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Comment by gwbas1c | Hacker News Reader

(In the US) Tesla uses a proprietary standard. Every other EV manufacturer uses CCS for high-speed charging. (Chademo was dropped.)

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.)

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That’s a bit like saying everyone will drop IPhone once USB-C is standard on other phones. It just doesn’t work like that, cars are a status symbol for a lot of people where as VCRs are pure functionality, there will be more to the decision making process than just “other charging networks catching up”.

I get your analogy but it’s not a good one

You don't usually use other people's chargers to charge your phone. Compatibility between EV chargers would be very useful though: I've had the experience of having to carefully plan a Tesla road trip from the Bay Area to LA around the locations and distances between Tesla Supercharging stations. I can see how having, at the very least, a converter to access other charging stations would be convenient.

My friend is able to use other charging networks on their model3. I think that there is an adaptor

The adapter is for slower charging, not CCS.

Looks like the CCS adaptor can do 350kw https://youtu.be/ZwW3UBEgyew

No, there's a Chademo adapter for Teslas in NA. I use it every week.

I think most of the discussion here is about the other way around— allowing non-Tesla vehicles access to the Superchargers.

In this case the Op was talking about arranging around super charger stations. But yeah.

I charge my phones at friend's houses or in their cars all the time, though? And I don't usually keep a spare cord with me.

Teslas come standard with an adapter that allows you to plug in everywhere?

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 only use your adapter at slow chargers.

You can not use your adapter at high speed CCS chargers.

I see. I’ve never dealt with off-brand fast chargers.

You can buy such chargers already and in future Tesla could easily offer official once. There is no issue in principle with fast charging a Tesla with a CCS charger.

In fairness they did say the Tesla Supercharger network rather than Tesla as a brand, so it’s more like suggesting “even Apple will replace Lightning with USB-C” rather than “iPhones will go away because of USB-C”.

I actually think you proved his point because neither iPhone or Tesla are status symbols anymore. I see so many of them they are becoming mundane. I own an iPhone and could care less about the next iteration, I'll replace my iPhone when needed.

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.

Tesla will not survive the weight of its stock price if the only buyers are ones who are purchasing it for the status symbol. They NEED to be part of and setting the standards.

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.

Porsche, BMW and Land Rover would like to have a word with you.

Tesla's market cap is $658B. The COMBINED market cap of VW (Porsche parent), BMW, and Tata Motors (Land Rover parent) is roughly $233B. You are comparing Apples and Blue Whales.

Market cap has nothing to do with either sales volume or revenue. VW sells a magnitude greater number of cars than Tesla.

I charge my iPhone exclusively with a Qi charger that is older than the USB-C spec.

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 don't think you can compare the network effect of people with VCRs and charging networks. Each person only needs 1 VCR, in their own home, and it's not that expensive to switch to the dominant format.

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.

> Your electric car is only as good as the density of its network

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.

having a vehicle that is not capable of long distance trips is a no go for everyone who can't afford more than one car that being said, owning a cheap(but good quality) short range ev for every family member and a regular huge car for long trips is the best way to go

https://www.aptera.us/ this might be it, though it can be ordered with 1000miles range, so not necessarily short range

Wow! I was excited about these folks way back. They completely shuttered in 2011. I'm glad to see them back, though by now I've got on the Tesla bandwagon.

I would think it'd be very hard for Betamax adopters to switch their machine and their collection to VHS, especially if they lived in an area where there was mostly Betamax retailers.

> diesel and petrol. In practice, every petrol station simply supports both fuels.

In the US they definitely do not :-)

The US is a bit large. Where I’m from in the US of A they have them at every petrol station ;-)

Conversely, when I worked at a gasoline-only gas station, I had the location of the nearest diesel providing ones memorized for those who asked.

>> 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.

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.

> 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 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.

VHS also wins for network effect. Betamax doesn't allow rental tape but VHS allows.

There are adapters from the NA Tesla standard to CCS. See https://www.setec-power.com/ccs-adapter/

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.

