Ford Will Use Tesla EV Charging, but That's Only Part of the Story | Hacker News Reader

Ford Will Use Tesla EV Charging, but That's Only Part of the Story

caranddriver.com

27 pointsthunderbong51 comments

As a Ford EV owner I’m conflicted about this.

I don’t like that this is reopening the “charger wars” when CCS seemed settled on (by all non-Tesla brands), even if it’s kind of cumbersome. also having less cars at CCS chargers means less incentive to provide/fix them.

At the same time I understand why they’re doing it.

I’m very curious to see how they do this in the new vehicles. Do they go 100% to the Tesla connector? Or will there be two ports: one Tesla and one CCS. Would those be side-by-side or in different locations? Maybe CCS by the driver (where they have it today) and the tesla port on the passenger front bumper or rear driver side bumper similar to a Tesla so cable length isn’t an issue?

I am glad there will be an adapter. However I am also a little worried that I may end I with some kind of “non-Tesla tax” where are Tesla chargers cost me more than they would a Tesla even though Ford is partnering.

I blame it on the fact that essentially all non-Tesla DC fast charging stations are wholly unreliable. (L2 chargers are generally fine.)

Electrify America fast chargers are the most common in my area, yet fail often and are commonly out of commission for weeks at a time. I've also had poor experience with EVgo fast charging as well.

My neighbor got the new i7 and the first time he tried to DC fast charge at an Electrify America station it threw a bunch of codes on screen and put his car in Limp mode. The dealership had to clear the codes and ended up flashing the firmware and erasing all of his settings and reverting the car to how it was configured at delivery.

It's probably BMW being overly cautious and not that the charger could actually harm the car, but I can say I have never had a Supercharger disable my Tesla requiring a tow.

I have only ever successful DC fast charged my Leaf about five times, I have however tried to DC Fast Charge it at least a dozen but the chargers are broken more often than not.

years ago I had a leaf and tried going on a few journeys that required in-route fast charging to arrive.

I can just say that range anxiety pales in comparison to charger anxiety.

There were only 3 general networks available to me (evgo, chargepoint and blink) and my experience was not great.

evgo was expensive but good, although their locations had only 2 L3 chargers available. They could sometimes all be busy. They were usually near a building and were sometimes occupied by ICE cars.

chargepoint was generally good, but they seemed to concentrate on L2 chargers and had few if any L3 chargers.

Blink sucked. 99% non-functional and broken. Like something out of fallout.

Then I switched to tesla and things immediately just worked. Not only was the telsa range practical, but the chargers were plentiful in location and number of stalls. The only hiccups I've ever heard of were from friends traveling during thanksgiving in the first few years, and that was just waiting in line for a supercharger stall.

It seems that the non-tesla networks are improving, but I don't think they are dependable enough to treat an EV like a gasoline car. I think driving a tesla you can pretty much do that.

as to the adapter, doesn't tesla already have a CCS -> tesla adapter? at a minimum wouldn't this sort of thing be available for ford? (honestly I think two ports in the side of the car would be awesome)

I have been machinating on this for a couple days and I think I've decided this is a good thing.

CCS Combo 1 and CCS Combo 2 are not interoperable and removing all the AC bits from both doesn't yield a compatible or smaller connector. So there's no real benefit to universal adoption of CCS if there's still two incompatible standards.

NACS however is very capable and a much smaller connector than CCS. It has a robust and hardened charging network. And any competing network supporting NCAS instantly expands it's customer base to every Tesla owner, and Teslas dwarf every other EV combined.

I have two EVs, one being a Model 3 and the other a Leaf. I initially wanted two EVSEs and had my home spec'd with two 240v outlets in the garage. One of those outlets remains unused because I found a Tesla to J1772 adapter for $100 that works perfectly to charge the Leaf. To add a J1772 charger to my house would cost me at least $500 for a breaker, outlet, and EVSE. I can stow this adapter in my Leaf's glove box and have access to every Tesla destination charger for free in addition to the J1772 network.

CCS 1 and 2 don’t exist anywhere in the same area, right? I know we have 1 in the US and Europe users 2.

I assume it’s based on if electricity is 120v or 240v at normal wall outlets, but that’s a total guess.

So I’m not sure if CCS having two connectors matters much.

