Introducing Command Credits

As we knew, the Tesla Fleet API was going to start charging for usage in 2025, and on February 1st at midnight UTC, that will officially begin. So, as planned, Teslemetry is introducing pay per use command credits, and reducing the polling frequency of vehicle data.

Command Credits

Command credits are Teslemetry's way of accounting for the variable cost associated with Fleet API commands. Some Teslemetry users do not use commands at all, while others use them frequently. By introducing command credits, we can charge users based on their actual usage, rather than spreading the cost across all users which will inevitably be worse for some users, and still not enough for others.

Like most parts of Teslemetry, Command credits cost USD$2.50 / AUD$4, are sold in intervals of 2000, and measured in units of single vehicle commands, however there are two exceptions:

• Vehicle data refresh - Costs 2 command credits
• Vehicle wake up - Costs 20 command credits

This is quite simply because a vehicle_data request costs twice as much as a command, and a wake_up request costs 20 times as much.

To get started, all current Teslemetry customers will be given 2000 command credits on February 1st at approximately midnight UTC, and all new and current trials will receive 500 command credits.

Tracking Usage

You should have seen the Teslemetry console has a graph showing your command credit usage in real-time for the last 14 days. The graph shows usage in credits, not commands, so you will notice "Wake" is always in increments of 20, and "Refresh" in increments of 2.

Every time you consume credits, a message is sent to your SSE listeners and webhooks with the type of command, cost, and balance. A "Command credits" sensor entity has been added to the custom integration, and will be added to the core integration in 2025.3 or later. At this time, purchasing command credits will not trigger a webhook or SSE message, but this may be added in the future.

Purchasing Credits

Command credits can be purchased in the Teslemetry console using the "Buy Credits" button, or alternatively you can enable "Auto Top-Up" to automatically purchase more credits when you run out. Specifically, credits will be purchased when you run a command that would consume more credits than your current balance. As long as the purchase doesn't fail immediately, the command will proceed as normal. If your payment fails, you may notice your command balance will be negative until you top up.

Command Credit purchases use the existing payment details associated with your subscription, and do not expire unless you delete your account. If you cancel your subscription, your command credits will remain on your account, sad and lonely, waiting for you to return.

If you have any issues with purchasing command credits, please contact support.

Managed Wake

Along with the new Teslemetry API that was recently released, vehicle commands will check if your vehicle is awake before sending the command, and will wake it up if it is not. This is important because if your vehicle is asleep and it is sent a command, you would receive a 408 offline response, but still be charged for the command. For this reason, and to ensure you're consuming command credits sparingly, you may want to check if your vehicle is awake before sending commands. This can be done in Home Assistant using that status sensor, which is currently updated every 30 seconds.

For example, if you wish to send the flash_lights command, and your vehicle is asleep, this will cost you 21 command credits. If you immediately called the flash_lights command again, this would only cost you 1 command credit, as your vehicle is already awake.

Reduced polling

First announced as part of the vehicle data caching blog, to ensure Teslemetry remains financially viable, the polling frequency of vehicle data has to be reduced significantly. The introduction of caching meant that those still polling the API would be able to receive valid responses at any time, but the data could be up to a minute old. Unfortunately, the cost of polling vehicles every 60 seconds while awake costs approximately USD$0.75 per vehicle per day, and vehicle subscriptions are only USD$2.50 per month.

To make this sustainable, the automatic polling rate has been increased to 10 minutes. If you require polled vehicle data more frequently, you can use the vehicle data refresh endpoint to force a server-side refresh, at the cost of 2 command credits. A button to perform this action will be coming to the Teslemetry console and Home Assistant soon.

Model S and Model X vehicles manufactured before 2021 are exempt from this change, and will continue to be polled every 1 minutes until further notice.

TLDR

• Command credits go live Feb 1st, and cost USD$2.50 for 2000 credits
• You will receive 2000 command credits if you are a current customer, and 500 if you are on a free trial
• You can purchase more command credits in the Teslemetry console, and opt-in to auto top-up
• Vehicle polling has been decreased to every 10 minutes, except for legacy Model S and Model X vehicles