Toyota adopts the North American charging standard
pressroom.toyota.com
pressroom.toyota.com
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/10/toyota-targets-10percent-pro...
But definitely a win for Tesla, since NACS will now be effectively universal (in the US) and Superchargers more popular than ever.
The no.1 reason people choose Tesla is because of the wide Supercharger network.
Gas stations (very roughly speaking! lots of Superchargers are colocated at grocery stores, malls, and other places humans can comfortably dwell for 15-30 min) don't want to front the hundreds of thousands of dollars per station for the equipment, so Tesla did. Paid for out of Model S and X margins early on, and more recently through profits from total sales. Remember, fuel sales are razor thin margins, pennies per gallon. The profit is on the snacks in the gas station store. Similar with fast DC charging, it is not a profit center due to demand charges (utility charges for pulling megawatts of power on demand) and charging infra capex [1] [2] [3]. But you must have this network to soothe range anxiety, as non Supercharger networks in the US are frankly garbage (as the Dept of Energy Secretary recently discovered on a PR EV roadtrip [4]).
> “To dive deeper into this sum-of-the-parts valuation, we modeled & projected out Tesla’s supercharger network, taking into account access & revenues from other OEMs using stations across the United States. Ultimately, we estimate that Tesla’s supercharger business will be roughly 3%-6% of total revenues, translating to a $10 billion – $20 billion business by 2030.” [5]
[1] https://www.mckinsey.com/features/mckinsey-center-for-future... ("Can public EV fast-charging stations be profitable in the United States?")
[2] https://www.utilitydive.com/news/nearly-all-high-voltage-ev-... ("‘Nearly all’ high voltage EV charging stations lose money: Report")
[3] https://seekingalpha.com/article/4497501-evgo-q4-earnings-no... ("EVgo: Not A Go Yet, Still Bleeding Too Much")
[4] https://www.npr.org/2023/09/10/1187224861/electric-vehicles-... ("Electric cars have a road trip problem, even for the secretary of energy")
[5] https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-tsla-20b-revenue-access-supe... ("Tesla set to access up to $20B in revenues from Supercharger deals, Dan Ives says")
This description confuses me...
The DC+, DC-, and GND pins look to correspond. But NACS has 2 other pins. CCS1 has 4 other pins, and CCS2 has 6 other pins.
I assume there is some protocol on the other pins. A supercharger can read the car's VIN, for example. And some power/charge-state negotiation? Is all of this excluded from the NACS spec? Do CSS1 and NACS have compatible negotiation protocols?
The CCS1 has the CCS communication pins, a big DC- and DC+ pin, and also three extra pins for AC slow charging (Line 1, Neutral or Line 2, and Protective Earth/communications ground). CCS2 has the DC pins, the communication pins, AC lines 1, 2, and 3, AC neutral, and protective earth/communications ground.
NACS has DC+, DC-, CP, PP, and a ground. Instead of sticking the bulky AC->DC converter in the car, NACS vehicles stick it in the charging station. That means an AC charger can't be as simple (it needs to convert to DC) but also that the car doesn't have to carry around something it only uses while charging.
NACS is slightly more complicated from a car perspective, as it requires the car to switch between DC and AC paths. There is literally no change from a charger perspective besides the handle, as chargers are not ever designed to be multi-purpose DC vs. AC.
> After a decade of being trounced by Tesla Inc., this was supposed to be the year that traditional automakers finally put up a fight for electric cars. General Motors was committing its biggest brands to a new line of electric models; Ford and Volkswagen were ramping up production of EVs designed for the masses. It was, many predicted, time for the automotive world order to re-assert itself.
> Things haven’t turned out that way. Ford’s vaunted F-150 Lightning has been outsold by the R1T from Rivian, a startup that sold its first vehicle just two years ago. GM’s lineup of new EVs has suffered crippling setbacks in battery manufacturing. In July, Volkswagen Chief Executive Officer Thomas Schaefer succinctly summarized his own company’s EV competitiveness: “The roof is on fire.”
> With just three months remaining, 2023 has been less a redemption story for legacy automakers than further evidence of their quagmire. In the US, Tesla has been expanding production about as fast as all of its competitors combined. The Austin, Texas-based EV maker accounts for 61% of fully electric cars ever sold in the US, making it more dominant in EVs than Apple is in smartphones.
https://archive.ph/jfnHS | https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-05/where-is-... ("Tesla's Year of Price Cuts Exposes Crisis for Legacy Auto")
Additional citations: https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-energy-highest-margin-busine... ("Tesla Energy is becoming the company’s highest margin business: Elon Musk")
https://digitalassets.tesla.com/tesla-contents/image/upload/... ("Tesla Q3 2023 Update")
> their net profit per gallon is around $0.03-$0.07–after factoring in costs like labor, utilities, insurance, and credit card transaction fees. [1]
Average store sells 3000 gallons per day [2], meaning $90 to $210/day profit.
[1] https://fortune.com/2022/08/09/energy-profit-margins-gas-sta...
[2] https://www.convenience.org/Topics/Fuels/Who-Sells-Americas-...
So yeah, it's a viable pivot.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
They can actually charge for charging (rather than giving it away), and lots of people will pay for it, it also adds to their network effect (more customers for charging = more charging stations they can build).
I wouldn't be surprised if 10 years from now the US government will declare Tesla a charging monopoly and split it away from the car company.
Future behavior not-withstanding, Tesla will (correctly IMO) point at the opening up of NACS standard and the supercharger network as a defining anti-anti-competitive move.
Do you think that for an App Store attached to a phone whether the phone cost $100 or $1,000 matters?
Because everyone related to those App Stores does.
For those that dislike these laws so much they would rather pretend they don't exist, I wish they would spend some time reading and understanding the context under which these laws were passed. These types of arrangements, when allowed to balloon out of proportion unchecked, cause massive amounts of damage to the average american citizen and their individual and collective long term interests.
