Tesla offers nighttime 50% Supercharging discount in California

The offer is primarily centered on busy urban Supercharger locations to help reduce cost.

California Tesla owners can expect a smaller Supercharging bill for using the network at night.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, but having a bunch of electric cars with big batteries all DC fast-charging simultaneously puts a significant demand on the power grid, which, in addition to other issues, increases the cost of electricity.

Tesla has experimented with offering Supercharging discounts for people who use the network to charge at night and at other off-peak hours to reduce its power bill. Now, according to a report published Monday by Electrek, it’s making that discount official in California.

Some Tesla owners in urban areas of California have started seeing notifications pop up in the Tesla app saying that charging specifically between the hours of 7 p.m. and 10 a.m. will net them a 50% discount on their charge rate. Of course, specific rates would still change from location to location, etc.

We’d ask Tesla if it plans on spreading this discount to other major US metropolitan cities, but it doesn’t have a PR department anymore. Instead, we’ll write our question down on 250 sheets of paper, crumple them up, shove them into a T-shirt cannon and fire it in the general direction of Fremont.