News
Future Teslas Could Come “Energy Included”
Future Teslas could come “energy included”, no matter how much you drive, for the life of the car. Crazy as it sounds, Tesla can actually make money giving Tesla owners free energy at home not just at Superchargers. Key components are already on the road or under development at Tesla. So, how would this work, when will it happen and what does it mean for Tesla owners and Tesla investors?
How it works
Tesla can provide grid regulation and stabilization services worth as much as the energy used for charging, or more, by centrally controlling the time and rate at which Tesla cars are charged. Embedding a modest up-front cost increment into the price of a special Tesla charging connector, pays energy cost in excess of earnings from grid regulation and stabilization as an “annuity”, and can leave a lot of money in Tesla’s pocket, too. This model is similar to Tesla’s Supercharger business – there is a detailed analysis of Tesla’s Supercharger business I did a while back on Seeking Alpha.
Owners will handle charging differently. Instead of setting charging current, normal or range charging, and (optionally) the charging start time, the owner will instead set a time for charging to be completed and whether a normal or range charge is needed by that time. The Tesla charging control center will then match the charging rate of each Tesla car using over-the-air communication links to earn grid regulation fees and capture the best electric rates while making sure each car is recharged when the owner needs to drive off.
Central Control of Charging Rate Provides Grid Stabilization
Your garage charging connector will be fed from a separate meter and the connector will “identify itself” to the car to enable Tesla controlled charging.
Two things make this scheme economically viable. There is flexibility in exactly when your Tesla charges because most days the charging time is much less than the time your car spends plugged in overnight. This flexibility lets charging be “timed” to help regulate the grid. When wind generation surges due to gusts, or when system load suddenly drops, chargers can be switched on to “swallow” the power surge. The grid system operator, working through the Tesla charging control center can rapidly adjust the charging load to help stabilize the grid.
Rapid adjustment of loads on the grid is valuable because it allows the grid to use more wind power with less fossil generation online as “spinning reserve”. When a large number of car chargers quickly switch on to “swallow” a surge in wind generated power, the value of the “regulation down” can actually be greater than that of the energy used by the chargers. At these times, the system operator will actually pay to have cars charge!
-->When will free home charging happen?
The answer is, we aren’t there yet. Utilities are only beginning to wrestle with what happens when large amounts of battery storage get connected to the grid. This turns out to be quite complicated. This Sierra Club Energy-Storage Cost-Effectiveness paper offers a summary of the results of several grid storage studies done for the California Independent System Operator (CAISO). At this point we can’t do a specific financial model because technologies, rate structures and even how grid regulation will work with attached storage have not been set.
There are also, at this point, too few Tesla cars on the road to make their charging a significant source of grid regulation. And so far, there is no central control system in place to coordinate the charging of Tesla cars. But times are changing.
CAISO now operates a unified energy imbalance market (EIM) across all or parts of seven states (CA, ID, NV, OR, UT, WA, WY). Within a few years one can imagine upwards of half a million Teslas registered in these states. When these cars are (mostly) plugged in for charging at night, they together represent several giga-watts of load that can be switched on or off in seconds, using the central charging control scheme. That’s a lot of wind regulation capability that requires almost no additional capital investment. It just might get us “free” energy to charge Tesla cars in their owner’s garages.
Status: Where are we on the path to free energy?
Tesla is doing a lot more with grid connected storage and grid regulation than many Tesla owners, and even many Tesla investors realize. In May of this year, J.B. Straubel, Tesla’s Chief Technology Officer made the keynote presentation at Silicon Valley/ SEEDZ Energy Storage Symposium. He discussed a surprising array of Tesla storage products already being made and installed in grid applications, from small residential storage systems being rolled out by SolarCity to large industrial units delivering hundreds of kilowatts. Video of JB’s presentation is available on YouTube here.
A lot of the hardware needed for central charging control of Tesla cars is already part of every Tesla. Every Model S already has a big battery, of course. And high power 10kW or 20kW chargers that are controlled through the touchscreen and the car’s computer. Every Tesla car has a broadband communication link to Tesla company computers that is used to download software updates. These links are available to control charging on a car-by-car basis. Tesla already makes a high power wall connector (HPWC) that can be installed with connection through a standard utility meter. Buying and installing one of these will probably be a requirement to get “free” charging at home.
-->The only part of the remote charging scheme that isn’t online today is the central control system for “aggregating” car charging so it can be controlled by the grid system operator. Everything else needed to implement aggregated charge control for Tesla cars is either already in production at Tesla or available off the shelf as commercial products or communication services.