Lassez Faire style regulation was effectively tried and it was an unmitigated disaster for the citizen, who is, and should be, protected in our Constitution while our corporations must obviously be constrained to subordination by it.
Just asking a stupid question: isn't setting up a charging station relatively easy?
I mean is the barrier to entry not pretty low? Compared to say conventional gas stations, there are fewer dangerous things, etc.
The only barrier I see is that each charger network might want their own app, etc. Providing a poor UX. But that's entirely fixable, I already see contact-less card payments at gas stations today -- other charging networks could do the same.
What is the moat?
Unbelievably, half the time when the NFC symbol is available on gas station machines it doesn't even work. About the only time I can reliably expect to pay contactless at the pump in Texas is at huge chains like QT and/or travel stations like Pilot/Flying J
It is noteworthy in this regard that part of the EU mandate for a charger network is "without requiring an app or subscription"... "They must also accept contactless payment and provide full pricing and live charge point availability information through ‘electronic means’ such as an app or sat nav system."
https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/news/88920/electric-car-chargi...
https://www.theverge.com/23806690/eu-ev-fast-charger-60km-la...
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/07/eus-law-mandates-fast...
In western Europe there are Ionity and Fastned networks that are pretty reliable and faster than v3 Superchargers. Non-Tesla charging is generally becoming competitive and usable. Tesla still can offer better UX in areas where they have a good coverage, but other manufacturers are catching up to that too.
So maybe Tesla has realized their advantage won't last forever? Their first trial of opening up Superchargers was in the Netherlands, home of the Fastned network.
The customer is captive for 15 minutes somewhere, but you can certainly give him reasons to choose to be captive for 15 minutes at your store.
EV infrastructure is probably easier to deploy than gas, so I'd expect to see a lot of new and smaller-scale charging sites. Instead of four gas stations at the corner with 8-12 pumps each, every store in every strip mall on that corner will have 1 or 2 charging stands each.
Part of me suspects this is why we're seeing an industry-wide attempt to make convenience marts less terrible (i. e. food you'd willingly buy). If you can no longer guarantee traffic from people fueling their vehicles, you have to raise the bar.
When there's a gold rush, you sell shovels and pickaxes.
1) government funding to the tune of billions of dollars to build more superchargers
2) lucrative opportunity to sell more kWh at their super premium price point
3) further establish their leadership by forcing everyone else to follow them
Yes, on the margin some people might prefer to buy a non-Tesla car if they know they can use the supercharger network, but the positive experience of the Tesla charger will influence more people to buy a Tesla vehicle.
The only downside is if there are queues at the superchargers because too many non-Teslas are charging too slowly…
But then, as others have said, it just creates an incentive for Tesla to build more chargers and capture more charging infrastructure market share.
But with non-Tesla chargers, half the time they're down or fully occupied because there's one or two stalls, not 4-96 like Superchargers. If you find a free one, you need to download some dinky app and validate your account and punch in your credit card details and then it fails half the time anyway. Gar!
The whole experience was horrible and helped me understand why some people don't think electric cars will ever take off. In fact, I think that the non-Supercharging experience is so bad that it is actively harming EV adoption. So, the sooner that Supercharging can be adopted the better.
NOTE: NACS is a charging standard and not limited to Tesla Superchargers. My hope is that when other companies (ChargePoint, EVAmerica, etc.) adopt the standard and start providing NACS charging locations they won't screw it up as badly as they have with CCS.
Sincerely, non-Tesla EV owner
And Tesla’s ability to do enormous markups only works if they have monopoly pricing power. Perhaps the superchargers, by virtue of being first, will sit at the prime locations, giving Tesla some serious pricing advantages. Or maybe Tesla chargers will be better maintained and overall easier to use, so Tesla may have additional pricing advantages.
But that would fall short of full monopoly-level pricing power, and we see that people have the ability to respond to differentials in fuel prices by driving to cheaper stations. This will be easier in cars that integrate charging prices into navigation.
One thing I would like to know is: will Tesla allow their cars to charge on non-Tesla NACS chargers?
I dont buy other EVs because of poor charging speed and poor charging network
I will buy a luxury EV in 2025 because of this and look forward to using the existing supercharging network or expanded supercharging station via standard
An EV without a charging network is worthless, so I'm sure that a good charging narrative is important to a potential customer. But, it doesn't stop there. Teslas make very impressive cars and have innovated not just the drive train but how the car is made. For example, the cars do incredibly well in safety tests.
(2) would have been a terrible outcome for Tesla - all the money invested in existing stations, all existing cars, would have the "wrong" standard.
Given how badly development of the charging infrastructure is lagging, and given Toyota is already making cars as fast as it can sell them, their slow rollout of EVs is probably a good thing for everyone.
Automakers in the UK are flipping out because they recently pushed back their overly ambitious date for eliminating ICE cars, which the automakers were supposedly (I'm skeptical) already tooling up for. You can see how being early comes with its own risks and costs for a traditional automaker making the transition.
None of that justifies Toyota's effort spent farting around with hydrogen, of course.
No, Toyota invested heavily in hybrid technology in order to keep their ICE core business alive and then tried to go all in on Hydrogen with heavy lobby to top it off.
They are not lagging behind, they made multiple bad calls, betting on the wrong horses and are now paying the price.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/drillinginfo/2016/02/22/debunki...
[0] https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2021/09/23/Sti...
The interesting finding presented in the paper are:
[p. 9] "Underpricing of fossil fuels is still pervasive across countries and is often substantial, especially for coal."
