6 ms·

The US Is Real Close to Screwing Up Electric Vehicle Charging Forever

28 points by harambae 6y ago

nobodyandproud 6y ago
Need a standards body and/or need the Federal government to step in. No other way. Edit: Who will be the Betamax/HD DVD?
- maxerickson 6y ago
  CCS is from a standards body. The thing that isn't standard is turning on the juice.
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  As the article points out, according to Europe the Tesla proprietary charger is already the Betamax/HD-DVD. It's going to stick around for a lot longer in America because America doesn't have the guts to force the same requirement that Tesla follow the CCS standards like everyone else (because 4 out of 5 EV cars in America right now are Teslas and they can Apple their way past standards right now). The biggest fight right now is that all the networks of chargers are still so focused on being "Owner's Clubs" or "Private Clubs". "You can't charge here, we're Tesla Owners Only"; "You can't charge here, we're Rivian Owners Only"; "You can charge here if you signup for our newsletter, sacrifice at least one goat a month in the name of Xuul, and pay $15/month dues whether you charge here or not"; etc. There was some of all that in early gas stations, but today you just expect them to all have a credit card reader and not need to jump through a bunch of hoops and join a membership club just to gas. It's probably going to take some competitive fights (and seems unlikely the Federal government is willing to step in) to fix that.
unethical_ban 6y ago
There should be a standard port and process for charging vehicles required, and companies can make additional, proprietary ports and charging capabilities in parallel if they want. It is a great benefit to society that our transport recharging (gas dispensers) are standard in design, so that any company can operate a dispenser of any vendor into a car of any design. The same should exist for EV - but if the "least common denominator" becomes obsolete, allow vendors to provide a secondary (or tertiary) mechanism to charge. Yes, this increases initial production cost. Yes, it is worth it for the benefits gained to open infrastructure.
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  From the opposite perspective, there shouldn't be so much "innovation" in plug design. We've known the basics of plug design for more than a century: you need a positive wire, a negative wire, a ground, and you need to agree on AC versus DC and current/frequency. Why do we need all of these additional "proprietary ports" and "charging capabilities"? We can pretty much stop at CCS for all that it currently matters. CCS supports a software protocol for negotiating AC/DC/current/frequency and a wider variety of options than are currently practical in most states. CCS is like a super-over-designed-by-committee USB-B+. (It's not quite USB-C because it is definitely not symmetrical and insertable in any orientation; it's backwards compatibility with "USB-A" level two ports alone insures that.) CCS supports "Plug and Charge" as a protocol handshake, and that's really indicative of the actual fight happening in "plug" designs for cars and the proprietary network: Apple Pay (Tesla Supercharger and what CCS could be if networks support it) versus your Old Fashioned Credit Card Swipe machine. Everyone is fighting to get more of those Credit Card fees and letting the ideal (plug in and the car knows how to bill everything) get in the way of the practical (credit card swipes have mostly worked for gas pumps for decades). It's a very dumb fight that is getting in the way of practical adoption.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    You want the car to authenticate itself. Instead of installing dozens of different apps on your smartphone you want to just plug the charger into the car and then just confirm whether you agree to the fees or not. The owners of the charger just want to get paid so the payment can be done through a dedicated payment provider like Apple Pay, Visa, whose app you install. It's not any meaningfully different than a gas station. Nobody cares, you pay by cash, credit card or apple pay and get on with your life.
    - WorldMaker 6y ago
      Yes, that's the ideal, the practical issue in the fight is still the "gatekeeping" behind "plug and charge" and who can do that, instead of just being "anyone with a valid credit card".
maxerickson 6y ago
The headline boils down to things either getting better or getting worse, so good job. The amount of money invested in chargers so far is small enough to not worry about it, and there aren't really any incentives to make it a pain in the ass, so it's reasonable to expect it to improve over the medium term.
p1mrx 6y ago