I generally agree with the rest of what you said. I’ve considered buying a Tesla Tap to be able to use those destination chargers, and there is a supercharger station far closer to me than the nearest EA station.

I understand Ford’s motivations and the CCS experience (I’ve had it). But it seemed like this was largely settled. Tesla missed their chance at being the standard, their connector is better, and I don’t like the confusion this will cause popping up just as non-Tesla EVs are really hitting it big.

> CCS 1 and 2 don’t exist anywhere in the same area, right? I know we have 1 in the US and Europe users 2.

That's correct. Combo 2 is European and the top part is a mennekes connector instead of J1772.

My point is that as long as you need 2 standards, one for North America and one for Europe, there's no benefit to the North American standard being CCS1 over NACS.

Because of the pervasiveness of NACS at this point, it is easier to just adopt it than to force CCS1 on Tesla.

There is already confusion with CHAdeMO, J1772, NACS, and CCS. J1772 can easily charge using AC NACS destination chargers for the cost of a $100 adapter. CHAdeMO will be killed off with the last gen Leaf. It's all the new CCS1 EVs that will be problematic.

> reopening the “charger wars” when CCS seemed settled on (by all non-Tesla brands)

'All but Tesla' means nothing when Tesla is the 800 pound gorilla in the room. Its like saying GPGPU is settled by now on OpenCL by all non-Nvidia brands.

Tesla is the 800 pound gorilla by default. Normal car brands haven’t cared much, the Leaf and the Volt were not well know.

It’s only in the last two years that a lot of EVs, especially in popular styles, have appeared on the market. and while those have generally been very hard to get, there haven’t been many an absolute numbers due to appearing at the end of the semiconductor shortage.

There is no reason to think that Tesla will continue to maintain the vast majority of EV sales in the US going forward.

An important note fairly far down in the article:

Today, no existing fast-charging network is making money. ... That means any missed revenue from the customer who drove an EV to a charger only to find it broken is irrelevant. And very few incentives exist to keep stations in working order.

Tesla’s supercharger network is a cost of selling their vehicles to soothe customer range anxiety. Legacy auto never understood this (or ignored it). That’s why Tesla had to spend $1B to build the global network [1] and has a factory to churn out 10k Supercharger stations/annually [2]; no one else would at the speed needed (VW paid to create Electrify America due to their Dieselgate settlement, which dictated no VW branding, hence the EA brand).

If you make the argument that profitability will arrive when utilization increases [3], it'll be kept out of reach by a combination of demand charges and having to colocate batteries (both of which Tesla and Electrify America do at some stations) to shave the demand curve (demand charges can be significant) from drawing MWs of power constantly most of the day.

Tangentially, gas stations aren't a great fit for fast DC charging (who wants to hang out at a gas station while they charge except perhaps at a full service biz like Wawa or Buc-ee's?), so those stations are instead getting installed at grocery stores, malls, and other places where people will make better use of the dwell time [4]. Most people will charge at home (or work, in some cases) except high daily utilization users (taxi, livery, law enforcement, etc), heavy duty use (towing), or those traveling long distances in a day (road trips).

TLDR It's a utility, not a profitable business.

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

[2] https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-supercharger-v3-factory-comp...

[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2022/10/26/electr...

[4] https://www.vox.com/recode/23023671/ev-charging-network-gas-...

It's also completely non-differentiated.

Each of the networks (other than Tesla) is trying to build customer loyalty via social networking features and monthly memberships, but that's destroying customer loyalty, not building it.

All people care about is the percentage of time the charger works, how long it takes for the session to start / complete, and whether a stall is occupied.

EA and EVGo are failing miserably on reliability and time to initiate charge, and anyone can install + operate a stall. The only network effect here is whether the charge station shows up on the map service vehicle owners use are using.

In theory, they could try locking smaller providers out of being listed on maps, but maps are also a non-differentiated commodity with a pretty low barrier to entry (people can just switch to whatever map service lists all the EV chargers, and not just the unreliable monopoly-owned ones).

Also, as the article points out, Ford has basically no loyalty to the charging networks, and is already weaponizing the on-board maps in their vehicles to force the charge networks to provide higher reliability services. I'm sure other automakers will follow a similar path.

Just put a god dang card reader on the charger and you win my loyalty. Oh great I need to install yet another app and make an account and put my credit card info in manually. Oh wait I don’t have any network.

