Agreed. Thank you Tesla for helping bring about a better standard here!
You should probably thank the government, too. When the feds decided they were going to put billions in subsidies to a national charging network, the original regulations basically required CCS, because that was really the only cross-platform game in town - Tesla was proprietary and not open to other automakers. In a brilliant bit of chutzpah, in response Tesla renamed their charging system the "North American Charging Standard" and started coaxing other auto companies to get on board, which most other companies were OK with because Tesla has by far the best fast charging network. But it was really the government subsidies, and the threat that Tesla would be left behind if everyone else went with CCS, that sparked the opening up of NACS in the first place.
Google has absolutely none of the expertise required to put such a connector together. It requires a very specific set of skills in chip design, signal integrity, and connector design which Google has none of.
But 9to5 Mac did some sleuthing and it seems that, in the case of Apple, it’s not entirely truthful: https://9to5mac.com/2015/03/14/apple-invent-usb-type-c/
Google also doesn’t seem to have fulfilled a bigger role than Apple did.
Connector design like this is a delicate balance between signal integrity (wants biggger) and mechanical integrity (wants bigger) and size (always smaller).
As for signal integrity: A lot of the signal integrity was papered over by having complex interface chips. This is why there is so much training and negotiation in USB-C.
As for mechanicals: The whole point of USB-C was to take failure-mode data from the previous generations and design a connector that avoided those. USB-C, in spite of how many people bitch about it, was designed so that the the most probable failure modes (which they learned from prior things like mini and micro USB) occur in the cable--ie the replaceable part.
None of this design expertise is inside Google.
I have never encountered an iPhone with a dead lightning port, it’s always the cable that wears out. There’s tons of laptops and android phones with worn out USB-C ports
Intel had the most, as well as the editor position.
All the Comms should have been done via an OFDM-like scheme rather than just a binary sequence over a twisted pair, giving far more throughput and allowing for compensating for conductive dirt in the plug causing crosstalk.
Overall, I believe such a design would have reduced costs, since there is no longer a need for such precision on cable and plug manufacture, which more than compensates for a tiny OFDM 'modem' inside the USB phy.
Maybe in another 30 years we’ll get a properly symmetrical design with something approaching lighting’s durability.
Compare that to the Supercharger network, where providing a great experience is a huge selling point for Teslas.
I might despise Musk, and I'm not a fan of Tesla lately, but you do really have to hand it to them: they were prescient and put in all the hard work of building out the best fast charging network, so good for them for reaping the benefits.
I didn't know that. Do you have some documentation about that. Would be fun reading material for the holidays
> I might despise Musk, and I'm not a fan of Tesla lately, but you do really have to hand it to them: they were prescient and put in all the hard work of building out the best fast charging network, so good for them for reaping the benefits.
Same boat club.
I’m getting sick of this tiptoeing in every thread that mentions Tesla. No ones going to come to your house and beat you if you say something positive, un-hedged, about Tesla