9 ms·

I've said this to loads of people, but the charging infra is 1/3 of the Tesla "killer app" EV experience. There were (in my view) three core "problems" facing

I've said this to loads of people, but the charging infra is 1/3 of the Tesla "killer app" EV experience. There were (in my view) three core "problems" facing mass EV adoption that Tesla has engaged with and solved very well. First is the perception that EVs (and their cousins/progenitors, hybrids) were slow, terribly boring cards. I think this was largely perpetuated by the rise of the Prius. Tesla solved this by building true performance cars, using the raw torque power of their EVs to assuage any concerns around performance and handling people could have. Second is the concern around "fueling", especially on road trips. This is obviously addressed by how stupid-easy the supercharging network is to use. I don't think any other auto manufacturer will become a true competitor to Tesla until similarly extensive networks are built out by Ford, GM, etc. Third is the paradigm-shift of the minimalist controls and the spaceship-like display. There are absolutely drawbacks to this--Mazda, for one, refuses to have touchscreens in their cars anymore due to safety concerns, and there are instances in my Model 3 where I dearly wish for a physical control. But there's something incredible about sitting in a modern vehicle and not being faced with a baffling array of buttons and dials, and having nothing between you and the road. The combination of these makes for a stellar experience with the vehicle, and for EVs in general.

