Tesla says its new “Emergency Drive Away” feature can do up to $25,000 in damage to a Supercharger every time someone uses it, and the car needs a mandatory service visit too.
Tesla has since released more details about the feature in response to owner questions. But Tesla hasn’t said who gets that bill.
Yesterday, Tesla launched Emergency Drive Away, which lets drivers shift into Drive and pull away while still plugged into a Supercharger. It arrived two months after a gunman shot three people in Teslas at a Supercharger station in Twin Falls, Idaho.
Tesla was upfront that the feature “will damage your vehicle and the Supercharger.” It didn’t put a number on that damage until an owner asked what to expect, physically and financially.
Tesla’s charging team answered:
That’s “up to,” and Tesla says it depends on the Supercharger. Still, “electrical and civil” is construction language.
The car doesn’t get away clean either. Tesla says a service visit for the charge port is mandatory, and it didn’t give a price for that.
There’s a cleanup too. Another owner asked about the liquid gushing out of the charger in Tesla’s demo video. Tesla said it’s glycol, the coolant in the cable, and that it will clean it up as part of a “mandatory service visit to the Supercharger.”
$25,000 is 40% of a new Supercharger post
For scale, look at Tesla’s own price list. Its Supercharger for Business configurator puts an eight-post V4 site at $500,000 in hardware, or $62,500 per post, before installation. Tesla’s worst-case repair is 40% of that.
It’s also more than 80 times the price of EVject, the $299 breakaway adapter that owners started recommending again after Twin Falls. Tesla sued EVject in 2024 over overheating claims.
Tesla skipped the question about who pays
Several owners asked Tesla directly who pays, including whether a driver who uses the feature in a real emergency is responsible for the Supercharger repair.
Tesla didn’t answer them. Its account kept replying to other questions in the same thread, confirming that the feature works on V2, V3, and V4 stalls and that it doesn’t work on home chargers.
It did answer one about penalties. Asked if there are any for misuse, Tesla replied “Yes,” and its launch post says deliberate misuse “will invoke additional penalties.” It hasn’t said what those are, or how it will decide what counts as misuse.
Tesla has an easy way to collect. Every Supercharger session runs through a Tesla account with a payment method on file, which is how it bills idle and congestion fees.
And $25,000 is more than the minimum insurance coverage in a lot of states. In Idaho, where the Twin Falls shooting happened, drivers only have to carry $15,000 in property damage liability. New York requires $10,000. Pennsylvania, $5,000.
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