[p. 9] 18% of these subsidies go to gasoline
[p. 9] "The power generation sector is the largest recipient of subsidies"
[p. 10] "By region East Asia and the Pacific accounts for 48 percent of total energy subsidies"
[p. 7] China and India together had 3.4 Million premature deaths due to air pollution in 2020 (The USA had 0.1 Million)
From an economic efficiency point of view, I can understand that prices are important, but wouldn't we have to take account of the benefits of using petroleum fuels too? Like allowing developing countries to feed their populations? They clearly can't do this with solar powered agriculture and solar powered shipping.
They make cars as fast as they can sell them and have a backlog of orders. "Paying the price" is one thing they are not doing.
This is a genuine question, I have been wanting to go electric for long, but it is still a luxury. And I haven't even taken into account older cars you can buy for a few k $.
What is the strategy? Will government make ice more expensive? Ban them? EU is already backpedaling on goals for all electric.
(This is purchase price. I don't know which math you're using for your "factoring all costs" conclusion, so I have no opinion about that comparison.)
Tesla 3 - $49,763
Toyota Corolla - $32,286
Corolla is nicer, more comfortable and reliable car.
https://www.edmunds.com/car-comparisons/?veh1=401919101&veh2...
I drove a Corolla for years (about a decade ago) and recently got to drive a Model 3 for a week. I disagree with your assessment of nicer and more comfortable. Model 3 wins there for me.
But in my long experience with a Corolla and short experience with a Model 3, I will agree with the Corolla being more reliable.
I’ve only sat in a new Corolla, not driven one, but the old Corolla was more comfortable than the new one.
That’s odd because the dimensions of the Model 3 are all larger than in a Corolla.
Yeah, the Model 3 does have a stiffer ride than most cars.
How do those Teslas compare to a gas car with similar passenger room?
It looks like you'll pay about 1/4 for a Tesla then gas.
https://www.motortrend.com/features/how-much-does-it-cost-to...
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/02/the-big-reuse-25-mwh...
You must know that if it costs you 80 cents per kWh that you have unusually expensive power. Not even in central Europe is the power this expensive.
Further, just from your own calculations in this comment you can see that it is cheaper to run an EV than an ICE if your power price is less than 80 cents per kWh, which is most of the developed world. Especially if you have dynamic pricing // off peak rates and charge at night.
My Mitsubishi space star did cost 14k new. A Zoe, which I picked because it is similar, cost 35k new. So it is 21k more.
There is the best scenario, where I charge only from home, power is 0.3$.
In this scenario, it cost about 4.2$ for 100km.
If I charge outside, power is around 0.8$ here, so it cost 11$ for 100km.
My ice car cost 8.5$ per 100km.
Best case scenario, EV cost 4.3$ less per 100km, to break even with the 21k more in the price, I need to do 488 372 km, which is about 40 years of driving as I do about 12 000km per year.
If I charge outside, this become even less and less interesting.
There is nearly zero used EV. I can buy a 2010 corola for 10k and do 100 000km on it, a tesla model Y is 45k.
My point is, today, buying an EV is a luxury.
This is different for older used car, I give you that, but it does not cover the big price difference.
Brake pads wear out less in EVs because you get some of your energy back with engine braking. Around 22%.
And saying tires are the biggest maintenance cost is hard to parse as it depends wildly on how long you plan to keep the car.
But anyway I don't want to argue either way, I have no love for ice any more than ev. But I wanted to buy an ev for a year and every time I do the math, I cannot afford it.
Two things are going to happen:
Cars in general are going to continue becoming more expensive (it's still functionally illegal for any American automaker to turn a profit on anything smaller than an SUV- gas or electric- the only automakers that still make normal cars are those that come from countries where trucks are largely impractical). Safety standards will increase to the point where cars simply cannot pass them, because electric SUVs weigh at least a half ton more than their gasoline counterparts hence even more accommodation will need to be made for them.
Additionally, electricity will become more expensive to match what gasoline used to cost. Remember, natural gas generation forms the overwhelming majority of new installations now (it's cleaner and cheaper than coal), and there's nothing stopping obscene taxes from being applied after the fact to that, either- especially since those generators are just replacing coal plants rather than increasing base load generation capacity. The whole "but my car can store power" thing is going to crater its battery longevity should that become necessary; developed countries should not intentionally make their grids as unreliable as South Africa's, but they're going to try anyway.
>EU is already backpedaling on goals for all electric.
Germany fucked around and found out that it's hard to run an industrial base without a steady supply of Russian natural gas or French nuclear energy. A government's concern about climate obviously takes a back-seat to concerns about not getting deposed by a population that values being able to afford to eat and keep the lights on today and tomorrow over slightly-cooler temperatures in 50 years, and "let's not destroy our money printing industrial base" is a perfectly valid conclusion for them to make when both of those inputs functionally disappear.
NACS' implementation of V2L is literally a TODO in their "specification" doc. I'm not joking.
https://www.autoevolution.com/news/as-carmakers-embrace-nacs...
While I would prefer an interoperable V2L standard, NACS is not a change for the worse in that regard. It does not prevent manufacturers from implementing whatever V2L system they wish on top of the NACS connector.
ORIGINAL COMMENT: That's not true. You can buy a generic Lectron V2L unit that will work for both Hyundai and Ford and other brands. It's based on J1772 and it's a simple adapter.
GM is also doing DC V2L/H for home backup.
https://ev-lectron.com/collections/ev-adapters/products/lect...
That. Whole house inverters are expensive.
As a thought experiment imagine a Ford gas station where the pumping infrastructure is the same but when a Ford car was present some advantage exists, like maybe optimized octane without extra cost or maybe the pump ran a little faster.
Or maybe another analogy would be Walmart running on AWS. Sure there are contracts, guarantees, etc, but there could be other data leaks that give a competitor advantage.
NACS's plug is smaller because the primary pins support both AC and DC. CCS uses separate pins for AC and DC. Also NACS locks the cable on the car side while CCS locks on both sides. That means with CCS, a malfunctioning cable can strand your car.