As a business it’s basically a fancy electric plug. Unless someone can make a very nice lounge and charge membership or something I don’t see it being very profitable. I would pay some amount on road trips especially to have access to bathrooms, some drinks and snacks, comfy seats, TVs, etc while I charge a larger chunk

Plug and charge is even better.

Pull up, plug in my car, it charges. Easier than a gas station.

It’s a standard, but not used enough. When I plug into EA it just bills my Ford account which bills me. Very similar to Tesla. No hassle. EVgo required a small setup, I still have to use their account (stupid), but I don’t have to fiddle with screens or apps anymore.

I think there is/was hesitancy over physical card readers because they can be messed with (skimmer, stuff inserted in EMV slot, weather when not protected by awning). But contactless has been getting more and more common so it’s a good option to have.

But plug and charge should be the preferred choice offered everywhere.

It would be nice to have a non-trackable option, like cash.

Pull up, give the cashier $20 for "pump" 5, and you get to draw $20 in kilowatt-hours.

Or even just a paper bill acceptor if you don't want to pay a cashier. Common enough at car washes.

I think they’re lazy. It’s one more thing that will break since maintenance seems to be low on the priority list

Dude - the chargers near me use NFC — but only for their own card! I open Apple Pay and pull up their card and tap it. Accepting a credit card cannot be difficult at that point

I've encountered a few CCS chargers which had a regular card terminal on it to start charging. Tap or insert chipped card, plug in, and it starts charging. It's how they should minimally all be, with plug and charge being an optional extra.

That really doesn't make sense to me. If your margins are thin then you presumably live on service and repeat business. There's almost certainly a broader explanation for this outcome then "it's not perceived to actually matter."

With EVs, you must make your margin at sale of each unit. There is no profit to be made elsewhere (service, fast charging, etc). In 100k miles of driving my Model S, besides a small amount of warranty work, it has only had tires, wiper blades, and washer fluid, no other service. Lots of Supercharging as well, but Tesla isn’t making a material margin on that.

Hence, why the dealership model dies (typically sustained by service revenue) and the fast charger network runs on razor thin margins or at cost as a quasi utility coop across automakers (with Tesla being the steward).

Plus most people will charge at home (if at all possible) so you can’t even rely on the superchargers as a big ongoing revenue stream.

It’s not like if GM had GM only gas stations their cars had to go to. It’s perfectly possible for a Tesla owner to go years without supercharging if they’re not road-tripping.

What do you service though ? EV's are so ridiculously simple compared to a modern ICE car. Timing belts, PCV valve, and O2 sensors; oh my! All that is gone. there's some trickiness to regenerative braking but that's simple in comparison. There's still tires and glass and bodyword to deal with and repair, but just such a huge chunk of auto maintenance just disappears on EVs it's not even funny. Never have to take your car in for an oil service again. There is the new situation of maintenance on the battery pack, and that's a good chunk of change for the labor on it, but that's still relatively rare compared to troubles on an ICE.

I think GP meant customer service not mechanical service. Very few gasoline stations have a mechanic on duty anymore.

And you overstate the mechanical maintenance needs of a modern gasoline car. Yes they need oil changes, which are quick and fairly inexpensive. For the most part they will go 100k miles if not more with little else but brakes and tires (which EVs need also). PCV valves and O2 sensors are stupidly simple devices, especially in comparison to the electronic and computer systems needed to make an EV work.

Nissan lost my loyalty with the Leaf over this. They have a maintenance schedule on the 2015 Leaf that has you visiting the dealer for inspection just to maintain the battery warranty. This is just a concession to dealers to give them an opportunity to badger you with unnecessary services.

I bought my Leaf used and paid $350 the first time I took it for battery inspection just to mollify my own anxiety about the unknown condition of fluids in the vehicle. Every damn time I have visited since the service manager walks out with a rag covered in dirty fluid telling me I need to change my reduction gear oil or brake fluid.

I pointed out that they did it previously and cited the maintenance schedule for those fluids. Then asked what the problem was that was causing the rapid degradation of the fluid. They go "talk to the tech" then return and say it was a misunderstanding and I am ready to go.

If ole Musky wasn't such a piece of work, the fact that Tesla doesn't pull this BS would earn my loyalty.