As seen on Black Mirror: https://www.reddit.com/r/TVDetails/comments/8es811/in_the_black_mirror_episode_nosedive_s3e1_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TVDetails/comments/8es811/in_the_bl...
Zanni 6y ago
I think Tesla has missed a bet in not trying harder to get other EV manufacturers onto their charging network. The Tesla charge connector is vastly superior to the CCS or ChaDeMo in size, weight and convenience, but at this point it's likely to be displaced by an enforced standard in a few years (as it already has been in Europe).
- neolog 6y ago
  Apple seems to have done ok
- Tagbert 6y ago
  In the EU, Tesla already lost this argument and is using CCS. https://electricrevs.com/2018/11/14/tesla-flips-to-ccs-in-europe-what-does-it-mean/ https://electricrevs.com/2018/11/14/tesla-flips-to-ccs-in-eu...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
felixhuttmann 6y ago
It is a software integration problem. Think Oauth. Your car is made by one company, the charging stations by another. The progress becomes very slow.
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  It's a "who gets a bigger slice of the credit card fees" problem. All of these networks are way over-complicating the negotiation dance of "walk to a machine and slide a credit card". Yes, "plug and charge" is a great idea, a car can be a great physical NFC token for itself/its owner's credit card, but it's a "nice to have". It's amazing the slow progress of getting at least the "slide a card" fallback working despite, say, decades of gas pumps doing exactly that. (Again yes, a less desirable "ideal", but a practical solution for yesterday.)
Nekhrimah 6y ago
Stated several times in the article are variants of [Tesla doesn't let non Teslas use the Supercharger network]. From memory, Elon has made it clear repeatedly that non Tesla vehicles would be allowed to use Superchargers, as long as appropriate costs were contributed. Clearly any arrangement making this happen can only really occur at the manufacturer level. In fact, it appears that this has already happened for one smaller manufacturer [0]. So, while it may be likely that regulation is necessary to ensure that a fragmented charging landscape doesn't permanently settle into the US market, "only Tesla's can use Supercharges" is provably false. [0] https://www.electrive.com/2020/12/22/tesla-superchargers-already-open-to-other-electric-cars/ https://www.electrive.com/2020/12/22/tesla-superchargers-alr...
- X-Cubed 6y ago
  Why should the vehicle manufacturer need to be involved? As someone who owns an EV, why shouldn't I be able to create a Tesla account, link my credit card to it, and use the superchargers to charge my non-Tesla vehicle? The charging networks that aren't owned by vehicle manufacturers follow this model, it seems weird that Tesla isn't willing to do the same.
  - WorldMaker 6y ago
    Worse, why would you need to create a Tesla account and "link a credit card to it" in the first place? The article doesn't make the point strong enough: but the charging networks are currently all so focused on "accounts" and "memberships", when they could just as easily add an NFC panel and accept Apple Pay/Visa Pay/Samsung Pay/whatever Google Pay is called this year, or even just old fashioned card swipes or new-ish fashioned EMV chip inserts. Tesla isn't the only one guilty of this "accounts and memberships on networks" mentality, it seems to be infecting all of the American networks right now. (Why are we over-complicating all of this so very hard?)
    - natch 6y ago
      >Why are we over-complicating all of this so very hard? What is complicated about this? 1) open charge port 2) plug in cable 3) walk away Your system with NFC and swiping and scanning cards and chips sounds more complicated to me. I even had to add "open charge port" and "walk away" in order to come up with 3 steps here… how much less complicated could it be?
thatfrenchguy 6y ago
Plug & Charge works and seems to be available in all new cars, why so much worry? Older cars can use whatever the charging station's app is, and it works fine? ElectrifyAmerica basically just works today.
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  The article starts by pointing out that Rivian has chosen to focus on their own network locked to just their own vehicles rather than backing a wider play like Electrify America. The concern is that because it is working for Tesla to have their own proprietary network, we'll see more incompatible networks proliferate rather than fewer more general efforts like Electrify America.
  - thatfrenchguy 6y ago
    Given Rivian uses CCS1, the federal (or a state) government can mandate pretty easily that they support all cars tomorrow after the fact. That's a bit more tricky for Tesla.