worldsayshi 6y ago
It's ridiculously wasteful to force every carmaker to build their own charging stations. Here regulators may have to step in to force them to find a standard and a charging market.
- ssheth 6y ago
  There is an "overarching" standard now .. CCS and a couple of older standards .. J1772 and ChaDeMo .. but when Tesla was getting started making chargers, there was no critical mass around any standards so they ended up creating their own.
  - worldsayshi 6y ago
    Are they sharing that standard or putting up obstacles around it?
    - djrogers 6y ago
      https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you
  - labcomputer 6y ago
    Not only was there no critical mass... CCS network didn't even exist until after Tesla had already deployed half a dozen Superchargers in California. And most of the CCS stations deployed before about 2017/2018 were the 50kW variety (in comparison to the 120kW Superchargers of the time).
  - Robotbeat 6y ago
    Also, the "Tesla" standard is objectively better in nearly every way. It sucks we don't all just use that for all EVs.
- Kranar 6y ago
  A charging station isn't like a full blown gas station with safety critical infrastructure and operations staffing it. A charging station is mostly a parking lot space with some electronics, a cable and some signage featuring a company logo. The amount of "waste" amounts the the plastic used to display said logo and some rubber and copper. The actual electricity itself and the infrastructure used to deliver that electricity is already standardized and shared among not only all electric car companies, but everyone in the area period.
  - tenacious_tuna 6y ago
    There could be waste in terms of duplicated effort. If Ford has charging stations that cover, e.g., the Rockies very well, it'd be "wasteful" to force Tesla to have to build out an identical network to cover the same region. (Where "force" is accomplished by incompatible cables, or communication changes, or some other issue.) If companies can share infrastructure, then they all will benefit from each other improving their own networks. Ford adding stations that can be used by other EVs will further improve the quality of life for all EVs.
    - Kranar 6y ago
      They do share infrastructure, the actual infrastructure needed to setup a charging station in the Rockies isn't in the signage and some fairly basic electronic components, it's in how you get the electricity to the Rockies. That will be shared by all car companies and isn't something the car companies themselves manage. That said, I think that in many cases they should share space. For example on a crowded downtown street, there should be standardized charging stations that can accommodate multiple types of cars. It would be annoying to have one parking spot for Tesla, another for GM, another for Ford. But that's not a question of waste or resourcefulness and I don't think that needs a government to step in to regulate either. Tesla's, along with pretty much all electric cars, support standardized charging as a matter of convenience to the user.
- oneplane 6y ago
  It's also ridiculous that some private company has to stamp out a good charging setup because nobody else will, but then has to let others use it. Granted, it would be nice if everyone would play together, but they didn't and they don't. Some heavy-handed top-down inter-organisational group with top-down design-by-committee ideas is going to be a shitshow too, so now the question becomes: what IS a good solution going to look like?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - tenpies 6y ago
    Why is it ridiculous? The government didn't set up petrol stations - they were always private everywhere on the planet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filling_station#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filling_station#History The entire EV market is already propped by governments and this has taken us to a place of extremely heavy, extremely battery-heavy, performance-oriented vehicles. That is the complete opposite of what an EV vehicle that is good for the environment would be. We should not be incentivizing this further by encouraging government to now subsidize a charging network.
  - caf 6y ago
    A good solution probably looks like: Consortiums of EV-selling manufacturers form to build charging networks for that consortium's cars. Eventually cross-usage deals or mergers happen between networks of similar size and usage, until you get to the any-car any-network happy place in about 20 years.
- fblp 6y ago
  Suggested improvement: To be eligible for government electric car subsidies the car maker should meet certain standards for their chargers and charging stations that enable interoperability and a more competitive market.
  - smileysteve 6y ago
    This timing works well as regulatory capture as Tesla has used up their us subsidies
- nickik 6y ago