The main downside of NACS is that it doesn't support three-phase, but neither does CCS1, which is the version of the CCS standard used in North America and Japan (where household three-phase is rare). Europe uses CCS2, which is an even larger connector than CCS1 (due to the extra pin needed for three-phase).
The other current downside is it doesn't support up to 1,000V like CCS does, which matters for the currently deployed 800v EVs out there. There's a revision to NACS to support this but it's not currently in the wild yet afaik. That's the next generation of superchargers
I'm just surprised they didn't consider when designing the standard that they're putting a critical moving part on the component most subject to handling and damage.
Public charging connectors get just beat up from constant handling from lots of different people, many of whom couldn't care less about the next person to use it.
For example, a robust PKI might make car theft just a bit harder. Or maybe if you farm kiwis you won't be able to charge your car anymore.
ISO 15118 outlines an ecosystem of digital certificates that need to be in place for Plug & Charge to work. This is where public key infrastructures (PKIs) come into play. A PKI is a tree-like, hierarchical structure of trusted third parties called certificate authorities (CAs). These CAs manage the creation, storage, distribution, and revocation of digital certificates.
The inside sales are also a lot more limited when I have to charge every 2 hours or so, god knows I have poor self control but not so much I’m buying overpriced snacks every time.
What the future looks like is a guess and thus nobody knows, but the following is my guess:
I expect hotels will limit their chargers to guests only (and likely move to slower/cheaper level2 chargers in all parking spaces). They want their guests arriving by cars to have a full charge in the morning, but they also want the discount from the power company that comes from not running high draw level3 chargers. They can probably get other discounts from the power company by limiting charging hours somehow.
I expect malls, grocery stores and the like will eventually give up on chargers. Most people coming to the mall are locals who are charging at home so there won't be much demand. This will depend on neighborhood, in middle class and above areas nearly everyone will have their charger at home and so not charge, while in poor areas landlords will be slow to install chargers so the poor will be charging in such areas for the next 50 years or so before it isn't worth it to have charging.
Along highways you see truck stop type chargers every 10 miles or so, both for people driving long distances (trucks and vacation travelers), about the same spacing as gas stations today. Land is cheap so they will have plenty of charging space, and they will try to get your inside while you charge with activities. Sit down restaurants (not fast food) that are not far from those highways will also have chargers to attract travelers to enjoy a nice meal while they charge, but they will be limited to customers only (or maybe high prices for the charge with a discount for food you eat inside making it a good deal only if you eat there).
Rural towns of 10k to 200k people will look like a highway regardless of location, since they need to provide options for farmers coming there for shopping who need a charge to get back home.
Large cities than more than one million people will have few chargers on the edges (where truck stops currently are), but once you get inside the city there will be no public chargers even on highways. Land is too expensive to waste on chargers for the few people who will use it. (there will be semi-public chargers where trucking companies open their private truck stop/maintenance facility to independent truckers)
This aligns the incentives to allow people who foolishly choose to buy inefficient car brands help fund the further buildout of the network.
Because if this didn’t happen, the cars that charge fast (Tesla, Lucid, Rivian for example) would be waiting for the slow cars like VW IDs (if VW ever gets on board). That would not be ideal.
Tesla's V4 chargers currently suck for 800 volt cars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEJ2KtzMeh8
It's not a secret plan, it's just bad charger implementation. If Tesla doesn't improve the V4 charger then people will go to other charging networks with better charger hardware (like Aplitronic or Kempower chargers).
A day or two ago…
External adapters are simple and will be available, since you can have different adapters for AC and DC charging to avoid needing active switching.
I’ve also heard of people with mobility issues having trouble with the heavy chunky plugs on those standards but using NACS (aka Tesla) just fine.
Why do those others have such absurdly chonky plugs anyway?
Technology Connections did an overview of this recently where I'm getting most of my info. It's a 45m video, but the history is only a few minutes, and I've included a timestamp in the link below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJOfyMCEzjQ&t=162s
Edit: Whoops, wrong time. Fixed.
I've had both Teslas and J1772 EVs for a number of years. Plugging in the J1772 cars is always a little game to get the connector lined up and at the right angle to connect to the car. Sometimes it takes 5 or 10 extra seconds to get it just right. But the Tesla connector just slides right in and orients itself perfectly with no effort. Push the button on the handle, door opens, insert connector -- 2 seconds every time, reliably.
The internal combustion engine isn't just the thing that powers cars. In that industry it's practically a religious object. If it doesn't go vroom vroom it's not a car and your penis will fall off... or at least I think there's a whole generation of people in that field who feel that way.
The fact that EVs have tipped and the transition is not going away is just now starting to sink in.
> This document covers the general physical, electrical, functional, and performance requirements for conductive power transfer to an electric vehicle using a handheld conductive coupler capable of transferring either DC or single-phase power using two current-carrying contacts.
Or, are you saying that the EU was wrong to mandate a standard? They should have waited to see how things shake out?
Also: as I understand it: NACS is only the physical Tesla connector; the digital elements (protocols etc.) are still CCS. That’s important.
Butttttt... Tesla was the one to drive all that.
Besides is any of this _really_ a problem? Can’t customers buy relatively cheap adapters for NACS chargers if their car isn’t compatible?
As of the last few years, CCS2 had basically already won in the those markets in the same way that NACS has basically won in North America today.
(There is an adjacent issue - in many of these markets three-phase supply in domestic and small business settings is more common than in North America, and the Type 2 AC plug can supply 3 phase).
Also, the problem with the CCS network isn’t the connectors or charging standard.
It’s other stuff, like payment processing and equipment maintenance.
There’s no reason to expect non-tesla NACS stations to be any better than the current CCS stations.
