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Comment by Robotbeat | Hacker News Reader

I don’t think it’d take a long time. They could just replace like one stall with CCS. The most time consuming parts like permitting and power installation on premises and stuff already is done.

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.

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Making one stall CCS wouldn't be that hard, but without details we have no idea what this will look like or the scope of what Tesla intends to do. This could easily be EU only.

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.

Is it superior? I have seen people on YouTube wrapping the connectors in wet rags in order to cool it down enough to charge at maximum watts.

I've never used one, our Audi is CCS but we have never had to resort to any antics even in 110f weather.

Tesla has always offered the charging network and patents for anyone to use. The other automakers chose to go another way, unfortunately. I guess it makes sense from their standpoint; you don't want your product tied to a competitor. But it does seem a bit short sighted on their part.

I believe the issue always was they'd have to use Tesla's billing infrastructure as there are no screens etc on the superchargers. I hear you though.

The standards based version of that is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Charge_Point_Protocol I've no idea if Tesla use something similar.

Certificate built into the car.

Nope.. and every other vendor is having issues implementing it. The ID.4 from VW is awaiting a software update to enable plug and charge. Tesla's is proprietary.

Ford Mustang Mach-e has plug and charge. Some users are having good luck with it, but quite a few are experiencing issues. It mostly works at EA locations.

Exactly.. it's not the "no-brainer" it should be at all yet... and it's been this way for quite some time.

Hardware people can't do software.

Tesla is more of a software company than any other car maker, that's why they'll win.

That was a trojan horse offer. Tesla required anyone accepting the deal to give up their right to ever sue tesla over any patent infringement of any kind. Any automaker's legal department that allowed their boss to sign that would have needed to be immediately fired.

I specifically remember Elon stating that anyone could just use the technology without even informing Tesla, so I looked it up:

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.

> 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.

So it was essentially a cross-licensing deal that allowed other automakers to use Tesla charging tech (did this include other Tesla-owned patents?), but the others would effectively have to license their entire patent portfolio to Tesla (can't sue is not too far from a blanket license to use).

Smart. Depending on the location they might be able to just add a new stall or two with ccs poets and call it a day, and migrate the rest of the stalls more gradually.

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.

Countries should have anticipated things and standardized EV charging 10+ years ago. It's not only the plug size, it's also enabling me + my neighbors chargers to communicate so we can optimize load on the electric grid. Standardize amperage so that my experience as a user isn't variable. Etc.

If they'd have done that, we'd have missed out on 10+ years of improvements. Now seems like a fine time to standardize, especially since adaptors are feasible.

That’s true. The standard 10 years ago was the Chademo plug. Have any of you ever used it? It is HUGE. It’s like lifting up and plugging in an entire vacuum cleaner into the front of your car. The unveiling of Tesla’s supercharger plug 9 years ago was a game changer, and no one has yet equaled it.

It's true it was the standard on early Japanese electric stuff (the Leaf mainly), but it's a bit of an exaggeration to say Chademo was some kind of industry standard 10 years ago. Chademo itself is a creation of Japanese auto-makers plus Panasonic/TEPCO. The J1772 as well as of course Tesla's connector have been far, far more common sights in North America over the last 10 years. Western auto-makers have almost completely ignored Chademo altogether.

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.

No advantage to customers to optimize load to the grid unless customers pay less. But we can barely get smart meters rolled out, and the backlash (in social media and mainstream media) against real-time electricity prices was fierce. Annoying to me that so many seemed to completely dismiss the value of real-time electricity prices after the Texas snowstorm, including a lot of people who now talk about the need to decarbonize quickly and make sacrifices in the West.

What was the value of the real-time pricing in Texas? (Beyond rewarding incompetence)

> * It's not only the plug size, it's also enabling me + my neighbors chargers to communicate so we can optimize load on the electric grid.*

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.)

Wealthy people could install solar + batteries to ensure they only use grid power in the cheapest of times.

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.

Right. I get the social equality aspects of the argument, but charging the fully burdened price for energy (i.e. which includes time of use) seems like a good way to get people to conserve smartly instead of wasting resources. It does make sense to turn down the A/C a bit when the grid is stressed, but there's literally no incentive to do so without some sort of realtime pricing. In fact, it makes MORE sense from an individual standpoint to turn it up as strong as it can be so if the power does go out, your house will stay cool a bit longer. That, collectively, increases the probability of the grid going out. It's a collective action problem, and without some sort of incentive to conserve use and greatest demand, it increases costs, emissions, and fragility of the grid.

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.

Of course usage policy is good. In Ontario, we have 3 tariffs, high demand, average demand, low demand. And yes, I do adjust my electricity usage based on that. But this is standard, this doesn't change every week and it surely does not go up to thousands of dollars in the middle of a climate emergency. You can reap the benefits of having higher fee during higher demand periods without having the insanity of letting the market decide the price without any cap.

You missed the part where all ratepayers get to pay off bonds for decades for a few days of incompetence-fueled crisis.

The backlash was just stupid. They kept pumping out stories about how a poor family of four ended up with bills in the thousands, but never mentioned how that same family saved thousands over years with this contract...

It seems to me that a lot of what happened was politicized just so people can trash the republicans.

Because most people expect a utility to always be available and affordable. The average American would much rather pay an extra $10-20/month for their entire life for electricity than once every 10 years have a bill for $4,000 because they didn't want to freeze to death when an unexpected cold front rolled through.

Spot prices are not for everyone.

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.

You're arguing for normal operations, which nobody is disagreeing with. The sticking point you hand-waved away is what happens in an emergency. Telling someone "well you saved money over the last decade, SURPRISE!" isn't an acceptable situation for a utility.

I'm arguing for not trashing the idea of spot pricing because of one emergency. They could use better regulations for emergency situations, to prevent both customers and distributors going bankrupt, but making the case that spot pricing is bad because of what happened in Texas is short sighted.

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.

If that's their preference, they should have stayed on the normal rate plan, which offers exactly that. I think the issue is misleading or fraudulent salespeople talking people into buying something they don't understand, rather than the realtime rate offering itself.

Do you think people saved the extra few dollars every month for years? Were they ever told/warned that one day they might need to pony up thousands of dollars? If there is a major weather emergency and you're already under a lot of stress trying to take care of your family, do you think the sound policy is to just let electricity go up to thousands of dollars while people are just trying to survive?

This is a poor policy for something that is an essential utility, this isn't just "republican bashing".

> This is a poor policy for something that is an essential utility

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.

> ”No advantage to customers to optimize load to the grid unless customers pay less.”

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.

> 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?

The mess in Texas was caused by not having enough reserve capacity to cover a period of exceptional demand, technical failures at power plants caused by extreme weather and under-investment, and not having sufficient interconnections with the rest of the North American grid which would have allowed more power to be imported.

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.

How about the charger talks to your oven, dryer, and other appliances so that you don’t need to budget the sum of everything in terms of amperage. Instead, your car can pause charging while your clothes are drying.

This kind of stuff will only happen if standard protocols are agreed upon.

No smarts needed. https://www.bsaelectronics.com/products/copy-of-dryer-buddy-...

True. Pricey but can be cheaper than having to rewire everything.

Europe standardized on CCS in 2014 with a 4 year transition period. That's why Tesla's in Europe use CCS rather than their own proprietary charger.

I think that was the right approach. Let some standards battle it out so that some bureaucrat isn't designing a high voltage connector. Once a clear winner was emerging legislate everyone adopt it and allow some time to transition.

A group of Tesla home chargers will do that, they're wired together, so a parking lot situation.

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