So you've never needed to use another network (good for you) but advocate for an adapter that works with only about half the other chargers out there... Google compatibility issues with that ;-)

He’s stating facts. He’s not advocating.

I just scanned the thread for it on the tesalmotorsclub forums. My (admittedly quick) reading is that it had lots of f/w glitches early, and that there are charging limits imposed by 3/Y and newer S/X which lead to the glitchy reputation. And that's multiplied by the general unreliability of non-Tesla chargers, so that makes things even worse.

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.

I own a Tesla, I don't know why I should care about other charging stations. Tesla's supercharger network is more than enough for road trips and in city I live in I just charge at home. Not sure why Tesla should be worried about their connector format "losing" to competition.

Furthermore, an inexpensive adapter makes the issue moot both for Tesla owners and owners of other EVs.

Because not everyone can charge at home and in cities people will rely on curbside charging, for which Tesla has no answer.

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.

Overnight charging will likely be a type 2 connector, and that's a small adapter that fits in a pocket, and is easy to keep in the center console when needed. Edit: this adapter already ships with every Tesla in the charger bag.

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.

There are already adapters for J1772 to Tesla, and the Teslas sold in Europe already have CCS ports because the EU mandated this. IMO it's not as big of a problem as people imagine.

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.

> Because not everyone can charge at home and in cities people will rely on curbside charging, for which Tesla has no answer.

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.

Assumption: everyone has a garage!

I was thinking of an apartment building garage in that statement, but all of my reasoning goes the same for an apartment building parking lot.

Mandatory parking area is not that excessive as it is inside the USoA all over the world. Those mandatory parking area laws are on the mayor contributors to urban sprawl (where every family needs a 2 car garage and therefore has one).

Why? I have friends who can’t charge at home, and just charge at superchargers. Not ideal, but they seem fine with it. It’s not like the cars take that long to charge, and their range is such that you only need to do that maybe once a week with a normal commute.

If the range of the car is 500km, in Europe most people would probably charge once or twice a week.

But I agree, we need chargers in buildings parking garage to make this work.

Because they can’t sell their cars in locations where they haven’t built out a supercharger network, which is still most of the world. The more interoperable standard will win there. Starting a supercharging station worldwide is very different from doing it in a few first world countries.

Do a lot of $50,000+ cars get sold in third world countries? I'm not sure those markets are a priority for Tesla.

Would seem that way, but yeah. A car affordable to 10% of a 100 million people and 1% of a billion people is the same market size.

The UK has a Tesla charging network, but it's very sparse in places [1] - if you're in Peterborough the nearest Tesla charger is 40 minutes drive away. A bunch of other networks have chargers that are much closer.

I suppose you could argue the UK is a third world country, of course :)

[1] https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/trips

The UK is also tiny. You don't need superchargers in every neighborhood, because people charge the cars at home. There are ample superchargers to get you anywhere in the UK you would want to go.

The district in India where my grandmother was from was the poorest in that state, and one of the poorest in India overall. In the span of the past 20 years (one generational transition), that district has transformed into one of the more affluent districts in the state, as well as the biggest car market in the country, especially for luxury cars such as BMW, Mercedes, Jeep and Range Rover.

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.

In those countries they're using the CCS combo port. Usually because they're mandated to.

> Because they can’t sell their cars in locations where they haven’t built out a supercharger network

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.

> 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...

Not everyone can charge at home, and access to charging infrastructure is a selling point for those people.

Most folks I know without home charging charge at Superchargers at grocery stores (Meijer grocery stores, specifically, who have an arrangement with Tesla for colocating Supercharge stations, although I've also seen Tesla 72kw urban chargers at higher end groceries in urban areas such as Chicago). Their vehicle is charged back up before their ~weekly grocery shopping trip is complete, and in some cases their employer has installed a J1772 charging station for them (and provides free electricity) as a perk. Those J1772 stations are very reasonably priced compared to a DC fast charger.

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.

