3 ms·

The gas station analogy is contrived: a comparable car can be filled with half a tank of liquid fuel in two or three minutes, while the Tesla website quotes the

by niftich 10y ago

The gas station analogy is contrived: a comparable car can be filled with half a tank of liquid fuel in two or three minutes, while the Tesla website quotes the supercharger charging it to half charge in 20 minutes. It's certainly a lot more reasonable to leave the car unattended for 20 minutes while going about one's business, especially as supercharger stations in urban and suburban areas tend to be near malls and retail districts. Nor is it much fun running back to your car within five minutes, but it's clear that this initiative is trying to encourage a behavior that's more considerate towards others waiting to charge. It also illustrates a different trend: that Teslas, more so than any previous car, blur the line between outright ownership and a automobiles-(and associated infrastructure)-as-a-Service -- (edit: even if they don't intend to make a profit off this change).

notatoad 10y ago
>Teslas, more so than any previous car, blur the line between outright ownership and a automobiles-(and associated infrastructure)-as-a-Service Not that i think you're wrong, but i'm not sure how you draw that conclusion from this announcement. "you can't park your car forever at our charging stations" hardy implies you don't really own the car.
- niftich 10y ago
  The supercharger station is operated by Tesla. Unlike at a fuel pump, you don't need to authenticate or submit payment; you can just plug it in, and the car knows who you are. If you overstay after your car is full, your car will inform HQ, and they will bill you to your name. You still own the car, of course. It's just a fascinating convergence of perma-OnStar, of over-the-air firmware and software updates, and it's quite different from the days when your relationship with the automaker effectively (or could have) ended when you drove off the dealer's lot.
  - greglindahl 10y ago
    I don't see why this relates to ownership. Tesla owners own their cars outright. Tesla owners up until now have free access to the Supercharger network for long-distance travel. "Paying" at a Supercharger is very convenient. How does that affect car ownership?
    - ajb 10y ago
      The formal legal status of ownership is not the same thing as the affordances usually provided by it, and the latter is what people generally mean when they talk about ownership.
  - snovv_crash 10y ago
    If you left your car parked at a gas station pump you'd probably be towed. I don't see how this changes anything.
  - Jarwain 10y ago
    To be fair, there's another way to spin that. The car doesn't know who you are. Tesla knows who you are, because you purchased their car. It probably has a unique identifier. UID is transferred to HQ, query run, information gathered. So not so much the car as just Tesla. Besides, it's possible for a certain kind of user that would never take advantage of a supercharger, instead stopping for electricity wherever they go about their day. This is total speculation though, I have not driven a Tesla, never mind having purchased one.
prostoalex 10y ago
> Nor is it much fun running back to your car within five minutes Considering (a) the charging status can be monitored through the app, (b) there's a push notification for "almost done", (c) there's the final push notification of "charging completed" when the 5-minute grace period kicks in, it's hardly a surprise out of the blue.

by niftich 10y ago

notatoad 10y ago

>Teslas, more so than any previous car, blur the line between outright ownership and a automobiles-(and associated infrastructure)-as-a-Service Not that i think you're wrong, but i'm not sure how you draw that conclusion from this announcement. "you can't park your car forever at our charging stations" hardy implies you don't really own the car.

niftich 10y ago
The supercharger station is operated by Tesla. Unlike at a fuel pump, you don't need to authenticate or submit payment; you can just plug it in, and the car knows who you are. If you overstay after your car is full, your car will inform HQ, and they will bill you to your name. You still own the car, of course. It's just a fascinating convergence of perma-OnStar, of over-the-air firmware and software updates, and it's quite different from the days when your relationship with the automaker effectively (or could have) ended when you drove off the dealer's lot.
- greglindahl 10y ago
  I don't see why this relates to ownership. Tesla owners own their cars outright. Tesla owners up until now have free access to the Supercharger network for long-distance travel. "Paying" at a Supercharger is very convenient. How does that affect car ownership?
  - ajb 10y ago
    The formal legal status of ownership is not the same thing as the affordances usually provided by it, and the latter is what people generally mean when they talk about ownership.
- snovv_crash 10y ago
  If you left your car parked at a gas station pump you'd probably be towed. I don't see how this changes anything.
- Jarwain 10y ago
  To be fair, there's another way to spin that. The car doesn't know who you are. Tesla knows who you are, because you purchased their car. It probably has a unique identifier. UID is transferred to HQ, query run, information gathered. So not so much the car as just Tesla. Besides, it's possible for a certain kind of user that would never take advantage of a supercharger, instead stopping for electricity wherever they go about their day. This is total speculation though, I have not driven a Tesla, never mind having purchased one.

prostoalex 10y ago

> Nor is it much fun running back to your car within five minutes Considering (a) the charging status can be monitored through the app, (b) there's a push notification for "almost done", (c) there's the final push notification of "charging completed" when the 5-minute grace period kicks in, it's hardly a surprise out of the blue.