Huge price rise for vital tesla feature

One of the big selling points of electric cars is the low running costs, but in a shock move Tesla has destroyed one of its biggest advantages.

One of the biggest selling points of a Tesla has gone up in smoke.

Tesla recently announced it has increased the price for using its supercharger network to 52 cents per kW, a sharp rise of 24 per cent.

The price hike makes it more expensive to fast-charge Teslas than to refill petrol-powered rivals.

Tesla has aggressively increased the price of using its Supercharger network.

Analysis by electric car experts at EVCentral.com.au shows it would cost $9.78 per 100km to run a Tesla Model 3 if it was charged exclusively on the brand’s Supercharger network.

This compares poorly to petrol powered machines such as the BMW 330i at $8.00 per 100km and the hybrid-powered Lexus IS350h at $6.76.

EVCentral says that despite the price rise, Tesla is still misleading visitors to its website by claiming you can travel “at a fraction of the cost of gasoline”.

A BMW 330i is cheaper to fuel per 100km than a Tesla Model 3 using the Supercharger network.

According to EVcentral, these claims are based on the old Supercharger fees of 42 cents per kW and a petrol price of $1.75 per litre — a price it has never hit in Australia. The average current cost of unleaded petrol is $1.22 per litre.

But the case against Tesla isn’t as black and white as it seems as the majority of electric car owners will use home chargers to refill their vehicles regularly and use supercharger networks only when they are travelling longer distances. Many also use solar at home, which further reduces the cost of recharging.

Tesla uses old and incorrect figures on the comparison part of its website.

The California-based electric car maker is no stranger to making wild claims.

It landed itself in hot water over its semi-autonomous driving technology, with a German court banning the company from using the word Autopilot to describe the technology.

The term Autopilot could be construed to be that the car drives itself. In reality the Autopilot feature works much like-lane keeping technology found in many other vehicles.

There has also been controversy over the brand charging customers thousands of dollars for future “Full Self-Driving” mode, which hasn’t been developed yet and isn’t legal to use.

Some Australian buyers paid thousands of dollars extra for full self-driving as early as 2013.