Since all the manufactures want to use superchargers they will be forced to handle payments properly (certificates on the car not a flaky payment terminal on the charger). Should help for third party chargers also.
Likely what will ship in the US is similar to the EU non-Tesla solution, where you just use their app.
BTW, CSS2 supports 3-phase AC charging, which is common in Europe, but not in the US. In this regard NACS would be a downgrade for Europeans.
But I'm not totally convinced Tesla is going over the cable rating. A lot goes into the rating of a particular cable -- everything from conductor material and size to the insulation around the conductors, proximity of conductors, etc. Not to mention the liquid cooling. It's plausible that supercharger cables are rated for more than 600A.
Not to say they are unsafe or anything but it’s not unheard of
https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/attachments/screen-shot-2022...
Tesla definitely seems to build thinner nicer cables and has reliable chargers and cable cooling, but I'm not sure that's inherent to NACS vs CCS.
No. NACS is CCS chargers with Tesla's plug on the end. The plug will become CCS Type 3.
Older Teslas (2019 and earlier) won't work on NACS chargers without a CCS retrofit:
But if you have an older (pre-2020) Tesla you may not be able to charge at a non-Tesla NACS charger, since those older Teslas do not natively support the CCS communication protocol.
Tesla has promised to offer retrofits for older cars. I went the DIY route for mine (replacing an ECU in the trunk area) for a cost of around $200 in eBay parts.
Longer term Tesla may drop support for it. Might as well use the one protocol everywhere, even when the plugs are different in passenger vehicles and in heavy vehicles:
Charging station funding is a subsidy to legacy carmakers, because they don't to spend a penny building charging infrastructure. Let the govt (Us: taxpayers) pay for it.
Mary, you electrified the entire auto industry, you led, and it matters (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UduPjk9gonw). At the time of this announcement, GM has zero EVs being sold.
President Biden shared a video of himself and General Motors CEO Mary Barra while stating that GM and Ford are building more electric vehicles in America than ever before: https://cleantechnica.com/2022/02/02/president-biden-hypes-f...
https://electrek.co/2021/11/18/president-biden-gm-ceo-marry-...
It is obvious that Govt hates Tesla, it is never mentioned. All the subsidies are for Ford and GM.
> Adjusted Gross Income Limitations
> $300,000 for married couples filing jointly
> $225,000 for heads of households
> $150,000 for all other filers
We can bash on him for the mountain of stupid stuff he does, but dancing with the government in highly regulated fields is where he seems to shine.
I think New York gave them a billion subsidy for Buffalo (or maybe spent a billion total on multiple companies?).
The US government funding of Tesla doesn't change the fact that the US government didn't go the EU route of mandating a design early on.
Issuance Date: January 2010, Loan fully repaid in May 2013
Also the government subsided them by effectively paying a portion of every Tesla sale price for a long while.
This is a misunderstanding of the situation. The reality is Europe is a long way ahead of North America on EV infrastructure.
The European charging networks are compatible with all EVs because of standardization. More investment has gone into charger manufacturing and charging network deployment because of standardization.
You've been able to charge other brands on a Tesla chargers for a long time in Europe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y33AArvMUQ
You can charge your EV on a 400 kW charger from Alpitronic and FastNed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4ZWN_-a2j4
Or use a 400 kW charger from Kempower and Shell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR2M5W6saAk
Or charge your Volvo truck on a 350 kW Ionity charger. Why not: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UAttTG03WA
Or charge whatever EV on whatever charging network you like. Europe has done EV infrastructure right. And they've got a plan to make it even better:
https://www.fleeteurope.com/en/new-energies/europe/article/f...
In contrast, North America continues to thrash about trying to arrive at a charging standard. It's still going to be years of fiddling around to get anywhere near where Europe already is.
The result North America has ended up with is CCS chargers with Tesla's plug on the end. North America could have and should have got to standardization sooner.
There's also fewer than 30 gas stations per 100k people too. Tesla charges almost as fast, so they don't need as many slow EU chargers.
No. The fastest chargers are CCS chargers. 400 kW CCS chargers are being deployed these days. Tesla doesn't do 400 kW yet on the Tesla plug (or even on CCS type 2).
And Tesla's V4 charger performance with 800 volt cars is very poor at the moment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEJ2KtzMeh8
Tesla cars are mid-range in terms of charging performance. Have a look at these charging comparisons:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gxcukAhIAU
But I'll still argue once you have "enough" chargers, it doesn't matter if you have more, and I think there are enough Tesla superchargers as evidenced by them being the number one EV in America.
No network of chargers is going to make my slow-charging, 70-mile-range 2013 Leaf convenient, compared to a 270-mile Tesla which can charge 5-10x as quick.
It's not surprising. There are more EVs in Europe, and the population density is higher.
China is ahead of both.
https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2023/trends-in...
https://digitalassets.tesla.com/tesla-contents/image/upload/...
There's a big difference between an EV tax credit and getting paid to install charge stations (West Coast Electric Highway) which are often broken, expensive, and slow.
So it's not exactly a government free success story.
The government program exists exactly for that sort of situation, where traditional banks are unwilling to take the risk on an unproven business model.
I have heard second hand that early EV credits helped them get off the ground, but I haven't checked that personally...
Feature, not bug.
That was literally the entire point of the (Bush era) Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing policy: to inexpensively achieve pollution reduction by nudging almost-there clean vehicle technologies "over the line" from non-viable to viable. Why are we suddenly complaining when it did exactly what we intended in the first place?
Inexpensive? Big check (see Clinton's try for a typical case). Accelerated pollution reduction with huge health benefits? Also check.
Where's the problem? I'm not seeing a problem. :-\
When you say "feature, not bug" I'm not sure if you're saying the feature is that traditional banks are bad at evaluating new tech, or if the feature is that Tesla would have not survived without a government loan. Either meaning is hard to connect to the rest of your comment.
