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Comment by type_Ben_struct | Hacker News Reader

Impressive numbers. The main problem for me is that the Supercharger network is not scaling at the same rate.

Well but the reality is the Supercharger network is doing a much better chance at growing along with Tesla numbers then other chargers do with the rest of the industry.

There is gone be an absolutely huge overflow of vehicles compared to charging infrastructure. Companies like Electrify America can already not handle the maintenance and upkeep of their stations and the ratio of vehicles to charges is about to increase massively as their initial deployed machines fail at ever increasing rates.

This is going to be a problem for a while. They can do their best to optimize the locations and stalls as they build out, but you'll be seeing photos of long lines of EVs waiting to charge for many years to come. If for no other reason that there will be very spikey demand in many locations.

I expect that many drivers will learn to simply avoid charging on certain days and places and stay close to home.

A major advancement for EV adoption would be mandatory standardization of CCS and mandatory conversion assistance or adapters for cars with other standards. There are not three different AC plug standards.

mandatory standardization can kill innovation. what a hell it would be if Chademo had been the mandatory standard.

We've had the period of standards competition and CCS has won. Now is exactly the right time to standardize.

CCS won in Europe because the EU mandated it. Tesla won in the US because they have majority of marketshare and built out a nationwide fast DC charging network on their own [1].

If they get federal funds to enable CCS, fine, otherwise keep the advantage to drive sales and let legacy automakers flail in the wind. There is no political appetite to mandate CCS in the US. That’s the cost of hesitating and a half assed approach to an EV go to market strategy (Tesla has sunk almost $1B into its global fast DC charging network, VW only did through Electrify America because it was a Diselgate settlement requirement).

[1] https://supercharge.info/map

Is this even true? Cumulative sales of plug-in cars in the U.S.A. looks to me like it still favors the SAE charger connector.

https://electrek.co/2022/08/15/tesla-tsla-dominates-us-elect...

Edit: https://www.atlasevhub.com/materials/state-ev-registration-d...

https://twitter.com/icannot_enough/status/157660558960586343...

PHEVs don’t count for these purposes imho, fast DC charging is wasted on their charge curve. They can make due at legacy J1772 connectors.

Market share and cumulative fleet size are two completely different things.

I’m curious how you come to that conclusion without some serious cherry-picking. It is a mistake confuse number of available models with units sold.

The Nissan Leaf had by far the greatest market share among non-Teslas in North America prior to the Model 3 launch. Moreover, most of the Leaf’s competition, either “compliance” EVs or PHEVs, were sold without any DCFC connector. After the Model 3 launch, Tesla has dominated market share in the US.

>CCS won in Europe because the EU mandated it. Tesla won in the US because they have majority of marketshare and built out a nationwide fast DC charging network on their own [1].

Does it really matter? Tesla offers both standards on their superchargers in Europe, and I'm sure (in their newer car designs) the digital and electronic components are ready to support both standards. I agree it's annoying to have two different plugs, but at this point isn't it basically a cheap retrofit? (At least for new-model Teslas and superchargers... I do worry that older Teslas might get left behind.)

It only matters if you own a non Tesla BEV in the US and require fast DC charging for your transportation needs.

Tesla locked the superchargers to Tesla vehicles as a business decision, not because of cables. According to news reports they plan to open the network later this year. That will require some minor charger upgrades, but I doubt they'll terribly difficult. In addition to gaining access to the Tesla network, CCS users can also look forward to the deployment of more non-Tesla CCS chargers since the market will soon demand it (given that every other car manufacturer appears to have converged on that standard, and they're likely to build a lot of cars in the long run.)

The much gnarlier situation is for us legacy Tesla owners. We'll still have access to the supercharger network, but we'll be sharing it with non-Tesla vehicles. Meanwhile we won't be able to use any of the non-Tesla chargers that get built. It sucks to own a Betamax when everyone else is about to settle on VHS.

i DC fast charged via my J1772 extended thingy with the two extra prongs, countless times, over 7 years, in North America.

Tesla Superchargers aren't the only DC Fast chargers in NA, for going on ten years. But they're more common, it seems.

> If they get federal funds to enable CCS, fine, otherwise keep the advantage to drive sales

There's no advantage to a proprietary charge port. Closed charging networks are dumb infrastructure. Tesla is slowly realizing that switching to CCS will lead to higher utilization and reduced costs:

https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/28/22596337/tesla-supercharg...

> Tesla has sunk almost $1B into its global fast DC charging network

Then Tesla can spend some more to change the plugs over to CCS, just like they did in Europe.

How long do we need for The Market to automatically converge on a single plug? By my read they've had over 12 years to do it and Tesla still has a custom connector. Are they offering their superior connector to other manufacturers and they're not buying? Are there extreme patent fees on the predominant connectors? Why do you think standardization would be bad here, specifically, right now?

Yeah it would have been great if car companies each had their own proprietary version of the gas nozzle and their own gas stations that would only work for their own brand cars.

you're talking about mandatory differentiation per vendor? that would suck.

that contrasts with vendors free to settle on what works for them all, perhaps innovating along the way, rather than being told what works for them uniformly.

No, I'm talking about what would have happened if we didn't standardize things like the gas nozzle/pump early on with ICE cars, which made them more universal.

There is no need for multiple styles of charging plug design (the physical interface). The innovation would be in the internals that negotiated the rate of charge, like USB devices do with fast/regular charging. I can still charge my 10+ year old devices with modern chargers that are capable of outputting 2-3x more current than my old device can handle, because it automatically negotiates a lower rate, using the same type of plug.

>There are not three different AC plug standards.

There actually are a lot more, esp in the 240v world in the US: https://www.bsaelectronics.com/pages/nema-plug-and-outlet-ch...

The most major advancement to EV adoption would be not just standardizing chargers but standardizing battery modules and allowing third party diagnostics and repair.

I’m a fan of standardisation, but:

> There are not three different AC plug standards.

There were four different AC sockets just in my childhood home — BS 1363, BS 4573, and two different sizes of BS 546.

Now I live in Berlin, I don’t use a single one of these.

https://shop.tesla.com/product/ccs-combo-1-adapter

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