  First of all, nobody is forcing anybody. Those manufactures that want to use a standard are free to use one. This is intact what happened, the waste majority is standardized and that mostly without regulation. Market forces are driving standardization. Tesla however is special because they have in incredibly dominate position in the market and they don't have to relay on 3rd parties creating charging stations. They can offer their costumers a premium experience and support their own growth. Eventually once charging is more universally available Tesla can simply expand to allow others to charge there and make a lot of money. Tesla has invested huge amount of money and this is their reward. Not sure why regulation needs to come in and force everybody to do things. Specially when early on a lot of things were not very clear. Also, government regulation defined API standards for payments are usually terrible.
  - worldsayshi 6y ago
    > Eventually once charging is more universally available What if Tesla ends up with more or less a monopoly? > Tesla can simply expand to allow others to charge there and make a lot of money. But will they? I agree that it's fair that Tesla gets return on their investment. But if we end up with a situation where infrastructure is disjointed or where it's infeasible for anyone else to launch any competetition then Tesla have gained a market position that might be "fair" to them but unfair to everyone else.
    - znkynz 6y ago
      Can't comprehend how your sensible, rational post has been downvoted.
    - ogre_codes 6y ago
      > What if Tesla ends up with more or less a monopoly? Tesla has "Open Sourced" their designs. > But will they? I don't know if Tesla will allow others to use their supercharger network, but anyone can use their designs for building a charging station for Teslas.
    - nickik 6y ago
      But this is total fantasy argument. Tesla will not have a monopoly. Why should they? Nothing is stopping other people from creating charging stations. Certainty not Tesla. > But will they? Yes, eventually it will be a financial make sense, but that is to 5-10 years away. > But if we end up with a situation where infrastructure is disjointed or where it's infeasible for anyone else to launch any competetition then Tesla have gained a market position that might be "fair" to them but unfair to everyone else. But this isn't the case. And will not be the case. So I don't get why you are making that argument.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  Just like when the EU tried to legislate micro-usb everywhere.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  Tesla has said anyone is welcome to use their charging technology. They did this 7 years ago, before any of these other networks were built out. https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you
  - paxys 6y ago
    Sharing technology itself is nowhere close to enough. The end game will have to be some kind of forced infrastructure sharing agreements.
    - ogre_codes 6y ago
      > The end game will have to be some kind of forced infrastructure sharing agreements. So Tesla spend billions of their own money building out infrastructure when the competition was literally laughing at them... and now that it's paid off and EVs are starting to go mainstream we should force them to share that infra with everyone else? That's a giant bullshit sandwich right there.
      - paxys 6y ago
        Might suck for them initially, but eventually real competition in the space is good for everyone, including Tesla. Their honeymoon period isn't going to last forever. And with the amount of government subsidy they have already received, they should be the last ones complaining about regulation.
        ogre_codes 6y ago
        > And with the amount of government subsidy they have already received, they should be the last ones complaining about regulation. You mean the same subsidies which currently give Tesla's GM-come-lately competitors a $10k pricing advantage on new car purchases? Maybe that's the solution. Every time a competing car is sold, Tesla gets the subsidy instead of the maker. Then Tesla can use it to continue building out the supercharger network which everyone benefits from. GM, Ford, VW, Toyota... these are multi-billion dollar companies, several of which have received massive subsidies from the US government themselves. Forcing Tesla to subsidize their myopic competitors as sort of perverted corporate tort in the US is crap.
zippergz 6y ago
A lot of this is obviously just personal preference, but the spaceship-like display is the exact reason (well, not the only reason, but a big and emblematic one) that I don't want a Tesla. I have driven them. I do not like the interface. I want a "regular car" that happens to be electric, not something that's trying to be a smartphone on wheels.
- tenacious_tuna 6y ago
  And that's absolutely okay! I totally get not wanting that experience, and I'm glad that we're at a point with EV development that the styles are proliferating so people have those choices. Personally I just love the disruption Tesla has caused to the "idea" of a car and its interface. I hope it'll encourage other car manufacturers to reconsider how they do their interfaces--even if they don't consolidate all their controls into the touchscreen, I hope at the very least the media systems in cars start being of higher-quality, now that people see what's possible.
- yardie 6y ago
  I tested the Model Y and this was my impression as well. Everything about the car was great but the human factor. I need my dashboard at eyelevel to the windshield, not down and to my right. I need more controls that do a few things. Not few controls that try to do too many things. They literally took decades of research in automotive human factors research and dumped it in the trash. And now they are going to have to discover those lessons all over again.