I don't know what "Clinton's try" is, or really what fuel efficiency has to do with any of this, to be honest!
Apples and oranges.
Traditional banks have a profit motivation. That's their only job.
Governments have a public health and well-being motivation. They try to achieve that at minimum cost.
It's wrongheaded to view government merely a "broken bank" in this scenario. It's actually that government is judged by totally different metrics, ones which they achieved very successfully.
>I don't know what "Clinton's try" is, or really what fuel efficiency has to do with any of this, to be honest!
Clinton's try for cleaner vehicles, of course. That was the previous attempt before Bush tried his ATVM loan program.
https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1993/09/30/clinton-announce...
It's relevant because it shows the typical-case cost for government achieving (or more accurately, not achieving) their public health goals in this sector. It shows how the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Loan program was actually a fantastically cheap and successful policy program when compared to its peers.
I agree with 1, but disagree with 2. The loan programs for scaling new massive tech are wonderful and hugely accelerate tech development, IMHO. My only possible complaint is that there are not more failed loans, as I have a bigger risk tolerance.
Government subsidy to stimulate the economy is good.
Tesla on the other hand creates a lot of jobs, invests in US factories, invests into R&D, pays a lot of taxes, and most importantly - delivers on the vision of transition to clean energy.
Without Tesla, America would still be driving even more gas guzzling SUVs and pickups.
So the relationship is mutually beneficial for the company, country, economy, and ecology
in teslas case at least there is clear ecological and experience benefit to consumers to show for all the “subsidies”
You call it subsidy, I call it accelerating EV transition
The charging station funding is to help GM and Ford, they can't figure out how the charging thing works, and they don't want to compete fairly, so my tax dollars and yours, they go to help these legacy carmakers.
But even if it was all pure "get other companies work around regulations", those regulations were created to reduce future costs to people, and the public coffers. By subverting them, in spirit, if not in letter, Telsa made profit not just by selling cars, but also by selling our future, something rarely accounted for.
Charging station availability is a solved issues, now they are at the payment consolidation and subscription. ( that part is still the Wild West, but it exists )
I live in LA, ( not L.A ) I’ve seen charging station cropping up only this years in non-metro area.
Look at a deployment map in rural Spain or France.
The issue was not finding the station but dealing with bad apps to pay for the electricity.
France was the worst for that, there is like 10 competing company. Ok maybe not 10 but I had 5 apps installed for sure.
Why is this a bad thing?
EU we’re well intentioned to regulate a standard as it drives efficiencies across infrastructure and provides some stability for manufacturers who might be nervous about entering an unproven market. However, it’s clear that they introduced it prematurely as the technology and requirements were yet to be ironed out.
I would hold that there will be an easy fix to this problem - maybe a drop in replacement to support regional differences, or a power adaptor (similar to the travel adaptor market that supports the current list of 15 odd mains connectors)?
At any rate, if the global market does need to be normalised, the transition period will no doubt be slow and somewhat inconvenient, potentially requiring support for multiple standards at both charger and vehicle.
Edit: reading through the comments here, it seems that there is an sociotechnical angle in terms of ergonomics, as some cables can be bulky or difficult to handle. (Are they any worse than a bowser handle though, and do people actually have an opportunity to do AB testing in showrooms, which are often catered towards a single brand?)
If anything their public charging network is significantly denser and more interoperable than in North America.
The US basically failed to achieve a workable public charging network, which has led to Tesla's buildout lead and the current situation where they are opening their connector to become eligible for future federal funding and to bring the other manufacturers on board with their connector and network.
I don't think the story of this being a clear cut policy win of US vs EU checks out so cleanly as the commenter above is trying to make it.
I would disagree and revert it entirely.
Like usual we have a standard CCS2 that is used successfully over multiple country representing over 500 millions people.
And like usual, USA goes its own way because a private actor pushes its way through lobbying and force it on everybody.
The Tesla connector has nothing Superior. It is thinner, that is its only advantage.
- CCS2 supports three phase power AC 22kw which is very useful in Europe. NACS does not.
- CCS2 cable are bulky because they respect international norms in term of cable safety. NACS does not, cable are undersized on purpose for cost reasons.
- CCS2 is already supporting payment in car. Tesla could simply have adopted that.
- We were already having 3 standard. Chademo for Japan, GBT for China and CCS for the rest of the world.
Congratulations: now we have 4.
Should I quote the appropriate XKCD or should I wait that Liberia and Myanmar uses NACS before doing it ?
CCS1 does not either.
> CCS2 cable are bulky because they respect international norms in term of cable safety. NACS does not, cable are undersized on purpose for cost reasons.
The cable size is a separate issue from the plug, and the main difference is cooling not safety margins.
> CCS2 is already supporting payment in car. Tesla could simply have adopted that.
NACS is using CCS1 signalling.
> We were already having 3 standard. Chademo for Japan, GBT for China and CCS for the rest of the world. Congratulations: now we have 4.
CCS1 is different enough from CCS2 that we already had 4 standards if not 5. Now we have 4.
CCS1 is entirely common with CCS2 for DC charging. The rest could have been unified later.
> main difference is cooling not safety margins.
It is safety margin. The pin are currently undersized for the rated power[1]
> NACS is using CCS1 signalling.
Which is irrelevant. Because both are still fundamental incompatible.
> CCS1 is different enough from CCS2
It is not. The only major difference between both is the presence of the three phase AC. A thing that could have been adapted in future and standardized everywhere world wide.
Now we are in the ridiculous situation that an EV will not even be able to charge itself in a neighboring country just because of lobbying bullshit.
Tesla already ship car with CCS2 by default in Europe. They could have standardize on that even in USA.
They did not for short profits, not for user convenience.
[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJOfyMCEzjQ&t=1441s&pp=ygUEbmF...
