Tesla plans to open its charging network to other EVs later this year
reuters.com
reuters.com
Thanks to EU regulations, all the superchargers in europe have both the tesla and CCS combo connectors at each stall. Telsa can allow CCS cars to charge with nothing but software. They actually had a bug earlier this year that allowed non-tesla cars to charge for free for a weekend.
In north america superchargers only have the telsa connector, which would mean either Tesla will need to offer an adaptor (which would likely have charge rate limits like their Chademo -> tesla adaptor) or add CCS to all their cabinets like they have done in europe (which will take a long time).
I suspect this is an offshoot of Norway standing firm on not offering tesla any grants or tax breaks to expand their charging network unless the chargers are publicly available. It wouldn't surprise me this starts in norway and only expands as regulations force them to open up.
They could convert a decent portion of their network to have one stall with CCS in maybe a couple months.
But the Tesla power adapter is superior. Smaller, cheaper, simpler, and more user friendly than the chonky CCS or Chademo plus in the US. (The European plug isn’t so bad.)
If I could turn back the clock, I’d open up the Tesla plug and mandate all EV makers use it.
Certificate built into the car.
Tesla is more of a software company than any other car maker, that's why they'll win.
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=ca6c332f-2cc5...
Indeed, there are no documents for executives to sign, but the patents aren't exactly fully free to use either: Tesla promised not to sue any company infringing on its patents as long as they're acting in "good faith," which obviously has a bunch of caveats (one being that you can't sue Tesla over any other patent related issues).
The end result is the same: a decent idea ruined by the lawyers.
Or, more cynically, a publicity stunt, facilitated by lawyers. A lot of "look, you can use our patents!" things fall under this umbrella; they're devised in such a way that the company gets some publicity, but no-one can realistically use the patents.
And of course, use CCS-compatible stalls for all new builds, of which there will probably be a great many as the EV charging station land grab kicks off.
CCS is a bit larger a connector but not meaningfully so and is just as capable as the Tesla connector feature wise really - can support 350kw DC fast charging and automated payments etc. I'd be pretty happy if Tesla switched the cars over to a standard design like they've done on the Euro cars, assuming reasonable adapters were offered to existing owners.
It means you can use a 30-50% smaller amount of solar, wind, transmission, and batteries, roughly, enabling cheaper energy, lower embodied emissions, and a faster energy transition (meaning reduced overall emissions). (And this applies to things like nuclear, too.)
Poor people can be told they'll save hundreds of dollars on their electricity bill but often don't realize it means they need to turn off the AC when its hottest and turn off the heat when its coldest.
It's good that wealthy people install solar and batteries to only use grid power in the cheapest of times. We literally want to incentivize wealth being put to productive use (in this case, reducing stress on the grid and--in the case of solar especially--emissions). That means more resources for others.
It seems to me that a lot of what happened was politicized just so people can trash the republicans.
If you have an EV or if you plan other energy intensive activities smarter (like heating/cooling, washing+drying), you can save significantly more than 20 bucks a month.
This is not a unique Texas solution to this problem. In the UK for example, a lot of people take out their gas heating and replace it with electric ones that can be "charged" overnight at cheap prices.
It's the same think with credit cards and loans: they can absolutely wreck uneducated people, but they're not essentially bad if you know how to use them, they're quite advantageous.
When the situation became a state of emergency, they could have stopped free trading and just provide everything they can, leaving the accounting for later. Or just capping the price to a lower level.
In the meantime, spot pricing would be a very good thing to happen all across America, as I said - it's contributing massively to the de-carbonification of UK. Demand response would help reduce a lot of the spikes in usage, and make renewables integration easier.
This is a poor policy for something that is an essential utility, this isn't just "republican bashing".
It's a very useful policy that can allow both buyers to save on costs, if they're careful; and utilities to decarbonise faster and introduce more renewables. For example, I know that a lot of people are taking out their natural gas heating in the UK and replace it with electric heaters that can be charged overnight when the electricity is cheap.
I would like more demand response in the US, it's a low hanging fruit. We need better protections in extreme circumstances, but that doesn't make it less useful overall.
Well, of course you pay less. There’s a lot of value to distribution networks in being able to flatten peak loads, so they will be paying/reimbursing you in some way for that capability.
> ”the backlash (in social media and mainstream media) against real-time electricity prices was fierce.”
Grid electricity by nature is scarce at times and abundant at others. So not offering real-time pricing is a market distortion and may not produce the best economic or environmental outcomes.
That said, unpredictable bills can be a hardship for consumers that can’t store electricity or shift their demand. The correct approach is to let customers choose if they want real-time billing or a fixed rate.
Wasn't that the situation that led to a mess in Texas?
These problems are independent of whether you're operating a market model or a monopoly model. The market model is common throughout Europe, but widespread power shortages don't really happen because there are many interconnections between countries, and mechanisms (such as payments made to reserve generators based on their availability) which prevent market failure.
This kind of stuff will only happen if standard protocols are agreed upon.
I love my model 3 sr+, but am under no illusions about the company failings. Elon shoots his mouth off on twitter all the time and it wouldn't surprise me at all this is the first any tesla staff have heard of this plan, which would mean no one has any idea what this looks like in practice.
