If you’re a business or property owner with a Tesla Destination Charger on your property, you will soon be able to bill Tesla owners for the electricity they use to charge their vehicles.
The first hint that this new feature was coming happened earlier this year when Tesla released a new 3rd generation Wall Charger. Along with a slight redesign to the charger itself, a WiFi connection was also added.
Then a few months later Tesla notified partners in its Destination Charging program of some impending changes. One of those changes was program applicants would have to begin paying for their High Powered Wall Connectors (HPWC), where before Telsa would provide them free of charge.
But the automaker also offered them a way to recoup those extra costs by saying they would soon be able to bill users for the amount of electricity they use. Tesla followed up with a new section on their website called ‘Commercial Charging’ that was released earlier this month, highlighting the advantages of joining the network, including making a return on their investment.
Now it looks the new feature will make an appearance soon as it was added to the latest 2020.48.5 software update that was released last night.
Hm… So there's a new chargeport protocol for billing added. Seems to be aimed at 3rd party EVSEs, streamlining billing of using 3rds party charger use?
— green (@greentheonly) December 1, 2020
While it will be a nice change for business owners to get some money back from owners who use their Destination Chargers, it is a much more important change for Tesla owners who live in condos or apartments.
Typically in these situations, strata councils and apartment managers have been reluctant to install EV chargers as there was no way for them to bill charging sessions, instead leaving the building owner, or the other condo owners, to pay for the electricity used. Now that those costs can be recouped, we’ll hopefully see many of these Destination Chargers being installed across the country and around the world.
It does appear though that the new feature won’t be released in Canada at the same time as it does in the US, as Tesla’s website does not have a similar ‘Commercial Charging’ page on the Canadian version of the website.
