Take this to daddy Elon - this has absolutely nothing to do with Rivian.
More Supercharging stations are adding "trailer compatible" spots, so this should become less of an issue over time. I would also bet that EV manufacturers will standardize on a port location similar to how gas vehicles have. (Early gas vehicles often put the fill hole in places like the dash or under the seat.)
1. https://www.reddit.com/r/Rivian/comments/1f0wt4v/okay_is_the...
No need. Just make the cables longer and the problem is solved. Even Tesla has put longer cables on their V4 chargers.
Here's a long cable on some EnBW Alpitronic chargers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LK2shbCwDYM
I'm sure future charging stations will have some long cables for vehicles with odd port locations or trailers, but I don't know if every charger at a station will have a long cable. Considering the disadvantages of long cables, it makes a lot of sense for manufacturers to use one location for the charging port. That allows owners to use as many chargers as possible. And it would mean that anyone driving an EV wouldn't have to remember where the port is on their specific vehicle.
Or Tesla could have placed the dispensers to the sides of even some of the spaces and alleviated the issue.
But Tesla envisioned only the few Tesla models to ever charge at Tesla chargers, so they designed them with tight tolerances.
Every charger will have longer cables. Longer cables have been deployed on chargers from many manufacturers for years. It's not novel.
Tesla is generally behind the curve with charger development. Kempower and Alpitronic make the best chargers.
Sadly, the graveyard of failed companies is full of ones that made amazing products. Kempower's revenue has been going down over the past year, and they've burned through half of their cash reserves in the past few quarters. They've decreased headcount to reduce costs. I hope they pull out of this dive, as more competition is great for consumers. But it really is the case that fancier chargers are significantly more expensive. So much so that it's hard to make them profitable.
Lots of ICE vehicles have their gas inlets in a number of different spots. Some even have them behind the rear license plate! And yet people don't seem to have an issue getting gas in their cars.
IMO having the vast majority of chargers at the head like that was a bad decision. Putting them on the side of the spots makes a ton of sense and really opens up a lot of flexibility.