I've never used one, our Audi is CCS but we have never had to resort to any antics even in 110f weather.
In fact, the newer “V3” Superchargers only have CCS connectors.
And if you have, for example, a solar powered charge station, now your charge station needs a big inverter to make AC, which the car then goes about turning back into DC.
CCS is made for DC charging, but can fallback to Type 2 AC.
All EVs in Europe are CCS
https://www.nissan.fr/vehicules/neufs/leaf.html
"Le temps de recharge rapide indiqué nécessite l’utilisation d’une borne de recharge rapide équipée d’un câble de recharge CHAdeMO."
IMO Nissan did a lot to spur the adoption of EVs with their glorified golf cart but they've really squandered any mind share or goodwill they gained.
It's been known in Norway for a little while, since Tesla applied for some grants or something only available for publicly usable chargers. So it's not just something promised, it's been acted upon already
Edit: https://electrek.co/2021/06/24/tesla-confirms-plan-open-supe...
The devil is in the details of both scope and execution, so until tesla clarifies the specifics I'm going to believe this is Norway only and Elon was angling for some good press without having to actually do anything tesla was already committed to doing.
If this article is representative of Electrek's journalism I think everyone should take their articles with several pinches of salt.
The Roadster (2008) used a different connector than the Model S (2012) and is completely incompatible. JS1772 (2009) was already being adopted as a standard by cars like the Nissan Leaf (2010) before Tesla's current connector was being used.
Tesla's Supercharger network at the launch of the Model S was a total of 6 chargers: https://web.archive.org/web/20121124081536/http://www.teslam... . So the initial infrastructure investment was not that significant.
Further reading into that article though you can see the Superchargers were capable of delivering 90kW. JS1772 cars were limited to ~20kW L2 charging at the time which is why Chademo (2010-ish) connectors were included for faster charging on earlier EVs. CCS (2013) would become the unifying replacement that added faster charging to JS1772.
More on topic, the rest of the industry and world has moved on and standardized to CCS. No one should start using Tesla's connector on their cars now. But making an adapter to use Tesla chargers on a CCS car could make sense. But having yet another thing to lug around in the car won't be ideal. The obvious logical choice is for Tesla to start retrofitting Superchargers with CCS now that it's open and eventually ween Tesla owners into using adapters that Tesla already makes.
Electrify America's are supposedly capable of 350kw but there isn't really an EV in existence yet that can hit it.
Tesla Superchargers are currently 250kW. There are rumors about a higher output connection for the semi trucks but it is unsure if that would be a different connector or not.
In e.g. Germany Teslas are <10% of the new EVs sold YTD, I doubt it would make much sense for Tesla trying to maintain a Tesla-only network there, as they have to support the standardized connector and communication protocol anyway. They can only gain by opening up their charging network there.
In the US you have Tesla and CCS. CHAdeMO still exists but it will vanish soon, as almost no new car uses it.
With every manufacturer accelerating their EV rollouts, there will soon be more CCS EVSEs than superchargers. This move isn't about giving non-Teslas access to superchargers, it's about giving Teslas access to what very soon will be the majority of EVSEs.
It also about tax incentives: the government isn't going to support a proprietary standard.
TLDR Tesla sells an ecosystem. They are the Apple of EVs.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/10/vws-2-billion-penalty-for-di...
[2] https://electrek.co/2021/07/07/electrify-america-rumored-bil...
[3] https://www.utilitydive.com/news/nearly-all-high-voltage-ev-...
Right down to the atrocious repair policies.
0: https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/prog.php?parent=tes...
1: https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/prog.php?parent=gen...
2: https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/prog.php?parent=for...
Switching over to CCS is already happening in Europe because of regulation. The Model 3 is sold with CCS instead of the Telsa connector as part of that: https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/support/supercharging I would not be surprised to see similar legislation here in the US, but we are typically massively behind on things like that. And it would likely be done as it is in the EU, new chargers would be required to have the standard connector. Retrofitting old ones is optional.
Competing on charging networks is tough. The charging cost is determined in large parts by energy cost and rent for the space. Customers have some ease-of-use effect to get a membership at a large network, but brand reliance is low. Thus there is little to gain, but cars from all sorts of vendors blocking Tesla's chargers isn't good for the exclusivity of their brand.
- Tesla obviously wants to have a exclusive network to boost their car sales. Vender lock in greatly helps them.
- The Government / The public want ONE charging network which can be used by anybody regardless of their car brand. In particular you don't want vendor lock in for something basic such as access to individual transportation. (Remember Tesla could easily decide that only "Tesla approved power sources" are allowed to charge your car)
I think it's inevitable that charging becomes a comodity such as fuel. Ad-hoc without registration / app download (or at most one on a national level).
While I agree with your overall point a little nitpicking:
Many certainly don't want ONE network, but compatible competing networks. (Compatible regarding plugs etc. and compatible regarding payment registration)
Basically like gas stations. Different brands but the same products.
Maybe loyalty programs for customers, special conditions for companies etc.
Eventually it makes sense probably but as of now in the US, many people still recommend Tesla if you are doing road-trips. Its still a competitive advantage.
Eventually they will open it up and make money, but reality is that fast charging is a losing business strategy right now. Tons of money in, no money out. Having it as marketing and competitive advantage right now is more valuable by far then the small amount they money they would make by opening it up.
