Due to Tesla’s high sales over the past year and the lack of time they have available to pass on information, some owners are misunderstanding who is responsible for Tesla Destination chargers.
Despite a desire to talk endlessly about their car at any social gathering the average Tesla owner in Australia is a pretty reasonable person, sadly there’s a very small percentage that lack understanding and common courtesy.
A good example was a recent altercation between a Tesla owner and a tourist business after the car owner failed to get charging started on a Tesla destination charger. Despite the electricity and a secure parking spot being provided free the business owner was given a dressing down both in person and online for not maintaining the equipment.
There’s clearly a number of issues at play here and none of them are the fault of the business. This is not a one off altercation, it happens from time to time across Australia and is seemingly on the increase as EV sales grow rapidly.
For those that don’t know Tesla destination chargers are supplied to a variety of business owners as a way of attracting customers, up until 2017 when Tesla paid the installation costs it was on most occasions a wise acquisition by the business, from late 2017 onwards the Tesla charger was supplied at no cost but the installation costs became the responsibility of the business, sometimes $1500 per charger.
Depending on the cost of installation and amount of customers attracted the charger could be seen as at best a small win but on most occasions an act of paying it forward in the hope it would assist a faster transition to electric vehicles.
A lot of the small business owners cannot yet afford a $70,000 plus EV but they feel that installing a EV charger is at least making an effort.
Business owners will no doubt get a fair share of complaints about the products they supply, but remember customers are paying for those products, they may have justification to complain.
A business owner offering free EV charging should not be treated with disrespect or the charging equipment may very well be removed at short notice thus ruining it for the vast majority that do the right thing.
Author: Rob Dean, Chair of the Tesla Owners Club Western Australia.