Tesla isn’t the only villian. The credit card payment systems are routinely broken — tap to pay, chip and swipe all fail in different ways (especially with EVgo)
This should be all or nothing — 99.9% uptime on compatibility with standard cars and payment methods, fleet wide, or you get zero dollars.
Unreliable is worse than unsupported, and the interoperability clauses of the law apparently don’t mandate reliability.
Sure that's anecdotal, but I read a few (more than 1 each) reviews on the Harley Davidson Livewire, Ford Mach-E, and Ford f150 lightning. All had charging issues during their review.
After owning a EV for years, my only range anxiety is caused by having to use non-Tesla chargers.
For example, the chip reader pins on the EVgo’s are corroded around here, so you need to wiggle the credit card in the reader and hope it manages to handshake with the embedded smart card. (If it is a Visa or Master Card.) If AMEX or Discover, they require you to swipe the mag strip, which would be useful if the mag strip reader didn’t spuriously decline payment.
There is also an rfid reader labeled “present phone”, but it doesn’t work with apple pay, the EVgo app (android or ios) or the rfid tags in any of my credit cards.
It sounds like you've had a lot of issues with charging your i3.
A single stall being out can mean someone waiting 15+ minutes, but some stations are so busy that it could easily lead to a line of cars.
Additionally since level 3 chargers are pivotal to road trips, people aren't casually stopping by them 'to top up', they usually are down to <50 miles of range when they stop, meaning continuing on may actually be impossible depending location of next charging station.
Having one working charger at a highway-adjacent station could mean literally hours of waiting on a busy day, especially if you're waiting for a 50kW vehicle. Even if you get lucky most of the time, just the possibility of a multi-hour wait time would make most drives impractical.
Yes Tesla should be paid if they're being forced to subsidize their competitors. The entire point of Tesla's charging system is that it's non-profit making. It's based on the idea that it's acts as a value-add to Tesla vehicles. If Tesla is going to allow access to competitors, then yes Tesla needs to be paid for that access, or charge differential rates between Tesla and non-Tesla vehicles.
The way Tesla gets paid is by users paying for the charge. It isn't complicated.
Are you making the argument that non-Teslas should be charged more than Tesla users. I'm fine with that but I think that wouldn't be allowed under this new provision.
In Europe, Tesla charges Tesla drivers less for charging and other drivers more. Tesla also has membership pricing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y33AArvMUQ
Other charging networks also have brand specific deals and membership pricing.
Okay but this is a theoretical statement and doesn't really jive with the current existing environment. This is a goal, not a method to achieve it.
There is no mystery here. This is not theoretical. It's the practical reality:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_WjeH3I8p8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPIhazPcY64
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI5EnOo05BE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=theiiFWydmo
Once again Tesla continues to push its proprietary systems instead of adopting the standards everyone else uses.
And it will, presumably, require Tesla to retrofit some kind of user interface to the charging stall. That seems a bit stupid when every car that can connect has a screen that could easily do the job.
And lastly, did this open system exist when Tesla started building their charging network?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_15118
Volkswagon, Ford, Mercedes, Lucid, and Rivian have all standardized on this to negotiate payment. Electrify America and a few others have already implemented this standard in their chargers.
The vast majority of times I've had to charge at a public charger, plug and charge negotiated the payment without issue. I do not drive a Tesla.
> And it will, presumably, require Tesla to retrofit some kind of user interface to the charging stall. That seems a bit stupid when every car that can connect has a screen that could easily do the job.
If they supported the industry standard instead of only their proprietary standard, they wouldn't need to.
The billions of dollars that are available aren't only to Tesla.
Tesla actually reliably accepts and processes credit card payments without issues, unlike the anecdotes provided by others here with other charging networks and there is no reason to think that Tesla would no longer reliably accept payments given that they intentionally accept payments from all major credit card processors.
Why would they not allow 3rd-party cars to charge? They may have some prioritization scheme for Tesla vehicles, but other than that I'm just not following what you are saying here.
Tesla isn't allowing my car to charge. They have a proprietary plug and a proprietary payment protocol. So if I drove my car to a Tesla stall in the US right now, it would not charge as it is not a Tesla. Why would they not, well, because for the past few years they've used their proprietary network as a marketing advantage.
So yeah, why wouldn't they? Why don't they today? It's the same question and it's the same answer.
Why would they not allow 3rd-party cars to charge, today, months after their original date they set to allow 3rd party cars to charge?
There's lots of state level grants available to apply for today, so we're already in the "billions available for public EV charging" future state.
Sure… Except that that’s physically impossible. Search YouTube for “arc flash”.
There are established PoS vendors that have figured out payments completely. Did they roll their own?
For example, in the US, Francis Energy quickchargers require a Francis Energy RFID card or use of their app.
Some gas station pump terminals will allow you to pump your debit card’s available balance and no more. No charger I have come across can do this, billing some arbitrary amount like $40 that is eventually replaced with the correct expense, if not outright requiring credit. Forget paying with cash, even for quick chargers located at gas stations.
Drivers with disabilities that prevent them from operating a gas pump by themselves can call an attendant at the station, but Tesla chargers has nobody on site.