It will be years before they open it up in the US is my guess. Sooner in Europe, but not because of regulation but rather because of the competitive advantage not being as relevant and attempting to get higher utilization.
It’s the customers who they should expect money from.
The way Tesla will get "compensated" is that users will pay for the electricity they use. This is straightforward business, not a "free ride".
I disagree. I already use an adapter for L2 charging, on the rare occasion that I am at one place long enough for it to be worth it (work). I use the super chargers almost exclusively. I don’t want to use an adapter, that’s a poor experience. If others want to use the network, let them adapt.
The burden of the adapter being put on the larger market is just not going to happen. If Tesla wants to stay relevant as more automakers enter the EV market they need to adapt.
Standardizing on the US CCS plug would be a mistake that would cement a disadvantage for EVs. If we’re going to insist on a standard plug, I’d prefer the Tesla plug but even the European CCS plug wouldn’t be so bad. Look at the size difference, and tell me that lifting a much heavier plug won’t have a usability impact especially for people with a small frame or physical disability.
In terms of usability, CCS just plugs in. I've not used a Tesla plug, but I'm curious as to how that could be cheaper.
CCS doesn't weigh that much - it's a plastic shell around metal pins. The cable weighs a fair bit - but isn't that the same of any rugged cable?
https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/supercharger-cable-s...
Tesla vehicles are MUCH more common in the US and have had access to much better fast charging for a lot longer, so you’re a victim of sample bias.
I just did a google search, I have yet to find an i3 or etron that was stuck at a charging station overnight and required a tech to get it unlocked, but maybe I'm using the wrong term. Feel free to link to the stories?
Everything I've seen using CCS, "stuck" is because someone forgot to push the trigger twice to unlock both the car and charger side.
That being said, I've had this happen exactly once 3 years ago. All the complaints I've seen are around the 2018 time frame which is when I had issues so I wonder if it was a software issue with the Model 3 that's since been resolved.
> Everything I've seen using CCS, "stuck" is because someone forgot to push the trigger twice to unlock both the car and charger side.
Trigger? With CCS there's usually a button which is just one side of a lever with a latch at the other end. It's purely mechanical and you have to hold it down to release.
They report far more problems with the CCS plugs.
The reason you hear more about Tesla issue is because there are far more Teslas and far more superchargers in the US.
European superchargers already offer CCS ports. Tesla started adding them in 2018 for their Model 3, which also features CCS (at least in Europe).
> All V2 Superchargers in Europe feature dual-cable posts to accommodate both DC Type 2 and CCS Combo 2 charge-ports. European V3 Superchargers feature single-cable CCS technology, which are directly compatible with all Model 3 vehicles. Model S and Model X vehicles in region can access V3 Superchargers with a CCS Combo 2 adapter.
https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/support/supercharging
And here is another post from 2018 showing one of the first pictures of a supercharger with CCS: https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-supercharger-dual-charge-ccs...
The Tesla Supercharger network is just like Betamax: Tesla has a good first mover advantage, just like Sony did. But once every EV sold has a CCS connector, it's not going to make sense to buy a Tesla that can only charge at Tesla's proprietary charging network.
Once VHS was on the scene, the Betamax format struggled. And just like Betamax, there will be people who argue until they're blue in the face that Tesla's charger is better than CCS.
(Betamax was, in practice worse than VHS. It was more expensive, and because the tapes were physically smaller, feature length films used slower tape speeds, and thus had lower picture quality. Even the supposed better picture quality of Betamax was too small to notice.)
The question will be: how big is the market of people who can afford a Tesla, but live in an apartment building with no possibilty to install a charger in the garage.
I don't think it's a live threatening issue for Tesla, but at some point they will need to solve it. I guess adapters will do.
A lot of places also put both type2 and tesla chargers right next to each other. The expense with chargers is mostly running the wires to the parking spots, the end points are cheap in comparison.
What likely will end up happening, long term, is that Tesla will switch to CCS plugs in the US as well, and retrofit their older cars.
Sorry, totally disagree that EVs (electric only, not hybrids) will be viable for more than a teeny percentage of apartment dwellers if their building doesn't support charging. Curbside charging just won't cut it for most people, for the simple fact that the most common time when people want to charge their cars at night, when the car is in their garage.
But I agree, we need chargers in buildings parking garage to make this work.
I suppose you could argue the UK is a third world country, of course :)
And also 0.1% of Indians or Africans is still 1 million potential customers or 300k cars sold potentially. Or $15B each market. So yeah, it makes sense to pay attention to the third world too.
If they start selling their cars in a certain country they just build a few superchargers. It's not that hard.
They even have a couple in the middle of Kazakhstan for some reason.
Vocal outreach by a Tesla fan (have met, awesome person).
https://insideevs.com/features/388623/tesla-superchargers-ka...
As long as Tesla can continue to colocate fast chargers at places urban dwellers must frequent (which is likely based on their experience and the brand value), it's a non issue imho. I've seen lots of Electrify America charging stations, but there might as well be tumbleweeds rolling through with how rare it is to see someone charging at one.
When that happens, I doubt that it will be any format other than CCS. I also bet Tesla owners will grumble that they need to use an adapter when no one else has to.