In his talk, JB describes aggregation of many residential storage systems to allow the grid operator to use that distributed resource in much the same way aggregated car charging control might be used to stabilize and regulate the grid. At the end of his talk, there is a Q and A session. Someone asks what Tesla’s plans are for eventually implementing the aggregated control center JB described. His answer, “We are building it now.”
Should Tesla owners / investors care about this?
Probably, but some caution is warranted. Tesla owners already talk to their ICE driving friends about how much less electricity costs compared to gasoline or diesel fuel. If in the future all Tesla charging is free, both at home and from Superchargers when traveling long distances, Tesla owners will be left with literally “nothing” to talk about – something their fossil fueled friends may (or may not) appreciate.
For Tesla investors, the prospect of making all the energy for Tesla cars free has some big implications. If the economics parallel those of the Supercharger business, Tesla could see very large additional profit (billions of dollars at least) for something that would require negligible new capital investment by Tesla.
There will be indirect benefits for Tesla, too. Already Tesla cars offer the advantage of much lower energy cost compared to ICE cars, and even hybrids. Free charging at home and at Superchargers would make Tesla cars energy cost even lower than other electric cars which get charged on the owner’s electric meter. While the absolute economic advantage of free charging, compared to other electric cars, will be modest, the emotional value of getting energy for free should never be underestimated as a competitive edge in the market place.
-->And of course there is the plain, simple novelty of offering a car that costs nothing to run. This is a feature no other car is likely to have, and which no other car (with the exception of soap box derby and solar-car competition cars) has had before. It is newsworthy, people will talk and write about it and it will produce a lot of buzz and free advertising for Tesla. Tesla investors need to be careful not to be overcome with hysteria as the shares go up, yet again.
Disclosure: Author is long Tesla.
Tesla recently released Full Self-Driving (FSD) v14.2.1, its latest version, but the tinkering with Speed Profiles has perhaps gone too far.
We try to keep it as real as possible with Full Self-Driving operation, and we are well aware that with the new versions, some things get better, but others get worse. It is all part of the process with FSD, and refinements are usually available within a week or so.
However, the latest v14.2.1 update has brought out some major complaints with Speed Profiles, at least on my end. It seems the adjustments have gone a tad too far, and there is a sizeable gap between Profiles that are next to one another.
Tesla FSD v14.2.1 first impressions:
✅ Smooth, stress-free highway operation
✅ Speed Profiles are refined — Hurry seems to be limited to 10 MPH over on highways. Switching from Mad Max to Hurry results in an abrupt braking pattern. Nothing of concern but do feel as if Speed…— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) November 29, 2025
The gap is so large that changing between them presents a bit of an unwelcome and drastic reduction in speed, which is perhaps a tad too fast for my liking. Additionally, Speed Profiles seem to have a set Speed Limit offset, which makes it less functional in live traffic situations.
Before I go any further, I’d like to remind everyone reading this that what I am about to write is purely my opinion; it is not right or wrong, or how everyone might feel. I am well aware that driving behaviors are widely subjective; what is acceptable to one might be unacceptable to another.
Speed Profiles are ‘Set’ to a Speed
From what I’ve experienced on v14.2.1, Tesla has chosen to go with somewhat of a preset max speed for each Speed Profile. With ‘Hurry,’ it appears to be 10 MPH over the speed limit, and it will not go even a single MPH faster than that. In a 55 MPH zone, it will only travel 65 MPH. Meanwhile, ‘Standard’ seems to be fixed at between 4-5 MPH over.
This is sort of a tough thing to have fixed, in my opinion. The speed at which the car travels should not be fixed; it should be more dependent on how traffic around it is traveling.
-->It almost seems as if the Speed Profile chosen should be more of a Behavior Profile. Standard should perform passes only to traffic that is slower than the traffic. If traffic is traveling at 75 MPH in a 65 MPH zone, the car should travel at 75 MPH. It should pass traffic that travels slower than this.
Hurry should be more willing to overtake cars, travel more than 10 MPH over the limit, and act as if someone is in a hurry to get somewhere, hence the name. Setting strict limits on how fast it will travel seems to be a real damper on its capabilities. It did much better in previous versions.
Some Speed Profiles are Too Distant from Others
This is specifically about Hurry and Mad Max, which are neighbors in the Speed Profiles menu. Hurry will only go 10 MPH over the limit, but Mad Max will travel similarly to traffic around it. I’ve seen some people say Mad Max is too slow, but I have not had that opinion when using it.
In a 55 MPH zone during Black Friday and Small Business Saturday, it is not unusual for traffic around me to travel in the low to mid-80s. Mad Max was very suitable for some traffic situations yesterday, especially as cars were traveling very fast. However, sometimes it required me to “gear down” into Hurry, especially as, at times, it would try to pass slower traffic in the right lane, a move I’m not super fond of.
