The Company’s ever-changing free Supercharger-access policy has many owners deliberating over how much it costs to charge a Tesla.

If you were one of the early Tesla adopters, you would have been able to charge your Model X or S for free at one of the company’s many Superchargers across North America. Alas, that privilege is no more.

With Tesla’s growing popularity the number of cars on the road, and lined up at Supercharger EV charging station outlets, increased dramatically. To the point where the automaker began phasing out free unlimited charging. From January 1, 2017, all new cars sold were restricted to 400 kilowatt-hours, or about 1,000 miles, of free charging every year. Once that was exhausted, the owners were charged a nominal fee.

This perk was further curtailed to only granting free unlimited charging through a referral program, restricted to buyers of performance versions of the Model S, Model X and Model 3. This came to an end on September 18, 2020.

However, in a game of ‘now, you see it, now you don’t,’ Tesla reintroduced free Supercharging to anyone who bought a model 3 or Y in the US before December 31, 2020, as it pursued its target of 500,000 sales. This access is valid for a year.

All other Tesla owners wanting to plugin to any of Tesla’s charging stations in America will have to pay about $0.28 per kWh, which means they pay between $7 and $8.50 per 100 miles of driving.

The Teslarati, however, have another, cheaper option.

RELATED: Tesla Model S Might Have Set A New EV Record At Laguna Seca

This Is How Much It Costs To Charge a Tesla At Home

Level-1 Tesla charging at home
Via: Arena One 99 Glamping

One of the perks of driving a Tesla is that you’re not compelled to ‘fill-up’ at one of the company’s fast chargers.

Sure, the latest 250 kW DC Supercharger could add up to 1,000 miles in an hour, or 75 miles in 5 minutes, but charging at home is a lot cheaper.

Using a 120V Level-1 AC home charger might take a Model 3 owner 14 to 21 hours to fully charge from empty, but this will come at a much lower cost.

For instance, if you live in Georgia where your average cost per kWh is less than $0.10, ‘filling’ up the 75 kWh battery on a Long Range Model 3 or Model Y from 10 kWh to 70 kWh, would cost about $6.00. Even using the national average residential cost of electricity of 13.31 cents per kWh in May 2021, charging at home is less than 50 percent of the cost of fast charging.

Based on 45 percent highway, 55 percent city driving and 15,000 annual miles, Forbes magazine, in September 2020, claimed a Tesla Model 3 Long-Range would cost the owner about $500 in electricity.

In another evaluation by motoring magazine “Car and Driver”, using the national residential average electricity cost and a Model 3‘s EPA-rated consumption of 84 MPGe, their test vehicle cost about $1300 over its first 24,000 miles or 5.5 cents per mile.

On the other hand, only utilizing fast charging would have cost 26 cents/kWh, pushing the average cost up to just over $2500 or 10.4 cents per mile.

Accordingly, depending on where the car is plugged in, the cost to charge a Tesla can vary significantly, but should still beat a fossil-fuelled equivalent, hands down.

RELATED: Shmee150 Ponders An Electric Future With The Tesla Model Y

This is how the running costs to charge a Tesla compare to a traditional car

Tesla charging range
Via: Don B-Medium

When summing up the running costs to charge a Tesla, Forbes concluded that using home-charging, a Model 3 Long-Range would probably cost less than half that of a similarly sized gasoline-fueled car such as the Honda Accord. Based on EPA consumption figures and fuel costs in September 2020 the report estimated the Accord’s annual fuel cost to be $1,050.

While this all looks great on paper, some regular EV users have a more comprehensive view of how much it costs to charge a Tesla.

Take, for instance, Tesla owner John Greathouse, who wanted to know how much money he would save on a cross-country trip of just over 1,600 miles. Nothing new in this, except that John felt time is money and therefore tracked the time added to the trip for charging-stops at Superchargers.

Using a hypothetical gas-powered vehicle with a sub-optimal efficiency of 20-miles per gallon, and California’s gas price of approximately $3.85 per gallon (in September 2020) the trip would have cost about $310 in gas.

So, while the actual cost to charge the Tesla was considerably less than the fuel bill would have been, six hours was added to the trip, waiting for the car to charge. Allowing for gas stops in a fossil-fuelled vehicle and the trip was probably extended by about five hours.

In John’s case, factoring in the cost of his lost time over those five hours, meant the Tesla would have cost $34 more than an inefficient gas-powered car would have.

This just goes to show that there are many ways of working out how much it costs to charge a Tesla: Some easy to follow, others a little more obscure.

NEXT: 8 Upcoming EVs That Might Dethrone Tesla