After a longer than expected wait, Tesla has finally made the switch to kWh billing at Superchargers stations across Canada, meaning owners will now be billed by the amount of electricity they put in their car, and not on the amount of time they are plugged in.
The switch comes nearly six months after Measurement Canada granted a temporary dispensation order allowing charging providers to bill customers per kWh, more than two years after the government first began the process to make the switch. That approval came on February 24, and within a few weeks the first charging operators switched to the new billing method. However those companies had to revert back to time-based billing because of a complicated application process that no one knew about that took longer to work through the channels of government the more charging locations you had.
Tesla’s expansive Supercharger network across Canada meant it took nearly six months to get approved, but that approval has finally come and on Thursday the automaker switched to kWh billing.
According to a review of rates by Drive Tesla, they appear to be consistent across the country. Urban Superchargers, which are the slowest 72kW, are also the cheapest at under $0.30/kWh. From there the rates increase to around $0.47 or $0.48 per kWh for V2 (150kW) and V3 (250kW) stations in all provinces. We were able to find some V2 stations that were outliers and also at less than $0.30/kWh, but most were at the higher rate. This is slightly more expensive than what Couche-Tard is billing ($0.39/kWh) at their 180kW stations.
What does this mean for Supercharger costs in Canada? If you were to charge your Model Y Long Range from 20% to 80% at a V3 Supercharger, it would cost you about $20. Under the previous time-based billing method, which varied based on the charging speed you were getting, that same charge would be roughly equivalent in terms of cost.
Here are some of the Superchargers we looked at and their new kWh rates. What do you think of the new rates? Let us know in the comments below.