Assuming you actually treat your car like a durable good, and not replace it every few years and get demolished by depreciation?

* Tires

* In-cabin air filter

* Windshield wiper blades

* Windshield washer fluid

* Brake fluid. It's hypergolic, after all

* Suspension realignment

* Suspension bushings

* Tie rod ends

* 12V AGM battery for non-powertrain systems

* Brake pads, though regenerative braking heavily reduces wear

* Rainwater drainage channels need to be cleared

* Air conditioner compressor

* Struts

* Wheel bearings

* Battery pack coolant. Eventually it will need replacement

* Battery pack coolant pump. Eventually it will need replacement

* Powertrain battery back

Over long enough timelines...

* Any rubber seals. Door seals, window seals. Frunk/trunk seals. Rubber oxidizes and degrades to UV over time

* Speakers

* Brake caliper rebuild.

* Brake master cylinder rebuild.

* Parking brake related items (modern electric ones just push out a cam against the brake rotor)

* Window regulators

* HVAC blend door actuators

* Soft-close door/trunk actuators

* Power seat motors

* Power mirror motors

* Seat foam and upholstery

* Door hinges. Eventually they won't stay open at a set position anymore.

* Auto-dimming mirrors

* Any backlit display

-- -----

Even eventually an electric motor may need re-balancing or servicing, but the timelines are very long. Powertrain costs are vastly reduced to internal combustion engine cars, but over a long enough timeline, all the other mechanical stuff needs replacing. Thermal cycling, oxidation, UV exposure, compression and friction affects everything eventually.

Some things people vastly underestimate as well. OEM-grade (not cheap aftermarket junk) door and window seals are NOT cheap to replace, and eventually the OEM ones may be entirely unavailable outside of collector grade cars. Even on VERY normal cars like a Toyota Camry you can spend $1500+ replacing door and trunk seals with OEM replacements.

> * Brake fluid. It's hypergolic, after all

You probably meant "hygroscopic" here. One probably doesn't want to be carrying hypergols in their car!

I did, but wow. Imagine if brake fluid was hypergolic?! Think of the periodic "exciting" news stories there would be from time to time!

I wonder, Government grants to setup chargers? Or something like that, where there mere existence means money?

Legal compliance. The Dieselgate settlement for Volkswagen in the United States required them to set up a non-VW branded charging network.

If you want something done with gritted teeth, get it done via lawsuit.

For me, the big news is that they’re providing an adapter for their old cars.

Can I use the adapter with a non-ford EV? How long until third party ones or jailbreaks exist?

Maybe… the big problem is that they said it’s going to be using fords tech stack and app so I imagine there will be some communication from the car to the charger to regulate the charging speed as not all super chargers have the magic dock upgrade that allows them to ”talk” with third party cars properly or even start without the app. That adapter maybe be doing some of that work which could make it harder to reverse engineer as you’ll still need something to auth and start charging at non magic dock chargers.

I'm hoping the dongle speaks CCS over the CCS port. Otherwise, I'd guess Ford would have to push firmware updates or something to old cars.

So, then it's just a matter of authentication. Assuming the auth goes with the dongle and not the car, then it's probably somewhat easy (and also legal) to spoof the authentication between dongle and car, since there's no hardware owned by a third party on that link.

If it's passing plug & charge credentials from the Ford vehicle through to Tesla, then I'd guess it'd be harder.

Tesla’s charger knows the car that is charging, they can ban individual cars from the network. I don’t think a jailbreak of the adapter will get around the authentication.

But, does it know the adapter, or does it know the car?

If it just knows the adapter, how does the adapter know what car it is talking to? Assuming I can buy the adapter, then I can physically tamper with it, so now we're in the realm of mod chips, etc. If video game consoles are any indication, it'll be a matter of weeks before someone hacks the dongle.

It knows the car. The adapters will probably just be small dumb adapters directly wiring all the pins properly. The car itself is doing the plug and charge negotiation.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_15118

I’d imagine it works a fair bit like plug and charge.

The adapter (directly or indirectly) reports the car serial number and then Tesla would just say “No”.

It’s also possible that the adapter doesn’t do much besides the physical, and a software update in the Ford handles the rest. At which point it would be 100% useless to non-Ford vehicles.