Charging on the other hand has a huge compounding network effect. Your electric car is only as good as the density of its network, and right now Tesla has a huge lead. I'd wager that the supercharger standard isn't going anywhere.
I'd also add that we already have two mutually compatible fuels for cars: diesel and petrol. In practice, every petrol station simply supports both fuels.
Presumably this is somewhat true for marketing and removing obstacles for potential EV buyers, and in practical terms, for long trips. But short of those long trips, the network is not a big factor in the quality or usability of the EV.
https://www.aptera.us/ this might be it, though it can be ordered with 1000miles range, so not necessarily short range
In the US they definitely do not :-)
Tesla may have the largest network, but since all the other networks are compatible it's actually harder to find a Tesla charger than a standard one. The adapter situation for charging a Telsa on a standard plug isn't all that great either, it's hit or miss.
I just wanna clarify something: that's not what the network effect is.
The network effect is defined as "the phenomenon by which the value or utility a user derives from a good or service depends on the number of users of compatible products."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect
For example, if each Tesla owner served as a charging station for every other owner, that would constitute a network effect, since the value/utility of a Tesla vehicle would increase with each additional owner.
What you're describing is just a traditional moat or barrier of entry. The Tesla supercharger network is a strong competitive advantage because it makes their product more viable for people. But that advantage isn't increased or decreased based on the number of Tesla owners out there. And that advantage certainly doesn't "compound" in any meaningful way that I can see.
Some extreme free-market supporters dont like anyone claiming the better item lost out in the open market, and will go to great lengths to discredit those claims. But be aware they're not actually experts in whatever field they're wading into, they just know what the conclusion that supports their employers is and argue for that.
So, they take the side of "VHS was better than Betamax", "Climate change isn't real" "Qwerty is better than Dvorak" etc. but the various opinions are all tied to the same belief system: "don't interfere with the people currently winning in the market because they are paying me to say that".
First, I'm a free market supporter. So are you. You like buying stuff, and think companies should exist and all that right? And you believe in climate change, right?
Second, most often the more zealous free market supporters don't tend to think that climate change isn't real but that the solution lies in market solutions instead of government intervention. Personally, I disagree, but I don't think it's fair to just assert that people like me don't "believe in climate change" by supporting free markets.
You're typing this on HackerNews, a forum hosted by YCombinator which is the most capitalist and free-market type of organization that exists!
These are all real opinions that many people encounter in the real world and have to fight against.
Which one of these is not like the other?
The free-market isn't some entity with a plan. It can't say "well we're going to screw up the whole world if we don't reduce profits now". It also does optimize at times for inefficient local minimums in practice.
I don't think what you and the OP I responded to are saying is really consistent at all and I will stand by and continue to criticize someone saying that free market supporters "don't believe climate change is real". That's nonsense. Again, some (not all) would simply argue the market can better handle it than government intervention. I disagree with this but you can't say people who believe in free markets don't believe that it's real. And furthermore, you believe in free markets and you believe it's real right? Or do you not? I'd love to hear a reconciliation of that.
> "these credit default swaps must be well founded, because it would be impossible for a free market of financial products to misvalue them."
Well if we throw aside government regulation of banks in general (before, during, after, the Fed, the whole shebang), the market would have worked itself out here. Those who took excess risk without understanding it would have failed. It's no different than any other risk taking. Unfortunately the government and banks are socializing losses and privatizing gains here. Many are suggesting in retrospect that we should have let the banks fail, because now that they know they will be bailed out they'll engage in even more risky behavior. The free market is further distorted here. I think it's a really interesting and long conversation to have, but you're oversimplifying it to defend an indefensible position.
In other words, you don't get to double-blame the free market. The free market wouldn't have bailed out the banks. It might have created the risky behavior, but the government bailed them out, so we don't get to see the system correct itself.
> These are all real opinions that many people encounter in the real world and have to fight against.
Yep. I have to all the time talk about and defend things too. People say the second amendment should be abolished, or that we shouldn't have universal health care and they are real things that I have to fight against (I support UHC and 2ndA). Nobody here has some big burden fighting against opinions in the wild any more than anyone else does.
> Some extreme free-market supporters
I'm not asking you either embrace or defend these extreme, incorrect positions. Further, I'm especially not interested in discussing the merits of them, and I don't know why you should feel a need to defend these ridiculous positions, as a free-market supporter, unless you also hold these ridiculous views.
Are there multiple incorrect positions to defend?
What I've said is that you can't assume someone who is an "extreme free-market supporter" (what even is this? Maybe they mean even average free market supporters. Idk.) doesn't believe in climate change. More likely, at least based on my own experience and the literature I've read from serious "extreme" free-market thinkers is that they think the market is in a better position than the government to solve the problem.
Again I personally disagree, but I don't think that they necessarily hold incorrect, immoral, or irrational views either.
In many ways, this makes it worse. You might randomly not trust the science on cigarettes, or fossil fuels, or lead in petrol, etc. etc. But when you consistently show up to defend people who know they are ruining lives for their own private profit because they dont want to face the inconvenience of the competition that the truth would cause, then they're basically bad people.
I'm a fan of markets and Adam Smith, but not a fan of the fascism that passes for libertarian thought in the US.