vondur 6y ago
Can you use other electric vehicles at a Tesla charging station? I'm thinking of getting as used Bolt. I'd mainly use it for driving around town and back and forth to work where they do have really cheap charging available. But it'd be nice to have more options when doing some longer trips.
- tenacious_tuna 6y ago
  Not in the US, at least. The US supercharger connectors are Tesla-proprietary. In the US, the EU forced Tesla to join the CCS standard. Notably, the CCS standard didn't exist when Tesla began rolling out their infrastructure. And I think Tesla open-sourced the patents for their DC charging in the hope that folks would standardize on their technology, but I don't know that they ever had plans to allow non-Tesla vehicles t o use their charging network. I also don't know if Europe CCS Tesla chargers can be used by non-teslas, but I would assume that's the case--otherwise, what's the point of the standardization? At any rate, I do hope to see other manufactures push for a unified charging network, explicitly so that non-Tesla EVs can experience the same luxuries as first party vehicles.
  - judge2020 6y ago
    > but I don't know that they ever had plans to allow non-Tesla vehicles t o use their charging network. In secret, probably not without sharing the cost of building out superchargers, but there have been past statements by EM saying they'd allow other manufacturers to use the network. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1340978686212800513?s=20 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1340978686212800513?s=20 (2020) https://chargedevs.com/newswire/elon-musk-tesla-is-in-talks-with-other-automakers-about-sharing-the-supercharger-network/ https://chargedevs.com/newswire/elon-musk-tesla-is-in-talks-... (2015) There also is indeed another auto-maker integrating Tesla chargers called Aptera. https://insideevs.com/news/458607/aptera-using-tesla-charging-technology/ https://insideevs.com/news/458607/aptera-using-tesla-chargin...
Reason077 6y ago
> "I don't think any other auto manufacturer will become a true competitor to Tesla until similarly extensive networks are built out by Ford, GM, etc." Given Tesla's success with the Supercharger network, it's tempting to think that this is a model that other manufacturers should follow. But in reality, it would be a hugely inefficient for every car maker to build their own charging network. Can you imagine how inconvenient it would be if Ford's gas vehicles could only be refuelled at Ford gas stations? Charging networks that are as extensive as Teslas will be built much faster if they're shared by all brands of vehicles. Manufacturers seem to understand this, and that's exactly what they're doing - investing in networks like Ionity (Europe) and EA (USA). As for ease of use, yes, Tesla sets the standard here. But other manufacturers will eventually catch up, with technology like CCS Plug & Charge.
- tenacious_tuna 6y ago
  I'm not convinced other manufacturers will catch up. As other users in the thread have noted, the frustrations of non-tesla chargers range to every extreme: needing to set up an account, and connect a credit card; stuck waiting for that credit card to authorize; the charger not communicating properly with the vehicle; not having internet connectivity to get the charger to activate--the issues are endless. I have never had an issue with a Tesla supercharger, ever, and that's the bar I expect out of third party chargers. All that said, I WHOLLY agree that it would be markedly more beneficial to all if the chargers were standardized, and you could charge (e.g.) non-Tesla vehicles on Tesla chargers. That would be maximally ideal--but I can't fault Tesla for things like their plugs being different when they had to forge the way.
  - Robotbeat 6y ago
    Yeah, the Tesla plugs are objectively better than the "standards." I own 2 non-Tesla EVs, and using a Chademo charge plug is actually kind of comical. A Tesla supercharger plug (which can handle 5 times the power the typical Chademo plug does) is basically the same size as a regular L2 plug, maybe even slightly smaller (big cable, however), and only one port is needed for both L2 and Superchargers. In an ideal world, everyone would just standardize to what Tesla uses because it's the best. The only exception would be ports that support 800V charging, but that is extremely rare, still (basically, Porsche?).
paxys 6y ago
I'm going to disagree on #3. I'd say Tesla is succeeding in spite of its interiors not because of it, and people mostly tolerate it because they like the rest of the car so much.
reilly3000 6y ago
Agreed on all fronts. They've also integrated residential solar directly into the car business in a way that was poorly understood then and still is now. Also, OTA updates. Its a terrifying concept, but going to the dealership to get your car's firmware flashed is as archaic as boxed software. As more automakers move in that direction, their attention to detail with security is going to be under a microscope. Tesla managed to capture the magic of waking up to an upgraded car, and hasn't has too many security nightmares to keep people away.

