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Tesla combats Uber, Lyft congestion in New York City with Supercharger Congestion Fees
Tesla is combatting Uber and Lyft congestion at its Superchargers in New York City with Supercharger fees after the ride-sharing services have backed up EV chargers.
This week, it appears the Superchargers are more congested than normal, and it could be due to the influx of Uber and Lyft vehicles at locations in Brooklyn and Queens.
Dear @elonmusk and @Tesla please consider increased demand for the superchargers (240kw) and make the new ones nearby these locations- #Brooklyn #BayRidge #BathBeach #Bensonhurst #DykerHeights #Forthamilton
Please, cooperate with Tesla – @NYCMayorsOffice @nyctaxi @Uber pic.twitter.com/fYmPNr9EOt
— Vako Ormotsadze (@VOrmotsadze) January 12, 2024
This is not a great experience.
We need more supercharger locations in NYC. As a Tesla customer we shouldn’t have to go through this, second time this week. @elonmusk @Tesla @TeslaCharging @WholeMarsBlog @heydave7 @SawyerMerritt @DirtyTesLa @DillonLoomis22 pic.twitter.com/GVybsMdq8w— Tesla Shill (@TeslaShill) January 17, 2024
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Tesla has sent this message to drivers in the area, indicating that Active Supercharger Congestion Fees will be applied:
“Idle fees have been replaced by congestion fees at select Superchargers near you. Congestion fees accrue when your Supercharger is busy and your vehicle’s battery is above a certain level. This change helps reduce wait times and ensures that everyone has access to Superchargers when they need it.
Congestion fees apply when:
- Supercharger is busy
- Your vehicle’s charge is above the congestion fee charge level
View congestion fees and charge levels at which they apply on your touchscreen.”
The number of Lyft and Uber vehicles that applied for licenses through the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) was well over 9,000 units last year, and several NYC Councilmembers warned that this could cause congestion.
The TLC eliminated the cap on for-hire drivers as long as the vehicles are electric or handicap accessible, but there are now so many in the city that it is causing issues.
On top of this, there are only so many charging stations in the City, and several are operated by Revel, the ride-sharing service that fought the TLC for more for-hire licenses several years ago.
Tesla Model 3 wins hearts as famed NYC Taxi, picks up where Nissan Leaf couldn’t
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As for congestion fees, Tesla launched them last year in an attempt to keep Supercharger lines moving when certain locations are congested.
Code from Tesla hacker green stated that the congestion fees would apply when vehicles are charging over 80 percent.
Potential Solutions
The big issue and core problem is that there are a lot of EV drivers in New York, but the infrastructure just has not gotten to a point where it can routinely handle an influx of cars that need a charge.
Revel has been expanding its network of EV chargers throughout New York City and plans to open more stations this year.
Spokesperson Robert Familiar told us:
“Revel’s public fast-charging Superhubs have seen about four times more public utilization in the last two months, which we see as a direct outcome of the Green Rides initiative. We’re anticipating an even greater uptick as more drivers look to skip long lines and hidden fees by charging at our higher-volume Superhubs.”
The 2018 Green Rides initiative has been great for EV adoption, but it surged demand so much that it generally outpaced infrastructure availability.
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Jason Kersten, the Press Secretary of the NYC TLC, told me that there will be growing pains until the City is able to build out the appropriate amount of infrastructure. EVs are obviously a great thing for New York, and we talked in detail about the transitional phase that the City will go through over the next 11 years as it gears up for a 100 percent zero-emissions fleet.
TLC Commissioner David Do believes infrastructure will need to catch up as drivers under the Commission jumped at the opportunity to own EVs last year:
“In October, we gave TLC drivers the option of owning their own EV plates instead of continuing to lease gas-powered vehicles, and many of them jumped at it. They’re now hitting the road, leading the charge towards a cleaner and more sustainable city and sending a very clear message: We need more charging infrastructure. We’re doing everything we can to meet that demand as quickly as possible. That includes the city’s commitment to install 13 fast charging hubs in municipal parking facilities citywide, a new Bronx charging depot, and 30 fast chargers at TLC’s Woodside inspection facility.”
88 percent of the 9,756 applications the TLC received between October 18 and November 13 were from individual drivers, not companies. The TLC has, so far, approved 4,732 and continues to process applications.
The TLC and the City of New York have worked together to increase charging infrastructure moving forward. The efforts have resulted in $15 million in federal funding for a charging depot in the Bronx, 30 fast-chargers at the TLC’s Woodside inspection facility, and 13 municipal parking facilities citywide, among other things.
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SpaceX just picked up another $1.6 billion from the Pentagon, with the U.S. Space Force awarding two task orders worth $1.6 billion to fly 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California through the end of 2027. The launches will carry satellites for the Space Based Sensing and Targeting portfolio, a set of programs meant to help the military detect and track airborne threats and relay that information across forces in near real time.
The award falls under National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1, the Space Force’s faster, commercial style procurement track for missions that do not require the military’s most demanding certification process. It is also the largest single order publicly disclosed under that program so far, and the first task order issued since the Space Force nearly tripled Lane 1’s contract ceiling from $5.6 billion to $17 billion on July 17.