> Which is irrelevant. Because both are still fundamental incompatible.
NACS using CCS1 signalling is significant, because that means existing vehicles will be able to charge from NACS using a passive adapter.
If you require adapters to contain a microcontroller, the number of bugs goes up by an order of magnitude.
True unification would mean changing the plugs on all the cars and be just as disruptive as this is.
> It is safety margin. The pin are currently undersized for the rated power[1]
I don't see anything relevant at that timestamp? But the pins are not the cable and you were talking about the cable.
> Which is irrelevant. Because both are still fundamental incompatible.
It is absolutely relevant to payment methods, because those are software.
> The only major difference between both is the presence of the three phase AC. A thing that could have been adapted in future and standardized everywhere world wide.
It would require reusing some but not all of the DC pins for AC, and I strongly doubt that was ever going to happen given that it hasn't happened so far.
> Tesla already ship car with CCS2 by default in Europe. They could have standardize on that even in USA.
Why would they use CCS2 when everyone else in the country is using CCS1?
Especially because the plug kinda sucks. Compatibility is more important, but since everyone using CCS2 was clearly not going to happen, might as well make a better plug.
> They did not for short profits, not for user convenience.
I don't really care about what their motive was.
“It is much more pleasant to use, that is the only advantage”
> NACS does not, cable are undersized on purpose for cost reasons.
Show us the studies of how unsafe NACS is.
The US went its own way from the beginning with CCS Type 1, because the CCS participants decided that going with the existing local Level 2 AC connector as the basis for CCS was the better option in each market, despite J-1772's worse latching mechanism and pin geometry.
Nothing about the NACS transition was done via political lobbying. If anything the political pressure on Tesla to adopt CCS is what made them cave in and open their connector rather than keeping it proprietary, which led to the other automakers moving away from the politically-favored connector to Tesla's to gain access to their better charging network.
NACS is as similar to CCS2 as CCS1 was. Same protocols and signaling, just a different physical connector. Tesla adopted the CCS standard with their connector instead of continuing to use their proprietary protocols.
Cable size has nothing to do with the NACS spec. Implementers are free to use whatever cables they used previously. You are mixing up Tesla's Supercharger implementation with NACS. Tesla uses similarly thin liquid-cooled cables on their CCS2 chargers in Europe.
The NACS standard uses CCS communication protocols. So it's as related to European CCS as CCS Type 1 was.
And in Europe Tesla uses CCS Type 2 without any discernible issues. In fact the Tesla/NACS connector would be a significant downgrade for the European market because Europe frequently uses 3-phase AC for charging and Tesla's connector does not have the pins to support that.
Tesla opening their connector last year in the US, branding it as the North America charging standard, and working with other manufacturers to get their support was driven by government intervention, namely the Infrastructure Bill which requires use of a charging connector used by multiple brands to be eligible for federal funding to build chargers.
I think Tesla's connector is great but you're missing a lot of context in your story.
Even calling it "great" is an exaggeration. It can't support anywhere near the power delivery CCS 1 or 2 can, when 800v architecture cars are now commonplace.
It's sheer fantasy calling it better than CCS2. What should have happened is someone should have mandated CCS2 for the US.
It's not that Tesla's connector is better (CCS1 has the same communication/payment stuff Tesla's does), it's that the US used a installation grants and legal settlement to build out a bunch of charging infrastructure with no requirements for availability/reliability. So, shockingly, lots of charging stations went in and nobody gives a shit about maintaining them.
The only problem CCS1 has is the shitty mechanical design that can't handle heavy cables. It's a problem that could be worked around simply by installing a hanging arm that supports the cable or handle. But again, there's no incentive to fix it.
NACS is basically CCS Type 3 at this point. It's a compact connector that is backwards-compatible with (most of) Tesla's existing Supercharger network while being compatible with CCS on a voltage, power, and communications protocol level.
Really the winning feature is less the connector, and more the install base of reliable chargers from Tesla (and the trajectory of their future buildout).
[0]: https://mobile.guideautoweb.com/en/articles/68779/cybertruck...
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megawatt_Charging_System
There’s nothing significantly technically superior about Tesla’s connector. Most of what’s superior about owning a Tesla is that the chargers are better maintained and placed in more/better locations. Heck, Electrify America wouldn’t even exist if the VW dieselgate scandal didn’t happen. The problem with CCS isn’t the connector, it’s that most companies who run US charging stations are doing it halfheartedly.
I think it’s also in bad taste to have a main point that European-style regulations are inferior to the American laissez-faire system without very much commitment to the facts surrounding why those regulations are supposedly “bad.” I can’t think of many metrics where the US leads Europe in terms of transportation. It seems to me that EU regulations help do things like keep pedestrian deaths and average MPG/emissions lower than the US.
Heck, the EU has double the EV adoption rate of the US. I have to think that a universal connector helped EU customers shop with confidence.
https://www.statista.com/chart/27431/ev-unit-sales-per-capit...
What we have right now in the United States are two major incompatible systems which is exactly what the EU avoided in the first place. Even the NACS solution isn’t a full solution because non-Tesla vehicles can’t use older generation superchargers.
This statement makes little sense. Europe’s standard is CCS2 which Tesla also uses. It’s quite comparable to NACS in features, even does a bit more.
It's been so weird to watch a company that did great with hybrids be so weirdly stubborn with fully electric cars.
If they get something working with iron based batteries and have a path to fully electricity their sales then the world is a better place. Their sales volume is immense.
Somebody tell Europe this, since many countries are sunsetting new sales of ICE cars within the next decade, right?
I'm skeptical that mining and recycling won't be able to be steadily ramped up to match demand.
If so – and Musk is controversial and all – but wasn't this the original 'hump', vis-a-vis Tesla that we needed to get over in order to attain widespread EV adoption?
