How long do you think the current Supercharger network will be a large competitive advantage?
I agree with Benedict Evan's point that electric charging will become a commodity: https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2018/8/29/tesla-soft...
I agree with Benedict Evan's point that electric charging will become a commodity: https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2018/8/29/tesla-soft...
But other car manufacturers, for whatever reason, don't get this. They build their compliance cars with a modest investment in EVs, but honestly, they aren't very good. The Leaf has its niche-- it's a good city car with low range and low cost. The Bolt really is one of the first non-Tesla players with a decent range, yet you can't drive it from Seattle to Yosemite because the lack of chargers and GM isn't investing anything in them. The same goes for BMW.
Volkswagen is forced to build chargers due to the diesel settlement, but ironically without their cheating and forced investment in EV, there would be fewer chargers out there than there are today (or in the near future).
Maybe I'm wrong and hydrogen or some other form of fuel will win, but if EVs do, car manufacturers will be scrambling to catch up and invest in chargers. I don't think this will happen soon, but maybe in 5 years they'll start thinking about it. Really, if they wait until the Model Y in 2020 and Tesla starts eating their lunch in the biggest segment in the US (CUVs), it might wake them up sooner.
Meanwhile, the closest Tesla superchargers are nearly double-digit miles away, far from the freeways, so at best 30 minutes away without traffic and up to 3 hours away with traffic. And since there are so few of them, you basically cross your fingers and hope that one of them is free when you get there.
That means that even with absurd 6mph traffic that takes 3 hours to get 30mi, you might still finish charging first on the SuperCharger (15min vs 3hours).
I have no doubt the'll start building chargers but I think the ramp up will be slower and the power levels will be lower than what people think. Most cars can't even charge at 350kW because their batteries are too small. You'd damage the batteries.
I don't think it will take more than a couple of years for well-maintained superchargers to be ubiquitous, and that's if you give away the power for free with government subsidies. If you charge customers for the energy, it might happen even faster.
Or about 1/7th of a windmill.
I have no doubt that they are serious and ambitious, but they are so far behind Tesla that it‘s not likely that they will catch up until 2020. Also, they are planning to place their fast chargers only 120 Km apart to accommodate for a wider range of vehicles, which puts them at a disadvantage too.
It is why teslamotors.com is now tesla.com
So far I have heard a lot of announcements about great cars and great charging networks from these companies but nothing they have actually done gives me any confidence.
People also said that the other car makers will switch the electric and start building electric cars in mass easily and quickly. So far however most of these projects have seen delays and other problems.
I would also say that all the 'lower' level chargers will benefit Tesla equally to everybody else, so its no intensive to buy a non-Tesla.
CHAdeMO is the better standard for fast charging, IMHO, since it allows bidirectional charging.
They choose not to make such an update though...
To the contrary, user experience at Tesla superchargers is great. There are enough of them, evenly distributed, that I never have range anxiety, they work, they are usually not over crowded (although getting busier), they are free or at cost, they are high powered, usually located near nice amenities, and they are simple - pull in, plug in and wait 15-45 minutes. I don't see anything on the horizon from other manufacturers that will even remotely approximate what Tesla offers today with supercharging. Partnership/expansion of for-profit networks will never get there.
So people believe that Tesla is going to upend the entire auto industry, but can't believe that some company will figure out how to build nice charging stations?
So many contradictions in the arguments here. Yes, the Supercharger network was, basically, necessary for Tesla to reach a critical acceptance level. But operating and maintaining those stations is not free.
The idea that the major fuelling stations won't start adding fast chargers is incredibly naive. They already have the infrastructure and real estate. It's a no-brainer. If/when EV demand reaches those levels, it will happen.
Do they?
I was under the impression most fueling stations had standard single-phase 200A hookups to the grid.
So, at minimum, that would mean an electrical upgrade, no?
If you don’t have an electric car (I have two, a Volt with no quickcharge and a Leaf with a quick charge), it’s hard to understand just how strong Tesla’s position in the market is here. It’ll probably be a decade before others catch up. Less if they partner with Tesla.
But here’s the thing: the market for electric cars is enormous, as big as the market for regular ICE cars. It’s not a niche. That’s why the “Tesla killer” argument is dumb: if your target is Tesla, you’ll lose because you’ll always be behind, fighting over a niche that Tesla created. Because Tesla wasn’t targeting other EVs, or even hybrids, they are targeting the entire market. If your target is ICE vehicles, then you may win because there will be plenty of market to go around.
The only chance to beat Tesla is to beat ICE cars.
I think you're underestimating Tesla's first-mover advantage. My father works for a city in LA county and when Tesla decided to build a supercharger there, they initially asked the city to not only provide free real estate and grid connection, but to pay them to do it. Now, the city didn't pay, but it did incentivize in the form of free spaces in a prime shopping center because both city and property owner knew superchargers will bring a steady flow of well-to-do captive audience customers. I'm guessing this scenario is repeating itself all over the country wherein Tesla is building out superchargers for very low upfront and recurring cost.
No other charge network or automobile manufacturer has this type of leverage, nor will they for likely many years. If Electrify America were to approach that same city with the same request they'd likely have to pay/lease real estate, or install in sub-optimal locations (like Walmart parking lots), because they will not bring even remotely close to the same amount of traffic and economic activity as superchargers.