28 points by harambae 6y ago

Need a standards body and/or need the Federal government to step in. No other way. Edit: Who will be the Betamax/HD DVD?

maxerickson 6y ago
CCS is from a standards body. The thing that isn't standard is turning on the juice.
WorldMaker 6y ago
As the article points out, according to Europe the Tesla proprietary charger is already the Betamax/HD-DVD. It's going to stick around for a lot longer in America because America doesn't have the guts to force the same requirement that Tesla follow the CCS standards like everyone else (because 4 out of 5 EV cars in America right now are Teslas and they can Apple their way past standards right now). The biggest fight right now is that all the networks of chargers are still so focused on being "Owner's Clubs" or "Private Clubs". "You can't charge here, we're Tesla Owners Only"; "You can't charge here, we're Rivian Owners Only"; "You can charge here if you signup for our newsletter, sacrifice at least one goat a month in the name of Xuul, and pay $15/month dues whether you charge here or not"; etc. There was some of all that in early gas stations, but today you just expect them to all have a credit card reader and not need to jump through a bunch of hoops and join a membership club just to gas. It's probably going to take some competitive fights (and seems unlikely the Federal government is willing to step in) to fix that.

unethical_ban 6y ago

There should be a standard port and process for charging vehicles required, and companies can make additional, proprietary ports and charging capabilities in parallel if they want. It is a great benefit to society that our transport recharging (gas dispensers) are standard in design, so that any company can operate a dispenser of any vendor into a car of any design. The same should exist for EV - but if the "least common denominator" becomes obsolete, allow vendors to provide a secondary (or tertiary) mechanism to charge. Yes, this increases initial production cost. Yes, it is worth it for the benefits gained to open infrastructure.

WorldMaker 6y ago
From the opposite perspective, there shouldn't be so much "innovation" in plug design. We've known the basics of plug design for more than a century: you need a positive wire, a negative wire, a ground, and you need to agree on AC versus DC and current/frequency. Why do we need all of these additional "proprietary ports" and "charging capabilities"? We can pretty much stop at CCS for all that it currently matters. CCS supports a software protocol for negotiating AC/DC/current/frequency and a wider variety of options than are currently practical in most states. CCS is like a super-over-designed-by-committee USB-B+. (It's not quite USB-C because it is definitely not symmetrical and insertable in any orientation; it's backwards compatibility with "USB-A" level two ports alone insures that.) CCS supports "Plug and Charge" as a protocol handshake, and that's really indicative of the actual fight happening in "plug" designs for cars and the proprietary network: Apple Pay (Tesla Supercharger and what CCS could be if networks support it) versus your Old Fashioned Credit Card Swipe machine. Everyone is fighting to get more of those Credit Card fees and letting the ideal (plug in and the car knows how to bill everything) get in the way of the practical (credit card swipes have mostly worked for gas pumps for decades). It's a very dumb fight that is getting in the way of practical adoption.
- imtringued 6y ago
  You want the car to authenticate itself. Instead of installing dozens of different apps on your smartphone you want to just plug the charger into the car and then just confirm whether you agree to the fees or not. The owners of the charger just want to get paid so the payment can be done through a dedicated payment provider like Apple Pay, Visa, whose app you install. It's not any meaningfully different than a gas station. Nobody cares, you pay by cash, credit card or apple pay and get on with your life.
  - WorldMaker 6y ago
    Yes, that's the ideal, the practical issue in the fight is still the "gatekeeping" behind "plug and charge" and who can do that, instead of just being "anyone with a valid credit card".

maxerickson 6y ago

The headline boils down to things either getting better or getting worse, so good job. The amount of money invested in chargers so far is small enough to not worry about it, and there aren't really any incentives to make it a pain in the ass, so it's reasonable to expect it to improve over the medium term.

p1mrx 6y ago

As seen on Black Mirror: https://www.reddit.com/r/TVDetails/comments/8es811/in_the_black_mirror_episode_nosedive_s3e1_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TVDetails/comments/8es811/in_the_bl...