Idk what you’re trying to say here with the rest of your post “they’re paid to say that!” But maybe if you could clear up who you’re talking about when you mention these fascist libertarians that would help. That’s a bit of an oxymoron to me so maybe you are thinking of a different group?
> But when you consistently show up to defend people who know they are ruining lives for their own private profit
I mean I think that could be the case with many groups, I’m not sure how that’s a libertarian thing? And even so it’s not like many of them don’t truly believe that the market can solve global warming better. Like I think commies genuinely believe that what they espouse is for good, though I know it’s certainly not. I don’t think they’re lying. Do you assume everyone is lying about their motives or just the group you currently disagree with?
It's hard to tell how much they believe it themselves, but lots of American Libertarians seem to have grown up in Republican households, logically rejected the more obviously evil and stupid parts of the platform and publicly distance themselves from it but have been unable to shake many of the subconscious beliefs they picked up and so those get expressed through the lens of Libertarianism.
This is hard to see when it comes to e.g. welfare as (conveniently) the moral framework has been set up to favour the people who already have the property, which provides a lot of overlap with conservatism, which similarly has a lot of "theory" but also comes down to "protect the wealth and power of the wealthy and powerful".
Where they most obviously break their own rules is environmentalism and climate change, where people are reducing the value of other people's property via pollution without getting a contract to allow that.
This leads to obvious hypocrisy and some flat out denial.
As I mentioned, I like free markets and agree with Adam Smith (though not the Adam Smith Institute, who are exactly the kind of people I'm calling out here), I agree with many of the arguments that Libertarians make when that stuff agrees with their basic purpose. But I continue to agree with what they claim to believe in when it gets awkward for them to do so. So it's annoying to see one get on their high-horse about principles while still supporting mainstream libertarian thought, which is generally going in the opposite direction and reducing competition and entrenching the existing aristocracy at the expense of utility, efficiency and progress.
> Where they most obviously break their own rules is environmentalism and climate change, where people are reducing the value of other people's property via pollution without getting a contract to allow that.
Ok so there’s a lot to unpack here and libertarians come in different flavors but it’s actually consistent. Most libertarians who actually know what they’re talking about would argue a couple of things:
First, someone else polluting the environment is a breach of contract even if it’s not formally signed. Your actions would be causing loss for another person. There’s difficulty in assessing blame, but in clear cases like pollution of an upstream river libertarian philosophy would indicate loss on the economic side. The hard part here is what to do about it, and that’s where you start to see more flavors of libertarianism emerge and get interesting.
Second, libertarians would likely say not that climate change isn’t a problem but the market can solve the problem better than the government can. This isn’t “breaking their own rules” but is instead completely consistent with libertarian philosophy and is rationally defensible. This is especially true given any study of economics shows evidence of this being the case in some or many industries. I personally disagree, but you can’t outright attribute this thought to malice. Here’s a trivial example! Why is the government subsidizing fossil fuels and oil and gas companies? Libertarians would argue that this market intervention by the government is leading the government itself to hold at least some responsibility for climate change.
I think your assessment of libertarianism is at most casual and your critiques are not wholly consistent. Comments like “this leads to flat out hypocrisy and denial” are baseless and easy to throw around. Same with “protect the power of the wealthy and the elite” - like what do you think Republicans and Democrats do??
I think you have this straw man of what you think libertarianism is and you just want to attack and blame everything on that. It’s like blaming everything on Hillary Clinton or something.
Betamax did have somewhat better picture quality, but it had real disadvantages (in particular, as mentioned elsewhere, impractically short tape lengths when using the high quality mode).
That said, as a Model X owner, I've never felt the need to seek out other charging in almost 4 years of ownership, and roughly 10k miles road-tripping.
That said, I have an older Model X where there is apparently no artificially imposed limit. If Tesla chargers become much more occupied due to non-Tesla's using them, I might pick up one of these adapters for my next road trip.
1: With CCS, the physically larger connector communicates to the customer that it's a high-speed charger. A lot of people don't understand the difference between slow and fast charging. (You can even see it in this thread where people don't know that they can't plug their Tesla into a CCS charger.)
2: CCS has bigger pins, which means it can carry higher amperage. There's no way to work around that situation with the Tesla connector.
(The bigger pin difference also, ironically, boosts the VHS vs. Betamax analogy. Betamax's biggest problem was that the tapes were physically too small, thus cutting either playback time or picture quality.)
[0] https://electrek.co/2018/11/14/tesla-model-3-ccs-2-plug-euro... [1]https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/CCS/CCS_Combo_2_Ad...
I get your analogy but it’s not a good one
I know, because my home charger isn’t a Tesla one and yet I have use it every day on a Tesla without issue…
You can not use your adapter at high speed CCS chargers.
The next model of iPhone or Tesla no longer excite me, they are just a new standard of electric car, I'm not impressed by anyone who owns either like I would be if I saw a McLaren or something roll up. Well, not that I'm impressed per say, but I'm not turning heads for a Tesla like back when they first came out, but I'll always check out a super car.
If Apple's stock had been priced at hitting android levels of market penetration and they hit the plateau they're currently on, their board would all have been fired and the vultures would be circling.