I've never heard charging speeds referenced in this way, but it's a really clever way to take into account the charging rate and vehicle efficiency, while being very intuitive! Is this a common "unit" in the EV space?
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/gm-engineers-dis...
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.#Later_life_...
> Midgley participated in a press conference to demonstrate the apparent safety of TEL, in which he poured TEL over his hands, placed a bottle of the chemical under his nose, and inhaled its vapor for 60 seconds, declaring that he could do this every day without succumbing to any problems.
> One question posed during Wednesday's Tesla quarterly earnings call involved allowing other manufacturers to access Tesla's supercharger network and Elon Musk's response was surprising.
> "This is not a walled garden."
> By that Musk means that he's open to allowing other EV manufacturers to configure their vehicles to be able to use the Superchargers. He stipulates that these manufacturers would have to pay their fair share of the costs and would have to either adopt Tesla's plug standard or include an adapter in their vehicles.
The biggest difference here is that electricity, thankfully, is the same in any form, and the key differentiator is the speed at which you can deliver it. I definitely hope that we can agree on better, faster, common, charge delivery formats, but I wouldn't want to put a hamper on innovation, particularly when the electrical automotive industry is so nascent.
Hotels have facilities that aren't used after breakfast until the evening, however they still have to have a lot of staff on-site during these hours.
You could have nice food and coffee instead of motorway service station junk, with booking facilities so you can have that coffee ready as you walk through the door and your parking spot for the charging reserved.
This could work really well in the more scenic parts of the world where there is a lot of the infrastructure built out already, just the right plugs with the right volts and amps needed.
I've been out wine tasting and have run into Tesla destination chargers.
Let's be real here. I just did a 2500 mile road trip in my brand new Model 3. While it is true that 20-25 minutes will give me enough range to drive for 120-160 miles, 20 minutes does not give me a full charge. Charging my Model 3 from ~10% SOC to 80% SOC takes 40 minutes at a Supercharger. The car charges quite quickly from 0% to 50%, but slows down dramatically after that. If you pull in to a Supercharger with 10-20% SOC, 20 minutes will get you up to 50-60% SOC at best.
That being said, I generally didn't mind this. I came to like the slower pace of stops. I know my wife is looking forward to the first road trip we take together in the car, as she always wants to stop and stretch her legs more often than I do.
I just wish more Superchargers had convenient access to 24 hour bathrooms.
So, even if I just charged every time to the daily limit, I'd still have about the same range as a gas car and I can't fill up my gas car at home on a regular basis. That benefit alone outweighs the cons of a slightly longer trip for me.
PS. Slow down. ;). If you're only getting 160 miles from the daily charge, you're driving pretty fast or using up power in some other way.
But people tend to be dominated by edge cases instead of giving up a small amount of mobility.
What is this based on? I know several people with electric cars and none of us take planes and rent cars on trips unless they're to another country. I drive to California and Austin all the time and the Tesla is the first car that I don't have to stay the night charging for.
This is the "everything is Silicon Valley" view of the world.
Another hilarious one is: "why doesn't everyone just bike to work?"
What I mean to say is, every product that is used by almost everybody will become a commodity at some point. That is not the question. The question is
a) How long can you keep it from not becoming a commodity?
b) How can you build your business model as market leader around it being a commodity?
E.g. gas stops can be considered a commodity at this point, but the powerhouse oil companies still own the whole thing and make hundreds of billions out of gas sales. If Tesla can use their leverage and tech-know-how to get into that position for electrical gas stations they might be in a good position to take that leadership position for a generation or two in providing electricity for the cars, making more money than with actual car sales.
So for Tesla, as much as for the not-yet-existing space station business, the fact that they will become commodities at some point is more of a strategic detail than a kill factor.
Alas, I would have thought the same for ISPs. Any reason why EV charging won't naturally evolve into a similar overpriced, regulator capturing, locale-by-locale monopoly?
I'm talking about the subset of the EV owners without home charging. Currently this number is small, but as battery prices drop and EVs become the de-facto 'regular car,' there's ~60% of the population who have no "at-cost" home charging (being locked-in to whatever exclusive vendor their apartment complex chooses).
In this respect EVs are very different from gasoline vehicles, and I say this as a big supporter of EVs. I can drive across town to buy gas, but I can't park my car across town overnight.
The problem with competing firms is that eventually someone wins.
That's why the fight for net neutrality is so important.
Not for the tenants themselves.
Tenants need permission from the owner to install charging infrastructure, and the owner has little incentive to allow competition because the vendor gives them a cut of the [overpriced] charging fee. Even California's progressive tenant EV charger law[1] doesn't apply if 10% (!) of parking spots already have chargers.
Your example of pay laundry is instructive. In theory laundry service remains interchangeable (after all, "water/electric service is already running to the buildings"), but in practice the owner simply forbids tenants from installing their own laundry machines (typically citing flood risk).
[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...
https://shop.tesla.com/ca/en/product/vehicle-accessories/mod...
It’s not that hard for Tesla to adapt to a new standard, too. The power electronics are the same, just a different plug and protocol. Tesla’s can connect to a CHAdeMO charger with a relatively cheap adapter.