Zanni 6y ago

I think Tesla has missed a bet in not trying harder to get other EV manufacturers onto their charging network. The Tesla charge connector is vastly superior to the CCS or ChaDeMo in size, weight and convenience, but at this point it's likely to be displaced by an enforced standard in a few years (as it already has been in Europe).

neolog 6y ago
Apple seems to have done ok
Tagbert 6y ago
In the EU, Tesla already lost this argument and is using CCS. https://electricrevs.com/2018/11/14/tesla-flips-to-ccs-in-europe-what-does-it-mean/ https://electricrevs.com/2018/11/14/tesla-flips-to-ccs-in-eu...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

felixhuttmann 6y ago

It is a software integration problem. Think Oauth. Your car is made by one company, the charging stations by another. The progress becomes very slow.

WorldMaker 6y ago
It's a "who gets a bigger slice of the credit card fees" problem. All of these networks are way over-complicating the negotiation dance of "walk to a machine and slide a credit card". Yes, "plug and charge" is a great idea, a car can be a great physical NFC token for itself/its owner's credit card, but it's a "nice to have". It's amazing the slow progress of getting at least the "slide a card" fallback working despite, say, decades of gas pumps doing exactly that. (Again yes, a less desirable "ideal", but a practical solution for yesterday.)

Nekhrimah 6y ago

Stated several times in the article are variants of [Tesla doesn't let non Teslas use the Supercharger network]. From memory, Elon has made it clear repeatedly that non Tesla vehicles would be allowed to use Superchargers, as long as appropriate costs were contributed. Clearly any arrangement making this happen can only really occur at the manufacturer level. In fact, it appears that this has already happened for one smaller manufacturer [0]. So, while it may be likely that regulation is necessary to ensure that a fragmented charging landscape doesn't permanently settle into the US market, "only Tesla's can use Supercharges" is provably false. [0] https://www.electrive.com/2020/12/22/tesla-superchargers-already-open-to-other-electric-cars/ https://www.electrive.com/2020/12/22/tesla-superchargers-alr...

X-Cubed 6y ago
Why should the vehicle manufacturer need to be involved? As someone who owns an EV, why shouldn't I be able to create a Tesla account, link my credit card to it, and use the superchargers to charge my non-Tesla vehicle? The charging networks that aren't owned by vehicle manufacturers follow this model, it seems weird that Tesla isn't willing to do the same.
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  Worse, why would you need to create a Tesla account and "link a credit card to it" in the first place? The article doesn't make the point strong enough: but the charging networks are currently all so focused on "accounts" and "memberships", when they could just as easily add an NFC panel and accept Apple Pay/Visa Pay/Samsung Pay/whatever Google Pay is called this year, or even just old fashioned card swipes or new-ish fashioned EMV chip inserts. Tesla isn't the only one guilty of this "accounts and memberships on networks" mentality, it seems to be infecting all of the American networks right now. (Why are we over-complicating all of this so very hard?)
  - natch 6y ago
    >Why are we over-complicating all of this so very hard? What is complicated about this? 1) open charge port 2) plug in cable 3) walk away Your system with NFC and swiping and scanning cards and chips sounds more complicated to me. I even had to add "open charge port" and "walk away" in order to come up with 3 steps here… how much less complicated could it be?

thatfrenchguy 6y ago

Plug & Charge works and seems to be available in all new cars, why so much worry? Older cars can use whatever the charging station's app is, and it works fine? ElectrifyAmerica basically just works today.

WorldMaker 6y ago
The article starts by pointing out that Rivian has chosen to focus on their own network locked to just their own vehicles rather than backing a wider play like Electrify America. The concern is that because it is working for Tesla to have their own proprietary network, we'll see more incompatible networks proliferate rather than fewer more general efforts like Electrify America.
- thatfrenchguy 6y ago
  Given Rivian uses CCS1, the federal (or a state) government can mandate pretty easily that they support all cars tomorrow after the fact. That's a bit more tricky for Tesla.