After stopping at a Supercharger station in China, a Tesla owner was startled by a $600,000 cost.
According to the automaker, it was a bug.
Tesla never charged its customers to charge at Supercharger sites for years.
It was part of the owner's experience and was included in the price of the company's vehicles.
This has altered in recent years, as Tesla has transitioned to a paying model in order to hasten the rollout of Supercharger stations around the world.
The manufacturer was required to develop a payment method that does not interfere with the smooth experience of using Supercharger stations.
It has mostly successful, but there have been a few hiccups here and there. None, however, as large as this one.
After a very short session at a Supercharger station, a Tesla Model 3 owner in China was charged 3,846,306 yuan, the equivalent of over $600,000 USD.
The following is what Filter Crusher had to say about the incident:
"On February 27, some netizens reported that when driving a Tesla Model 3, they charged for 20 minutes." Today, the vehicle was unexpectedly barred from Supercharging and was prompted by the app to pay a supercharging tax of 3,846,306 yuan. Filter Crusher contacted Tesla customer support, who informed him that there was a mistake in the background system of select vehicles, which specialists are correcting. "It is not yet resolved."
It's unclear what the fault was, but it was odd because it affected multiple areas of the Supercharger app.
The owner had free Supercharging miles from the previous Tesla referral program, according to screenshots of the Supercharger tab in the owner's Tesla app, however the final 2,286 km (1,420 miles) were all used in the last charging session, despite the fact that Tesla could not have given that.
