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Looking at plugshare, it seems to me that the holes in the dc fast charging network are not all that numerous. A handful of stations would give the Bolt and al

Looking at plugshare, it seems to me that the holes in the dc fast charging network are not all that numerous. A handful of stations would give the Bolt and all other electric cars a similar long-range story to what Tesla is offering. Tesla is guaranteed to lose this game eventually, with all other carmakers aligned to a real standard. Their supercharger system offers only slightly faster charging than SAE combo DC fast charge, and supercharger plug is already less common than the standard.

mikeash 10y ago
The gaps look pretty huge to me. I live around DC and have done trips to Ohio, Montreal by way of upstate New York, and south Florida, and all would require detours to accomplish with SAE Combo chargers. I'm pondering a trip to western Wisconsin this winter and that just wouldn't work at all, with nothing west of Madison. Coverage is pretty good in some places, but awful in others. And then you also have to consider availability. Non-Tesla stations tend to be installed in ones or twos and are often not well maintained. You can't really rely on any single station, because it could very well be blocked or broken. Tesla stations are usually installed in 6s or 8s, which means they're unlikely to be blocked and have some redundancy against failures, and Tesla acts quickly to fix any problems. Finally, the speed difference is pretty huge. SAE Combo may theoretically offer speeds similar to Superchargers, but in practice it's far worse. Chevy is advertising the ability to add 90 miles in 30 minutes. That's about half of what you get from Superchargers. It's still totally doable, but it you'd spend a lot more time charging. And Tesla can't really lose the game. They already have an adapter for CHAdeMO stations, and an SAE combo adapter would not be hard for them to make. I'm confident we'll see such an adapter for sale in the next year or two. The worst case for Tesla is that other cars come up to parity here, and even then there's no sign of that happening any time soon.

mikeash 10y ago

The gaps look pretty huge to me. I live around DC and have done trips to Ohio, Montreal by way of upstate New York, and south Florida, and all would require detours to accomplish with SAE Combo chargers. I'm pondering a trip to western Wisconsin this winter and that just wouldn't work at all, with nothing west of Madison. Coverage is pretty good in some places, but awful in others. And then you also have to consider availability. Non-Tesla stations tend to be installed in ones or twos and are often not well maintained. You can't really rely on any single station, because it could very well be blocked or broken. Tesla stations are usually installed in 6s or 8s, which means they're unlikely to be blocked and have some redundancy against failures, and Tesla acts quickly to fix any problems. Finally, the speed difference is pretty huge. SAE Combo may theoretically offer speeds similar to Superchargers, but in practice it's far worse. Chevy is advertising the ability to add 90 miles in 30 minutes. That's about half of what you get from Superchargers. It's still totally doable, but it you'd spend a lot more time charging. And Tesla can't really lose the game. They already have an adapter for CHAdeMO stations, and an SAE combo adapter would not be hard for them to make. I'm confident we'll see such an adapter for sale in the next year or two. The worst case for Tesla is that other cars come up to parity here, and even then there's no sign of that happening any time soon.