SpaceX to become America’s Military data backbone for missiles, drones, and warfighters
Eric Zarybnisky, the Space Force’s acting portfolio acquisition executive for space access, said the entire process, from identifying the requirement to signing the contract, took about two months, including a month set aside for companies to prepare proposals.
SpaceX is not just launching these satellites. It already holds the contracts to build two of the programs within the same portfolio, $4.16 billion for the Space Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator system and $2.29 billion for the Space Data Network Backbone, which Teslarati covered in May. That means SpaceX is now responsible for both building key pieces of the military’s next generation sensing network and getting them into orbit.
With this latest award, SpaceX’s Pentagon contract total for 2026 alone tops $8 billion, adding to a defense portfolio that already includes the Golden Dome missile defense software group SpaceX joined in April and a string of GPS launches it inherited after ULA’s Vulcan rocket ran into a booster anomaly, which we detailed in March.
Lane 1’s vendor pool technically includes seven companies: SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Impulse Space, and Relativity Space. In practice, SpaceX remains the only provider with the combination of launch cadence, flight proven Falcon 9 hardware, and West Coast infrastructure to support a campaign requiring roughly one Vandenberg launch a month for the next year and a half.
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Some lawmakers have flagged the growing concentration of national security launches with one company as a risk worth watching. For now, the Space Force keeps backing SpaceX, with it being the company that shows up ready to launch.
Elon Musk shed two new bits of detail on Starship following its 13th test launch, which was an overwhelming success.
SpaceX launched Starship for the 13th time last Friday after two delays: one on Monday when several Raptor engines did not ignite, and another on Thursday due to unfavorable weather conditions in Starbase, Texas.
The launch was overwhelmingly successful. SpaceX was able to complete a necessary test of the heat shield tiles by increasing the acceleration of Starship from launch throughout the flight; 20 Starlink v3 satellites were released with no issue; the Super Heavy Booster landed safely in the Gulf of America, Ship successfully reignited engines while in space; and it also splashed down without incident in the Indian Ocean.
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
Nevertheless, more details are coming out about Starship, and Musk is doing the talking.
Starship Will Be Retrieved in the Ocean
Musk revealed on Tuesday night that Starship would be recovered by a ship in the Indian Ocean. SpaceX routinely tries to recover Starship after splashdown in an effort to find out more about the flight by examining the spacecraft afterward.
We’re sending a ship out to recover Starship https://t.co/fUqUZTITO9
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 28, 2026
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This helps engineers find out more about why things might have happened, allows them to examine any potential damage or anomalies that might have occurred, and increases the chances of an even more successful flight next time thanks to the additional information recovered.
Ship Could Have Been Caught by Tower Arms, Musk claims
Musk has already indicated that SpaceX will plan to attempt a catch of Starship with the 14th test flight. While this would be a major accomplishment, it would be an expected next step, considering the fact that the Super Heavy Booster has already been caught by the chopsticks on numerous occasions.
The ship landing was precise, meaning that it would have been caught by the tower arms https://t.co/6nbNrRfX9P
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 29, 2026
A ship catch would be a great indication of where SpaceX stands in terms of reusability and launch cadence. A successful catch with relatively no incidents would be a good sign that SpaceX is nearing a more frequent launch of Starship, but also that the reusability of the massive rocket would be something many would expect in the near future.
It is a necessity to make life multiplanetary.
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Elon Musk has updated his timeline for when humans will walk on Mars and for when ships will simply get there.
The objective of getting to Mars has been one of Musk’s biggest goals since becoming a serial entrepreneur and realizing that time on Earth is limited. Musk has said several times he hopes to die on Mars, and not by impact.
Musk now believes that people will be on Mars in “roughly 5 to 7 years.” He said that a Mars lander will get there “a few years sooner.”
People on Mars in roughly 5 to 7 years.
Mars lander a few years sooner.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 29, 2026
The response from Musk comes after NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said that SpaceX’s biggest priority is the Moon and not Mars. Because of this, Isaacman conceded that he believes nuclear power and propulsion investments will provide “potentially the pathway with the fewest miracles required to put four people on Mars in the next 10 to 15 years.”
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Of course, this is what NASA can do through taxpayer funding and nuclear investments, he added.
Musk’s grand ambitions are much more optimistic than most, and it is certainly a double-edged sword. This is not the first time timelines for Mars have been somewhat lofty, especially to those normal thinkers like you and me, not super geniuses like Musk.
In fact, the SpaceX and Tesla frontman has said on at least a dozen occasions that we could be on Mars in the coming years. Musk said 2020 would be the big year as early as 2009. In 2020, he was “highly confident” of a landing in 2026, and had even said 2024 in a best-case scenario.
The point is, the range has varied, and it’s anyone’s guess when we’ll get there. This latest adjustment to the timeline is typical of Musk, and while the Moon has seemingly taken priority over Mars, it is still worth mentioning that the ultimate goal is to make life multiplanetary, and it starts potentially with the Red Planet.
SpaceX scores another massive Pentagon deal to support military satellites
Elon Musk sheds two new bits of detail on Starship after 13th test launch