We had some readers also mention this to us:
-->The abrupt speed reduction when switching to a slower speed profile is definitely an issue that should be improved upon.
— David Klem (@daklem) November 29, 2025
After switching from Mad Max to Hurry, there is a very abrupt drop in speed. It is not violent by any means, but it does shift your body forward, and it seems as if it is a tad drastic and could be refined further.
-->News
Tesla’s most affordable car is coming to the Netherlands
The trim is expected to launch at €36,990, making it the most affordable Model 3 the Dutch market has seen in years.
Tesla is preparing to introduce the Model 3 Standard to the Netherlands this December, as per information obtained by AutoWeek. The trim is expected to launch at €36,990, making it the most affordable Model 3 the Dutch market has seen in years.
While Tesla has not formally confirmed the vehicle’s arrival, pricing reportedly comes from a reliable source, the publication noted.
Model 3 Standard lands in NL
The U.S. version of the Model 3 Standard provides a clear preview of what Dutch buyers can expect, such as a no-frills configuration that maintains the recognizable Model 3 look without stripping the car down to a bare interior. The panoramic glass roof is still there, the exterior design is unchanged, and Tesla’s central touchscreen-driven cabin layout stays intact.
Cost reductions come from targeted equipment cuts. The American variant uses fewer speakers, lacks ventilated front seats and heated rear seats, and swaps premium materials for cloth and textile-heavy surfaces. Performance is modest compared with the Premium models, with a 0–100 km/h sprint of about six seconds and an estimated WLTP range near 550 kilometers.
Despite the smaller battery and simpler suspension, the Standard maintains the long-distance capability drivers have come to expect in a Tesla.
-->Pricing strategy aligns with Dutch EV demand and taxation shifts
At €36,990, the Model 3 Standard fits neatly into Tesla’s ongoing lineup reshuffle. The current Model 3 RWD has crept toward €42,000, creating space for a more competitive entry-level option, and positioning the new Model 3 Standard comfortably below the €39,990 Model Y Standard.
The timing aligns with rising Dutch demand for affordable EVs as subsidies like SEPP fade and tax advantages for electric cars continue to wind down, EVUpdate noted. Buyers seeking a no-frills EV with solid range are then likely to see the new trim as a compelling alternative.
With the U.S. variant long established and the Model Y Standard already available in the Netherlands, the appearance of an entry-level Model 3 in the Dutch configurator seems like a logical next step.
News
Tesla Model Y is still China’s best-selling premium EV through October
The premium-priced SUV outpaced rivals despite a competitive field, while the Model 3 also secured an impressive position.
The Tesla Model Y led China’s top-selling pure electric vehicles in the 200,000–300,000 RMB segment through October 2025, as per Yiche data compiled from China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) figures.
The premium-priced SUV outpaced rivals despite a competitive field, while the Model 3 also secured an impressive position.
The Model Y is still unrivaled
The Model Y’s dominance shines in Yiche’s October report, topping the chart for vehicles priced between 200,000 and 300,000 RMB. With 312,331 units retailed from January through October, the all-electric crossover was China’s best-selling EV in the 200,000–300,000 RMB segment.
The Xiaomi SU7 is a strong challenger at No. 2 with 234,521 units, followed by the Tesla Model 3, which achieved 146,379 retail sales through October. The Model Y’s potentially biggest rival, the Xiaomi YU7, is currently at No. 4 with 80,855 retail units sold.
Efficiency kings
The Model 3 and Model Y recently claimed the top two spots in Autohome’s latest real-world energy-consumption test, outperforming a broad field of Chinese-market EVs under identical 120 km/h cruising conditions with 375 kg payload and fixed 24 °C cabin temperature. The Model 3 achieved 20.8 kWh/100 km while the Model Y recorded 21.8 kWh/100 km, reaffirming Tesla’s efficiency lead.
The results drew immediate attention from Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun, who publicly recognized Tesla’s advantage while pledging continued refinement for his brand’s lineup.
-->“The Xiaomi SU7’s energy consumption performance is also very good; you can take a closer look. The fact that its test results are weaker than Tesla’s is partly due to objective reasons: the Xiaomi SU7 is a C-segment car, larger and with higher specifications, making it heavier and naturally increasing energy consumption. Of course, we will continue to learn from Tesla and further optimize its energy consumption performance!” Lei Jun wrote in a post on Weibo.
Tesla tinkering with Speed Profiles on FSD v14.2.1 has gone too far
Tesla’s most affordable car is coming to the Netherlands