Teslas are a status symbol, but they sell in volume because they also have a usable network. Given enough competitive market pressure, front-runners can and will make changes.
I definitely do not get that what they have already done once, can't be repeated elsewhere.
My impression when it comes to fast chargers are that the most expensive parts of setting them up, is getting the power infrastructure from the grid to the station. Zoning might also be something that is time consuming. But neither of these have any impact on the plug to the car.
So maybe the current US Tesla charger network is Betamax, but retrofitting it to do both VHS and Betamax shouldn't be that hard, and they've done it once already, somewhere else. So I don't see the problem.
Btw, what you miss is that other networks can adopt the Tesla charger. EVGo for example will have many of Tesla Proprietary charger on their stations.
Some key advantages include: reliability, convenience, ubiquity, and location. I've never been to a supercharger with more than one broken stall, they all "just work". I've also tried other options, but I've actually never found one that was operational at the time.
I've used other non-Tesla chargers while on road trips (just to try them out) and the experience is much, much worse. There is usually an app do download, or you have to swipe your CC, or both. There is usually some sort of screen with instructions, but they are all different and sometimes the screen is not visible/broken. It's a real mess.
Of course it is. They have to support cars from all manufacturers (except Tesla). They all have an app, but so does Tesla. The sum of all charger networks is larger than the Tesla network and growing faster too.
I do think it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
This is a significant improvement over using NFC and apps.
There's no reason current non-Tesla chargers couldn't support this, other than they haven't bothered to.
Have you used superchargers? I get the sense that a lot of commenters here haven’t. The current UX is nearly spot on perfect - plug in, walk off, app notifies you when it’s almost done charging. Only issue I’ve seen is needing to go back to your car to avoid idle fees, but it’s understandable.
Also, most fuel pumps were covered so the idea of negotiating payment in the rain wasn't too much of a concern. It almost seems like a regression to me that most EV charging stations usually have no covers to them.
Lack of coverings, yeah, but you’re not meant to stand around next to the charger, since they’re not as quick as gas pumps - you can sit in the car, and you’re free to “idle” it, running AC/music/surfing the web, or just go inside whatever venue the charger’s associated with. Also, presumably it makes it a good bit cheaper and quicker to deploy more of these.
Either way, the 5-10 seconds of dealing with a prompt or two on the machine pales in inconvenience of waiting for the car to charge, so much at least in my opinion its a rather inconsequential inconvenience. Cool, you've shaved off 10 seconds so I can hurry up and get to my 20-30min wait for the car to charge. Its not like its really saving me that much more time. I've never in my life thought "dang, my life is so hard, I had to tell the pump I didn't want a car wash. If only someone could come up with a process that would prevent the pump from even asking if I would like a wash, my life would be so much better." And I have used the plug-in and charge process with a Mach E and an EA charger, so its not like I don't know what I'm missing. Its just such a massively inconsequential change in my life and yet it gets billed as the best thing since sliced bread and clearly one of the main reasons why you should pick one expensive car over the other. And as I've mentioned elsewhere, it makes it a lot more complicated to change to a different payment method other than the default you've set up on the account. To change a payment method with traditional pumps, I just use a different card. To change the payment method on a plug and go kind of car, well, that depends on the car and how its account is set up and managed.
Also, I get why electric charging stations don't have covers, they're much cheaper to deploy. That said, you're probably going to have your car there longer, there's a higher chance you might be in the car waiting during that time, so it would be really nice especially where I live (Texas) to have that covered. That and while I realize these connectors are designed for it there's something about handling high voltage high amperage power connectors in the rain that makes me quite uncomfortable to plug and unplug in the rain.
Do you have any stats on this? I'm not doubting you, but I often browse this which can show (crowd-sourced) changes to the Supercharger network and it is growing pretty fast:
If so, comparing the brands is a bit moot since most non-Tesla normally has at least 4 (and normally much more) charging bays where as many other DC fast charging places normally have less than 4 (often 2).
Currently, the best chargers in the UK (for convenience, and as much as my limited experience has been) are Instavolt: contactless payment, no app.
Not quite as convenient, but familiar for most people. Parking meters are worse!
It will be the worst if 10 years from now every vehicle has a different ’usb’ port while your mileage count goes lower.
Tesla moved first, and that deserves some reward because anyone could have started for decades prior to Tesla.
For asia, it's still undecided between CCS and CHAdeMO
Even right now the new FastNED or Ionity charging stations that have the latest 300kW chargers are very difficult to install due to the huge power requirements, especially with several of them running in parallel. Tesla Superchargers do actually slow down when multiple cars are charging at once.
So going back to the charging standard - the "default" CCS plug supporting "only" 350kW is going to be sufficient for a long time I think. And if it's not it can be made to support more with very minor changes to the design - after all it's literally just two prongs thar carry the power.
But running the cables is presumably easier when the railway has that convenient strip of land all across the country.
Tesla’s connector is lower weight among other advantages and a simple adaptor allows for Type 2 or CCS charging as well. We are very early into the EV transition to be worrying about backwards compatibility.
CCS just adds two large pins under the Type2 for DC charging. No sense to have those heavy pins when you’re charging from small 3.7kW home wallbox.