Honestly, I suspect that most businesses like restaurants and other attractions that anyone would want to stop on during a long drive will have a high-speed charger in the parking lot.

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.

In the EU, Tesla cars (even cars built and shipped from the US) and Tesla superchargers use CCS.

It seems like Tesla is adding CCS ports, at least to their European chargers.[0] There are also adapters to go the other way.[1] I am sure at some point Tesla might just switch over to CCS unless there is something better about the Tesla connection. I don't really know enough about this to comment on the benefits of either.

[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...

Isn’t the CCS connector much larger than the Tesla one? If there are no big inherent advantages to it, I’m not sure why Tesla should switch in the US?

If the CCS network becomes big enough that it puts Tesla owners at a major disadvantage, then it's possible. Maybe I shouldn't say I'm sure....the Tesla network already has a major headstart so it might continue it's dominance.

In Norway, Tesla has since introducing the Model 3, added dual cables, where you can charge either your old style plug or your CCS plug Tesla. At all of their supercharging stations, while also expanding their network at a rapid pace.

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.

It's not really apples to apples since you can get adapters for these chargers.

When you mostly charge at home and mostly use supercharger on the roads its really no issue. If your really go to a place where there is no Supercharger and only a CCS, adopters exists and Tesla could easly sell them.

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.

I'm trying to appreciate your analogy, but perhaps Tesla charges are better than the more open version unlike Betamax.

Better and cheaper, since it’s smaller than the CCS plug.

The Tesla charger is more elegant than CCS, although I anticipate the following problems:

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.)

Unlike Betamax, the Tesla plug is cheaper to make than the Chademo or CCS plugs.

Tesla seems to be testing a CCS adapter. With such a thing, which doesn't seen like high barrier, a Tesla would be able to use both networks.

Is CCS just a physical standard? If so, can I buy a smart adapter?

you can adapter these things though so it isn’t like betamax

You may not be aware, but you've stumbled into a bitterly fought political battle with that analogy.

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".

The better market does always win in the market! Now, define "better."

you would have to include marketing of product and luck as part of the product which gets kind of weird.

Idk how you go from free-market supporters think X to "free market supporters believe climate change isn't real".

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!

The comment you're replying to is talking about people who take free-market supremacy as a fundamental axiom that is used as the basis to reject empirical evidence. As in, somebody who would think along the lines "climate change can't actually be a problem, because if it were, the market would have recognized it and be adapting to the problem." Or, "these credit default swaps must be well founded, because it would be impossible for a free market of financial products to misvalue them." Or "The Dvorak keyboard layout must be worse otherwise the free market would have chosen it over QWERTY."

These are all real opinions that many people encounter in the real world and have to fight against.

> they take the side of "VHS was better than Betamax", "Climate change isn't real" "Qwerty is better than Dvorak" etc.

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.

I don't really understand what's going on here. That comment started with:

> 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.

> I'm not asking you either embrace or defend these extreme, incorrect positions

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.

I explicitly didn't claim to know what they believed. I said they said whatever they were paid to say.

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.

> 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?

To be clear up front, I think American libertarianism is just another face of the Republican party and the two work hand in hand and can both be fairly, objectively, factually, and usefully classed as Fascist. (It's not a coincidence that the novel "It can't happen here" called it's American fascism Corporatism.)

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.

I can’t really agree with you that Libertarians are a faction of the Republican Party. Feel like that would be untrue by definition and many libertarians are atheists, want weed legalized, disagree with war mongering, etc., and so while there is some policy overlap (just like there is with Democrats) it’s more of happenstance than being a faction. Both Republicans and Democrats tend to want to increase the size and scope of government and redistribute wealth based on their own priorities, which is something that generally is opposed to libertarian ideals. If you take more serious libertarians they’re probably saying defund welfare and the military.

> 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.

I’m sure there are people who think that way, but I assume more think along the lines of “the free market helped replace VHS with better formats, so the superior product still won out in the end”.

It's more complicated than that; VHS and Betamax are both better than each other :)

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).

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