Africa-Press – Mauritius. The carmaker says that it’s wasteful to include a Level 1 charger for free with every vehicle since people just don’t use them.
Historically speaking, when someone has bought an electric vehicle, it’s come with a 110-volt mobile charger. It makes sense, right? You might need to charge in an emergency, or maybe you don’t have a Level 2 charger at home. Well, like our old friend Bob said, “The times they are a-changin’,” because Tesla is no longer including a 110-volt charger with its new vehicles.
This news was reported Saturday by InsideEVs and confirmed by Tesla CEO Elon Musk in a Tweet. His stated reasoning for getting rid of the included 110-volt charger is that people don’t use them. That makes sense when you think about just how long it takes to charge any EV on 110 volts. Our long-term Mini Cooper SE takes multiple days to go from around 10% charge to 100%, and its battery is tiny compared with a Tesla’s.
Of course, taking away something that people have gotten used to getting for free is a sure way to get people riled up on social media. In response, Musk tweeted that Tesla would offer the Level 1 charging kit for $200 and make it easy to order along with the car. As of publication, it’s not part of the Model 3 or Model Y configurators, though.
Interestingly, Tesla isn’t the only company bailing on the venerable old 110-volt wall charger. Kia’s EV6, for example, also doesn’t include one, but people don’t seem as angry about that. That could be down to it being a new model, or — and this seems more likely — Kia fans just aren’t as rabid as Tesla fans.
Typically, we’d contact a car company for more information in situations like these, but Tesla does not operate a public relations department to field requests for comment.
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