worldsayshi 6y ago

It's ridiculously wasteful to force every carmaker to build their own charging stations. Here regulators may have to step in to force them to find a standard and a charging market.

ssheth 6y ago
There is an "overarching" standard now .. CCS and a couple of older standards .. J1772 and ChaDeMo .. but when Tesla was getting started making chargers, there was no critical mass around any standards so they ended up creating their own.
- worldsayshi 6y ago
  Are they sharing that standard or putting up obstacles around it?
  - djrogers 6y ago
    https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you
- labcomputer 6y ago
  Not only was there no critical mass... CCS network didn't even exist until after Tesla had already deployed half a dozen Superchargers in California. And most of the CCS stations deployed before about 2017/2018 were the 50kW variety (in comparison to the 120kW Superchargers of the time).
- Robotbeat 6y ago
  Also, the "Tesla" standard is objectively better in nearly every way. It sucks we don't all just use that for all EVs.
Kranar 6y ago
A charging station isn't like a full blown gas station with safety critical infrastructure and operations staffing it. A charging station is mostly a parking lot space with some electronics, a cable and some signage featuring a company logo. The amount of "waste" amounts the the plastic used to display said logo and some rubber and copper. The actual electricity itself and the infrastructure used to deliver that electricity is already standardized and shared among not only all electric car companies, but everyone in the area period.
- tenacious_tuna 6y ago
  There could be waste in terms of duplicated effort. If Ford has charging stations that cover, e.g., the Rockies very well, it'd be "wasteful" to force Tesla to have to build out an identical network to cover the same region. (Where "force" is accomplished by incompatible cables, or communication changes, or some other issue.) If companies can share infrastructure, then they all will benefit from each other improving their own networks. Ford adding stations that can be used by other EVs will further improve the quality of life for all EVs.
  - Kranar 6y ago
    They do share infrastructure, the actual infrastructure needed to setup a charging station in the Rockies isn't in the signage and some fairly basic electronic components, it's in how you get the electricity to the Rockies. That will be shared by all car companies and isn't something the car companies themselves manage. That said, I think that in many cases they should share space. For example on a crowded downtown street, there should be standardized charging stations that can accommodate multiple types of cars. It would be annoying to have one parking spot for Tesla, another for GM, another for Ford. But that's not a question of waste or resourcefulness and I don't think that needs a government to step in to regulate either. Tesla's, along with pretty much all electric cars, support standardized charging as a matter of convenience to the user.
oneplane 6y ago
It's also ridiculous that some private company has to stamp out a good charging setup because nobody else will, but then has to let others use it. Granted, it would be nice if everyone would play together, but they didn't and they don't. Some heavy-handed top-down inter-organisational group with top-down design-by-committee ideas is going to be a shitshow too, so now the question becomes: what IS a good solution going to look like?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- tenpies 6y ago
  Why is it ridiculous? The government didn't set up petrol stations - they were always private everywhere on the planet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filling_station#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filling_station#History The entire EV market is already propped by governments and this has taken us to a place of extremely heavy, extremely battery-heavy, performance-oriented vehicles. That is the complete opposite of what an EV vehicle that is good for the environment would be. We should not be incentivizing this further by encouraging government to now subsidize a charging network.
- caf 6y ago
  A good solution probably looks like: Consortiums of EV-selling manufacturers form to build charging networks for that consortium's cars. Eventually cross-usage deals or mergers happen between networks of similar size and usage, until you get to the any-car any-network happy place in about 20 years.
fblp 6y ago
Suggested improvement: To be eligible for government electric car subsidies the car maker should meet certain standards for their chargers and charging stations that enable interoperability and a more competitive market.
- smileysteve 6y ago
  This timing works well as regulatory capture as Tesla has used up their us subsidies
nickik 6y ago
First of all, nobody is forcing anybody. Those manufactures that want to use a standard are free to use one. This is intact what happened, the waste majority is standardized and that mostly without regulation. Market forces are driving standardization. Tesla however is special because they have in incredibly dominate position in the market and they don't have to relay on 3rd parties creating charging stations. They can offer their costumers a premium experience and support their own growth. Eventually once charging is more universally available Tesla can simply expand to allow others to charge there and make a lot of money. Tesla has invested huge amount of money and this is their reward. Not sure why regulation needs to come in and force everybody to do things. Specially when early on a lot of things were not very clear. Also, government regulation defined API standards for payments are usually terrible.
- worldsayshi 6y ago
  > Eventually once charging is more universally available What if Tesla ends up with more or less a monopoly? > Tesla can simply expand to allow others to charge there and make a lot of money. But will they? I agree that it's fair that Tesla gets return on their investment. But if we end up with a situation where infrastructure is disjointed or where it's infeasible for anyone else to launch any competetition then Tesla have gained a market position that might be "fair" to them but unfair to everyone else.
  - znkynz 6y ago
    Can't comprehend how your sensible, rational post has been downvoted.
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    > What if Tesla ends up with more or less a monopoly? Tesla has "Open Sourced" their designs. > But will they? I don't know if Tesla will allow others to use their supercharger network, but anyone can use their designs for building a charging station for Teslas.
  - nickik 6y ago
    But this is total fantasy argument. Tesla will not have a monopoly. Why should they? Nothing is stopping other people from creating charging stations. Certainty not Tesla. > But will they? Yes, eventually it will be a financial make sense, but that is to 5-10 years away. > But if we end up with a situation where infrastructure is disjointed or where it's infeasible for anyone else to launch any competetition then Tesla have gained a market position that might be "fair" to them but unfair to everyone else. But this isn't the case. And will not be the case. So I don't get why you are making that argument.
908B64B197 6y ago
Just like when the EU tried to legislate micro-usb everywhere.
ogre_codes 6y ago
Tesla has said anyone is welcome to use their charging technology. They did this 7 years ago, before any of these other networks were built out. https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you
- paxys 6y ago
  Sharing technology itself is nowhere close to enough. The end game will have to be some kind of forced infrastructure sharing agreements.
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    > The end game will have to be some kind of forced infrastructure sharing agreements. So Tesla spend billions of their own money building out infrastructure when the competition was literally laughing at them... and now that it's paid off and EVs are starting to go mainstream we should force them to share that infra with everyone else? That's a giant bullshit sandwich right there.
    - paxys 6y ago
      Might suck for them initially, but eventually real competition in the space is good for everyone, including Tesla. Their honeymoon period isn't going to last forever. And with the amount of government subsidy they have already received, they should be the last ones complaining about regulation.
      - ogre_codes 6y ago
        > And with the amount of government subsidy they have already received, they should be the last ones complaining about regulation. You mean the same subsidies which currently give Tesla's GM-come-lately competitors a $10k pricing advantage on new car purchases? Maybe that's the solution. Every time a competing car is sold, Tesla gets the subsidy instead of the maker. Then Tesla can use it to continue building out the supercharger network which everyone benefits from. GM, Ford, VW, Toyota... these are multi-billion dollar companies, several of which have received massive subsidies from the US government themselves. Forcing Tesla to subsidize their myopic competitors as sort of perverted corporate tort in the US is crap.

