementation in real life. So, it is safe to assume that once the terms are clear, it probably won’t affect many owners. The common sentiment here seems to be relief and hope that the inconvenience of busy Superchargers might come to an end.

Plans of Expansion

Elon Musk’s Tesla currently has over 40,000 Supercharger stalls in operation across the globe. The EV giant is also planning to expand to over 100,000 by the end of 2023. Based on the info from supercharge.info, there are 279 Tesla Supercharger locations under construction now. Tesla has also submitted 416 permits/plans/applications for specific addresses.

So, Supercharger stalls are popping up every day. But ever since Tesla allowed other EVs to charge at its locations, congestion has worsened. Sure, this might fix it temporarily but in the long run, it might anger Tesla owners.

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