Anyway, using slightly larger pins in a home connection is trivial vs the overall advantages. It’s the heavy gage wiring and active cooling that makes fast chargers heavy and that’s where you notice the added bulk and weight of the backwards comparable connector.
https://evcharging.enelx.com/resources/blog/552-ev-charging-...
Here is a picture: https://www.chademo.com/wp2016/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/co...
Second-best is carrying a bunch of adapters in your frunk and having charging on different standards (that you can adapt) available widely.
I think the latter is more likely, given that everyone these days wants to build/own their own platform. As long as you can adapt it and pay to charge, it's a step in the right direction.
Are there any financial incentives for this? Even if a technical solution exists, are there incentives for EV manufacturers to support it?
This is one of the big things I'm looking for before committing to buying an EV as my next vehicle. Even if Tesla "opens" their charging network, that's not the same as having a single, universal charging standard which anyone can build out themselves. A "USB for cars" would be the ideal solution.
As I doubt the US will adopt GB 20234, my bet would be on CCS.
The pricing is down to the CPOs and the same charger can cost different prices based on what deal they made with the EMSP.
Source: I work for a EMSP.
When you onboard to our company you have to learn so many acronyms.
But, why don't EVs have a standard to follow like gas cars have a standard fill port? It seems like there is a lot of proprietary tech going on in the EV market at the moment, like early 2000s cell phones that all had their own unique charging port.
Edit: Thank you for your replies! I'll look into the CCS EV plug.
The Chademo and Us CCS plugs are terrible. Objectively bad (expensive, heavy, etc).
The European CCS plug isn’t quite as good as Tesla’s but is probably good enough.
The Us should adopt either Tesla’s plug or the European plug.
Also, CCS wanted to reuse some of the pins from the L1/L2 J1772 plug, but the original plug didn’t have room for larger pins. Tesla’s plug was designed from the beginning to be eventually capable of fast charging.
Unfortunately, there's a competing standard: CHAdeMO and Tesla being the first mover has their own proprietary connector.
Manufacturers that supported Chademo, like Nissan, are switching to CCS.
At this point Telsa is the only non-CCS manufacturer.
The only unfortunate thing, then, is that Tesla had 79% of the EV market share in the US in 2020 (cf. https://electrek.co/2021/07/14/tesla-tsla-leads-95-increase-...).
And they are not using CCS.
(edit: CCS... not CSS)
* J1772 "Level 2", the slower 240V AC that's common for home charging (this was incorrectly labeled as "type 2, thanks for the correction jsmith45)
* CCS - fast DC charging, the form factor is Type2 plus a bit of an extra shape.
* CHaDEMo - a separate fast DC charging connector
This image shows the size difference: https://teslatap.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/connector_co...
(To be clear, standardizing on CCS is likely a good thing and I'd support it, but, y'know … I'd be a little sadder)
In Europe, tesla uses the Type 2 CCS plug on Type 3. Older models ones used a seldom used part of the Type 2 specification that permitted DC charging without the extra pins from CCS.
The main advantage of the Type 2 is that for AC charging it allows for three phase power at up to 480v (50 kw max). (vs 250v single phase maximum for Type 1).
Other than connector shape/size, type 1 is a strict subset of the Type 2 standard, to the point where a simple passive adapter can convert a type 1 charger to a type 2 vehicle just fine.
A single phase type 2 charger of the right voltage range could potentially work with a type 1 vehicle with a simple passive adapter, but this direction is more risky, since it appears that voltage and phase counts are not a negotiated parameter, and that the control signals are not limited to 5v like in the Type 1 connector.
So I suspect it will be for Superchargers. Every EV owner who uses Tesla’s network will be tempted for an even better experience by just buying a Tesla.
Right now only about 2% of US new car sales are electric. In that small pond Tesla is the big fish, with something like 90% of that market. In the overall new car market, though, Tesla is a guppy.
Over the next decade or two, that overall market is likely to become more and more electric, with at some point ICE cars becoming the niche product instead of the other way around.
Will Tesla be a big fish in that future US new car market? I wouldn't bet on it. They arguably currently have the best electric drivetrain, but they are not as good at many or most of the other aspects of a car. My guess is that the current big car companies can learn to make a great electric drivetrain faster than Tesla can learn to make a great everything else.
By opening their charger network before the other companies get a good non-Tesla charging solution widely deployed Tesla has a good chance of becoming the dominant charging network in that future market where as a car company they remain a niche player (probably with sports cars being their niche). And all those electric cars from all those other companies need charging, so if Tesla can dominate the charging market that could be very lucrative for them.
There's definitely going to have to be some sort of minimum charge rate enforced so vehicles without fast charge capability don't choke the network out for fast charge vehicles. Turnover is crucial considering the cost of fast DC charge stations (~$200k/station), and no one (reasonably) wants to wait to plug in when they arrive to charge. Tesla charges a per minute idle fee once charging is complete to encourage vacating the stall, and I'd expect a similar per minute penalty for slow charging vehicles using the Superchargers.
To Tesla's credit, they do install agnostic J1772 chargers at some Supercharger stations (the gas station near Ohare airport comes to mind [1] [2]).