zippergz 6y ago

A lot of this is obviously just personal preference, but the spaceship-like display is the exact reason (well, not the only reason, but a big and emblematic one) that I don't want a Tesla. I have driven them. I do not like the interface. I want a "regular car" that happens to be electric, not something that's trying to be a smartphone on wheels.

tenacious_tuna 6y ago
And that's absolutely okay! I totally get not wanting that experience, and I'm glad that we're at a point with EV development that the styles are proliferating so people have those choices. Personally I just love the disruption Tesla has caused to the "idea" of a car and its interface. I hope it'll encourage other car manufacturers to reconsider how they do their interfaces--even if they don't consolidate all their controls into the touchscreen, I hope at the very least the media systems in cars start being of higher-quality, now that people see what's possible.
yardie 6y ago
I tested the Model Y and this was my impression as well. Everything about the car was great but the human factor. I need my dashboard at eyelevel to the windshield, not down and to my right. I need more controls that do a few things. Not few controls that try to do too many things. They literally took decades of research in automotive human factors research and dumped it in the trash. And now they are going to have to discover those lessons all over again.

vondur 6y ago

Can you use other electric vehicles at a Tesla charging station? I'm thinking of getting as used Bolt. I'd mainly use it for driving around town and back and forth to work where they do have really cheap charging available. But it'd be nice to have more options when doing some longer trips.

tenacious_tuna 6y ago
Not in the US, at least. The US supercharger connectors are Tesla-proprietary. In the US, the EU forced Tesla to join the CCS standard. Notably, the CCS standard didn't exist when Tesla began rolling out their infrastructure. And I think Tesla open-sourced the patents for their DC charging in the hope that folks would standardize on their technology, but I don't know that they ever had plans to allow non-Tesla vehicles t o use their charging network. I also don't know if Europe CCS Tesla chargers can be used by non-teslas, but I would assume that's the case--otherwise, what's the point of the standardization? At any rate, I do hope to see other manufactures push for a unified charging network, explicitly so that non-Tesla EVs can experience the same luxuries as first party vehicles.
- judge2020 6y ago
  > but I don't know that they ever had plans to allow non-Tesla vehicles t o use their charging network. In secret, probably not without sharing the cost of building out superchargers, but there have been past statements by EM saying they'd allow other manufacturers to use the network. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1340978686212800513?s=20 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1340978686212800513?s=20 (2020) https://chargedevs.com/newswire/elon-musk-tesla-is-in-talks-with-other-automakers-about-sharing-the-supercharger-network/ https://chargedevs.com/newswire/elon-musk-tesla-is-in-talks-... (2015) There also is indeed another auto-maker integrating Tesla chargers called Aptera. https://insideevs.com/news/458607/aptera-using-tesla-charging-technology/ https://insideevs.com/news/458607/aptera-using-tesla-chargin...

Reason077 6y ago

> "I don't think any other auto manufacturer will become a true competitor to Tesla until similarly extensive networks are built out by Ford, GM, etc." Given Tesla's success with the Supercharger network, it's tempting to think that this is a model that other manufacturers should follow. But in reality, it would be a hugely inefficient for every car maker to build their own charging network. Can you imagine how inconvenient it would be if Ford's gas vehicles could only be refuelled at Ford gas stations? Charging networks that are as extensive as Teslas will be built much faster if they're shared by all brands of vehicles. Manufacturers seem to understand this, and that's exactly what they're doing - investing in networks like Ionity (Europe) and EA (USA). As for ease of use, yes, Tesla sets the standard here. But other manufacturers will eventually catch up, with technology like CCS Plug & Charge.

tenacious_tuna 6y ago
I'm not convinced other manufacturers will catch up. As other users in the thread have noted, the frustrations of non-tesla chargers range to every extreme: needing to set up an account, and connect a credit card; stuck waiting for that credit card to authorize; the charger not communicating properly with the vehicle; not having internet connectivity to get the charger to activate--the issues are endless. I have never had an issue with a Tesla supercharger, ever, and that's the bar I expect out of third party chargers. All that said, I WHOLLY agree that it would be markedly more beneficial to all if the chargers were standardized, and you could charge (e.g.) non-Tesla vehicles on Tesla chargers. That would be maximally ideal--but I can't fault Tesla for things like their plugs being different when they had to forge the way.
- Robotbeat 6y ago
  Yeah, the Tesla plugs are objectively better than the "standards." I own 2 non-Tesla EVs, and using a Chademo charge plug is actually kind of comical. A Tesla supercharger plug (which can handle 5 times the power the typical Chademo plug does) is basically the same size as a regular L2 plug, maybe even slightly smaller (big cable, however), and only one port is needed for both L2 and Superchargers. In an ideal world, everyone would just standardize to what Tesla uses because it's the best. The only exception would be ports that support 800V charging, but that is extremely rare, still (basically, Porsche?).

paxys 6y ago

I'm going to disagree on #3. I'd say Tesla is succeeding in spite of its interiors not because of it, and people mostly tolerate it because they like the rest of the car so much.

reilly3000 6y ago

Agreed on all fronts. They've also integrated residential solar directly into the car business in a way that was poorly understood then and still is now. Also, OTA updates. Its a terrifying concept, but going to the dealership to get your car's firmware flashed is as archaic as boxed software. As more automakers move in that direction, their attention to detail with security is going to be under a microscope. Tesla managed to capture the magic of waking up to an upgraded car, and hasn't has too many security nightmares to keep people away.