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Comment by dielotr | Hacker News Reader

I can't help but feel like this is Tesla surrendering their biggest moat (their Supercharger network, and the exclusivity of it) for questionable gain (worse immediate experience for their customers, unsure if additional revenue will outweigh the costs).

But I can't NOT see it as a huge win for accelerating the world's transition to sustainable energy (Tesla's core mission). Brave, bold, and good for the planet. Better for the consumer, who now has two manufacturers' worth of cars to choose from.

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Imagine a world where oil is companies and car manufacturers teamed up to make incompatible gas station pumps, does that not sound completely ridiculous?

Yes and no. There’s more “magic” to the layperson when it comes to electrical engineering. “Liquid gets poured” is more tangible and people will have practical knowledge of it. Using convoluted methods to prevent liquid flow from your competitors’ pumps is going to be more obvious as malicious to the average consumer.

(I still definitely applaud this move which increases charging availability for consumers; just responding to this specific question.)

> Using convoluted methods to prevent liquid flow

It doesn’t have to be convoluted. Differing the diameter (or shape!) or depth of the fuel input would do just fine unless people were going to resort to carrying around funnels.

They actually did this (leaded pumps won’t fit unleaded fillers) but they didn’t do it for diesel vs unleaded. Ask me how I know.

I’m confused. I’ve never seen a diesel nozzle that fits in an unleaded tank. Or do you mean Vice versa?

Somehow my daughter managed it…

Diesel pumps in the US aren't really standardized, or at least they didn't use to be. When all gasoline was leaded, diesel (for cars) and gasoline used the same size nozzles. When they came up with unleaded gasoline, they used a new, smaller nozzle, so that unleaded only cars could have fillers that only let the smaller nozzle fit to exclude leaded gas. But cars built for leaded gas had a larger opening and could take either nozzle. Diesel kept the larger size fillers, because all the existing pumps used them. Since they the larger filler, it was no big deal to put an unleaded size nozzle on a diesel pump --- it still fits in the car, and it's got a green cover, the international sign of not default fuel.

So, I had a 2011 VW Diesel, and before the emissions scandal, they had some fuel issues that they were blaming on gasoline in the fuel system, and so they sent out stickers to the registered owners to put around the filler that said 'hey --- diesel only', and that didn't solve the issue, so they sent a contraption that made it hard to fill with an unleaded sized nozzle. With that contraption, I found one of my usual stations was using an unleaded sized nozzle for diesel. So I stopped filling up there, because the contraption was designed to never come out and it takes a long time to fill up when the contraption opposes your nozzle because it's too small. I imagine that station eventually figured it out and put a leaded fuel sized nozzle as I think other manufacturers rolled out similar contraptions too. Gasoline ruins diesel fuel systems rather quickly, and it's not too hard to be distracted and misfuel.

Of course, truck stops have even bigger nozzles for diesel to go in big rigs and other sizable vehicles.

BP gas stations use green for their unleaded gas pumps and black for diesel. Big dumb

As they should, they're British Petroleum, right? All their pumps should be standard across the world, and in England, the custom is the diesel is default and 'petrol' is not.

Interesting. Who’s to say which configuration is the “more correcter?” In the US it’s a PITA.

That's not quite the same scenario as GM cars only being able to fill up at GM owned gas stations.

Every phone has a different charging cable tho?

Do they? Now it’s just Lightning and USB-C and it looks like Apple is finally conceding. But I agree there was a time before smart phones where it was truly all over the place.

Apple was ahead of the game though, in that their iPhone/iPod/iPad chargers had a USB-A socket (except for some of the very early iPod chargers which had Firewire 400 sockets), while other phone manufacturers were still using chargers with non-removable cables.

I still use my Apple chargers from the early 2000s, while all the chargers I had for other phones and devices are just e-waste.

> I can't help but feel like this is Tesla surrendering their biggest moat ... for questionable gain

If Tesla has a non standard connector much longer, it becomes a liability. It'll be harder and harder for them to sell cars that need adaptors everywhere.

I also don't think the Supercharger Network will be a moat much longer. As there are more EVs, the incentives for business to put in chargers gets higher. Teslas needing an adapter becomes a liability.

Questionable gain? If they can be the dominant provider of fast charging for a hundred years regardless of their car sales, that's quite the gain. They also get to build out their capacity with subsidies they would have otherwise missed out on. They are easily 10x more capital efficient than the next fast charging competitor, so this is a very well thought out move.

Over the long run, would you rather have been a car company or an energy company ( oil company )?

Turning their potentially short term dominance in EV market share into long term dominance in charging seems brilliant to me. This is especially true if you expect Chinese and Indian EV makers to commoditize the market.

Running a charger network is not the same thing as being an energy company like Shell or Exxon Mobil. Tesla has to pay peak electricity rates for their superchargers to the local utility provider. So it’s not a high margin business.

I'm curious to see how much drivers talk about their Fords vs. Teslas at the stations. In particular, the FSD capability that Ford won't have (until Tesla licenses it to them).

I just had a shouting match with my wife in her FSD available X. I said, "Hey, while you were away I tried FSD, and it still sucks."

Her response, "How dare you even try FSD in my car!"

Lets just say, FSD has not worked -- it does not work -- it will not work before the car finds its place in the junkyard.

FSD, coming next year™!

For the love of god please do not talk about your car at the station.

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