Though what would be really clutch about battery swapping is that the overhead of battery maintenance could be offloaded from the owner and amortized into the price of a swap. I imagine there would have to be a battery standard so that cells could be serviced at an individual level on the swap provider’s end during maintenance.
And as more and more hotels add L2 Tesla charging, more Tesla owners can charge overnight away from home. If I do trips to Oregon from Seattle, I never supercharge anymore.
On a first principles basis this kind of makes sense. Supercharging has effectively no moving parts. The plug doesn't even have a tab. That's less maintenance and pieces that can break over time. On the other hand, battery swapping has a ton of moving parts, and would require the car to have additional hardware.
But batteries are heavy, so quite possible that a battery swap would end up taking as long as supercharger charge anyway.
[1] https://www.nio.com/nio-power
[2] https://electrek.co/2023/10/09/nio-completes-30-million-glob...
That's even before the risk of malicious owners. I'm sure there would be many attacks, but one that comes right to mind is intentionally swapping in low-quality cells into swapped batteries to extract and sell the new high-quality ones you pull out.
I've noticed that battery-swapping seems to be mainly suggested by peope who haven't owned an EV, or have owned an EV where fast chargers are not common.
My recent experience in a rental Tesla solidified that even with the 250kW chargers, having to go elsewhere to charge it is a big deterrent to buying one. Even in Los Angeles, the Supercharger network isn’t dense enough to overcome this for me.
Chrysler Bailout of 1979, $1.5 billion
In 2008, $17.4 billion bailout to General Motors and Chrysler
In 2009, $3 billion, cash for clunkers
Ford's loan: $5.9 Billion, September 2009, Loan fully repaid in June 2022. (~13 years) https://www.energy.gov/lpo/ford
Nissan loan: $1.45 billion, Jan 2010, repaid Sep 2017 https://www.energy.gov/lpo/nissan
Total net to date: -12.4B (https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/list/category/Auto%2...), losses from ICE manufacturers.
Tesla's loan: $465 million, January 2010, Loan fully repaid in May 2013 (~3.5 years) https://www.energy.gov/lpo/tesla
There are quite possibly a lot more if we dig up the ~100 years of ICE manufacturing history.
Also, don't forget the $7 trillion subsidies just in 2022 for fossil fuels: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-10-16/climat...
And ethanol subsidies! The federal government pays oil companies about $6 billion a year to blend ethanol into your gasoline; it's been subsidizing ethanol for 33 years now: https://www.npr.org/2011/07/21/138543233/ethanol-industry-to...
And billions of dollars to oil companies for carbon capture.
https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2020/07/29/ford-...
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/19/bush-bails-out-us-...
Final tally: Taxpayers auto bailout loss $9.3B https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2014/12/30/auto-ba...
I expect to see cash for clunkers 2: electric boogaloo around 2030. Once the charging infra and the grid is ready, it makes a lot of sense to disincentivize ICE ownership.
Where Tesla makes money is when people with those cars go to charge at the Tesla superchargers.
There are some governmental pressures to use interoperable connectors used by multiple brands if you want to be eligible for federal infrastructure EV charger funding. Tesla is making themselves eligible for this funding, making sure they won't be legislated into changing all of their charge connectors to CCS1 in the future, and gaining new customers to improve profitability of their charger network.
Tesla is by far the fastest growing DC charging provider in the US, on track to build over 500 stations this year with each station being 8+ chargers, some with 40 or more chargers.
Tesla most likely saw the writing on the wall, standardization was inevitable, it is already the case in Europe. They have a lot to gain if that standard is theirs, so they opened it. Everybody wins, especially considering that it is also a pretty good connector. I'd say that the only drawback is that it is not the same as in Europe, but since cars rarely cross the Atlantic, it is not a big deal.
The current Tesla charging standard is not NACS.
NACS is a new standard based on CCS protocol with Tesla's plug hardware (SAE J3400 connector).
There are very few Superchargers that support NACS, they're mostly still on the old Tesla standard.
This means the US and Europe essentially have the same charging software, with different plugs on top. All the automakers already had to and intended to only support CCS. Tesla's plug just makes more sense for the US's 1-phase power compared to the bulkier CCS plug which is designed for 3-phase power. NACS is just using better hardware with the software they already have.
> NACS is a new standard based on CCS protocol with Tesla's plug hardware (SAE J3400 connector).
> There are very few Superchargers that support NACS, they're mostly still on the old Tesla standard.
Are you sure about that? If so, can you cite a source explaining the difference between the current Tesla charging standard and NACS? Because that's contrary to everything I've read about it before. E.g., https://www.tesla.com/blog/opening-north-american-charging-s... says this:
> We invite charging network operators and vehicle manufacturers to put the Tesla charging connector and charge port, now called the North American Charging Standard (NACS), on their equipment and vehicles. NACS is the most common charging standard in North America: NACS vehicles outnumber CCS two-to-one, and Tesla's Supercharging network has 60% more NACS posts than all the CCS-equipped networks combined.
Right now there's only a handful of "magic dock" truly CCS/NACS compatible superchargers that speaks the CCS/NACS protocol that works with non-Tesla vehicles[1].
? ? ?
Let’s correct your misunderstanding, then.
1. The US has 3 phase power. 2. The difference between NACS and CCS1 plugs is that NACS just combines the DC and AC lines into the same wire. Since the lines support both single and multi-phase AC power, and DC, the only downside of multi-purposing the line is that the car needs to make sure it’s routing the negotiated power to the correct place. 3. The protocol that any new supercharger speaks is the CCS protocol.
In several (not all) European countries, it's normal to have 3 phase power in your garage, kitchen and laundry room -- even in apartments. In (almost?) all of them, it's normal for any business to have it.
That means the typical destination and many home chargers are using it.
Some medium density residential, generally high density residential, commercial, & industrial are all 3 phase.