I would like to see these stations be regulated as common carriers. They should not be allowed to collect PID (like VINs). They should not be allowed to refuse to charge a car. They should not be allowed to use any proprietary protocols. Any compliant car should be able to participate.

Imagine if gas stations could ask for a VIN and make decisions based on it.

Moreover, the ability for Teslas to supercharge is vehicle-side. In order to disable Supercharge capability on a Tesla, they reach into the car and turn it off. Strange no one's filed a CFAA suit against Tesla, but I don't own one and thus don't have standing.

I'd assume they have something more like a smart card (credit card, EMV) chip inside.

Hackers are not modding credit cards to change the account.

> I suspect that at least initially, Ford will add the Tesla connector alongside CCS/J1772 in its new generation of EVs. That would allow it to say, “Not only can you charge your EV at any charging site in the U.S., but . . . you can do it without carrying a single adapter."

That's not that impressive of a feature as a selling point, nor is it even accurate. Such a car still couldn't charge at a CHAdeMO charging station. (That's the beauty of standards; you have so many to choose from.)

I think that the reality is the only major reason you wouldn’t use a Tesla charging station once you have access is because all stalls are occupied.

Pricing and charging speed may in some cases be a reason to choose an EA station but at least currently, it seems rare. I have an adapter for my M3 “just in case” but I have never even considered using it over several years of ownership.

Or, maybe you'd use a CCS one because they're closer to you. There's several CCS locations within a few miles of me, all in shopping centers I'm likely to frequent. The nearest Tesla supercharger station is on its own off a highway over 12 miles away. The same is true for visiting family elsewhere, there's a few CCS locations really close and around shopping areas by but the Tesla one is on its own in an otherwise empty lot of the highway many miles away.

You're thinking about EVs like you do ICE. Charging stations are the exception, not the rule. EV owners generally charge at home and therefore don't need DC fast chargers close to home.

My partner has been driving from San Diego to Santa Barbara or LA several times this year for site visits. There might be a Supercharger stop if we forgot to set the car to charge to 100% the night before. Otherwise my partner can make the trip and just plug-in at home.

We drove out to the desert for an overnight camping trip and made it home without having to stop and charge. I realized when we were out there that our campsite had an RV outlet and I could have brought our travel charger and gotten free L2 charging all weekend.

Road trips are the only time we use Superchargers. According the Tesla App it's 4% of the time.

> EV owners generally charge at home and therefore don't need DC fast chargers close to home.

I do when I don't have a private garage to wire up a charger. I do when I'm visiting family who don't have chargers in their homes or good setups for me to plug in a mobile charger. I do when I'm visiting someplace that isn't immediately adjacent to the highway.

I agree, the vast majority of my charging is done at home. But it's not all my charging sessions, and I'm not everybody.

Yeah; the article says that Ford is doing this mostly to force EA and EVgo either be competent or go out of business.

Biden tried to force them to be competent by adding availability requirements to the inflation reduction act, but, from what I've seen, it hasn't worked (yet).

Hopefully adding one decent charging station provider to the market will work a bit better, and force the others out of their current "good competitor" monopoly mode.

Well akshually... I don't believe there's a single chademo station anywhere without CCS at the same site.

There are 16 CHAdeMO charging points in the US.[1] Most of them on the New York Thruway between Albany and Buffalo. There are two in San Francisco and two in Marin County. That's it.

[1] https://www.chademo.com/#map

While there aren't many, there's definitely more than 16. There's like a dozen still online in DFW alone, looking around on Plugshare. Practically every big Nissan dealership has one, and if there's an older EVgo station nearby it probably still has one Chademo connector.

But, for the most part if there's a Chademo plug there's one or more CCS. A Chademo only dispenser is practically a unicorn these days.

> There are 16 CHAdeMO charging points in the US

You are wrong by a factor of over one hundred.

> That's it.

Yeah, except for the thousands of chademo charge points outside of your microscopic awareness. https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1139-june...

How are you getting 16 from that map? Did your browser fail to load the data?

Sorry. There's a lot of breakage on that map page, including "403 Unauthorised: a valid access key is required to access the geoplugin API over SSL" Firefox is filtering out much hostile code. Yet the CHAdemo map for Europe looks fine. Only the US is sparse.

Plugshare, which is crowd-sourced, shows far more CHAdemo chargers.

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