[1] https://www.plugshare.com/location/249899 (the Superchargers)
[2] https://www.plugshare.com/location/326963 (the J1772 chargers)
Another obvious business model is parking lots using car batteries to balance the grid and selling their service to electricity companies. People park during the day and their battery is rented to the electricity companies for load balancing
They also sell coffee :-)
More importantly though, the other competitors offer has been rather pathetic, one, maybe two charging stalls, where Tesla builds proper spots with 12-18 stalls. Tesla will show the other brands (drivers of which, honestly, might have no idea what they are missing out on) how it's done.
With the pricing of charging conundrum, I feel currently the goals of car makers and charging providers like Ionity, Fastned or EnBW (and metric ton of bit-players) were misaligned. I hope this move from Tesla will drive some consolidation, and make other car-makers realize that charging and car sales need to go hand-in hand, be totally aligned.
Its actually getting them sued by owners with free lifetime supercharging, since they may suddenly be charged [0]. I have free lifetime supercharging on my tesla, and I'm quite happy about the idle fees.
[0] https://electrek.co/2021/07/01/tesla-sued-over-extremely-rea...
So dwell time while charging for a Leaf, i3, etc just to make it to the next charger could be a while by comparison. Meanwhile I pull up to highway supercharger in my Tesla expecting to take a 10min break to stretch my legs & use the restroom while getting 100mi of charge only to find the chargers blocked by putzes with their slow charging cars.
The ICE analogy would be pulling into a gas station to find the pumps taken up by gigantic industrial trucks with 300 gallon tanks that you are stuck behind.. or some shitty Yugos or something that force the pump into a slower filling mode that takes them 5x as long to fill up.
Maybe none of this matters in US as the vast vast majority of EVs are Tesla anyway, and as others make inroads it will be with cars capable of fast enough charge rates? As it stands today in NYC area, Tesla has about 5x the charger locations of EA, each of which has 4x the number of chargers so...
2) I'm also curious how the payments will be handled.
Another aspect that makes Superchargers for Tesla streamlined is that you just pull up & plug-in, the authorization/confirmation of payment is done between the car&charger because your car is tied to your account & credit card.
I have found the app/web/QR code/credit card/NFC/RFID dance using 3rd party chargers to take up to 5 minutes to get payment sorted (idiotically none of them just have a credit card swipe like a gas station). Further, we've seen that one weak point for Electrify America seems to be the payment system frequently failing at the charger or server side and people showing up to chargers unable to plug in.
Yes a Chademo 10 years old Leaf charges slowly, but a Tesla model s from the same time does too.
My guess is they’re just developing an adapter.
But also… Elon time is real. Chances it happens this year pretty low.
They're doing it to get government subsidies. Governments aren't going to subsidize chargers that only charge one brand of EV, which is proper and correct:
https://electrek.co/2021/06/24/tesla-confirms-plan-open-supe...
Tesla has already switched to CCS in Europe. All other manufacturers have switched to CCS in Europe and North America. It would only be sensible for Tesla to switch to CCS in North America as well.
In my view, they've always seen charge stations as a profit center and opening to other makes improves the return on that investment. As long as Tesla is selling all the cars they can build, this would be a net positive to revenue. It's also consistent with Musk's overall goal of hastening the transition to renewable energy.
Tesla's chargers are slower than CCS chargers. For example, Ionity's chargers are 350 kW: https://ionity.eu/en/design-and-tech.html
Telsas even charger faster on CCS than on superchargers: https://insideevs.com/news/507489/tesla-model3-charging-fast...
The Lucid Air will have a peak charging rate above 300 kW. The Air is on a 900 volt battery platform: https://www.lucidmotors.com/charging
How can you say that any number of anything is 'a lot' when you're specifically not considering demand? What does it even mean for there to be 'a lot of capacity' in a sense divorced from relative demand? 'A lot' only has meaning in relative terms.
Just finished a road trip from Phoenix to Northern Minnesota and back. There are enough superchargers that you do have to plan your route around them...but that just means staying nearish the freeways (mostly). There seems to be a supercharger about every 150 miles even through the more remote parts of the midwest.
Whatever it is, they must think going alone won’t cut it anymore.
CCS is two chargers in one - Type-2 and DC.
The Type-2 / Mennekes connector which provides AC charging at a variety of speeds is available on just about ever charging station I've seen.
CCS adds two-pin DC to the bottom of the Type-2 port.
If your car has CCS, you can charge from either Type-2 or CCS cables.
If your car only has a Type-2 port, you can only use a Type-2 cable.
At home, you'll only be charging via AC. Typically, you'll install a charger which either has a fixed Type-2 cable, or a Type-2 port into which you insert your own cable.
Hope that makes sense!
Your home charger will have a Type 2 plug for AC charging. The "combo" part is the extra two DC pins that DC fast chargers use:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_Charging_System
Almost all EVs in Europe have a CCS Type 2 Combo port (including Tesla Model 3s).
The Nissan Leaf still uses a CHAdeMO port for DC fast charging and a Type 2 port for AC charging. The new Nissan Ariya will use CCS Type 2 Combo.
The European Tesla Model S and Tesla Model X still use Tesla's modified Type 2 port but come with an adapter for CCS Type 2 Combo support. The new Model S might come with a CCS Type 2 Combo port but it hasn't been released in Europe yet.
The vast majority of chargers in my area sit unused.
I'm not holding my breath, company lost my Trust a few years ago.