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In this case it's the government mandating the weaker one, through the lobbying of competitors trying to wreck the market leader. It's the _way_ that this happe

In this case it's the government mandating the weaker one, through the lobbying of competitors trying to wreck the market leader. It's the _way_ that this happened that puts such a sour taste in my mouth personally.

matthewdgreen 4y ago
Tesla had several years to open-source the NACS standard if they wanted to: that is, really open source it without attaching patent grant conditions. Instead they waited to do so until the very late date of November 2022 [1], which is many years after both Europe and the US settled on CCS1/2. The CCS standardization has been ongoing for over a decade. Even so: if Tesla had fully opened NACS even as late as five years ago there's some chance it could have become the dominant standard in North America. Tesla waiting until late 2022 to submit NACS as a standard isn't consistent with being "wrecked by competitors": it's more like a harmful troll. Now NACS is either going to be another dead legacy standard or (worse) North America will end up with two incompatible zombie standards for a long time, and many people (including Tesla owners like myself) will have to use annoying and unsafe adapters. [1] https://www.tesla.com/blog/opening-north-american-charging-standard https://www.tesla.com/blog/opening-north-american-charging-s...
- mlindner 4y ago
  Tesla submitted their charging standard as the standard for CCS. It was refused.
  - matthewdgreen 4y ago
    Do you have a citation for this that gives the details and exact reasons for the refusal? I’ve searched pretty extensively and found nothing. I love my Tesla but I’ve learned to check primary sources when it comes to any claim made by Tesla or Elon Musk.
  - vel0city 4y ago
    They've continued to push their patent pledge. If you want to use "NACS", you've got to turn over all your IP. This was true years ago, its true today. While they published some schematics on their website for the connector, there's still patents and other proprietary bits to actually communicate and get the charging infrastructure to work. Without that associated IP, the schematics are effectively useless. This isn't a huge deal for a company like Aptera, they're probably going to use a good bit of Tesla's IP in other situations for their EV and don't have large teams constantly cranking out IP. But companies like Ford, VW, Stallantis, etc., they've got like a combined billion dollars worth of IP they'd be turning over to all their competitors. A big win for Tesla and smaller companies like Aptera, but not necessarily a big win for the legacy companies to essentially write down all that IP value. If they had just asked for normal kind of licensing, I imagine there probably could have been more support for the connector years ago. But they put it behind the patent pledge to try and eliminate intellectual property rights in the automotive industry assuming it would be a juicy enough carrot for everyone to chase. Turns out, it wasn't.

matthewdgreen 4y ago

Tesla had several years to open-source the NACS standard if they wanted to: that is, really open source it without attaching patent grant conditions. Instead they waited to do so until the very late date of November 2022 [1], which is many years after both Europe and the US settled on CCS1/2. The CCS standardization has been ongoing for over a decade. Even so: if Tesla had fully opened NACS even as late as five years ago there's some chance it could have become the dominant standard in North America. Tesla waiting until late 2022 to submit NACS as a standard isn't consistent with being "wrecked by competitors": it's more like a harmful troll. Now NACS is either going to be another dead legacy standard or (worse) North America will end up with two incompatible zombie standards for a long time, and many people (including Tesla owners like myself) will have to use annoying and unsafe adapters. [1] https://www.tesla.com/blog/opening-north-american-charging-standard https://www.tesla.com/blog/opening-north-american-charging-s...

mlindner 4y ago
Tesla submitted their charging standard as the standard for CCS. It was refused.
- matthewdgreen 4y ago
  Do you have a citation for this that gives the details and exact reasons for the refusal? I’ve searched pretty extensively and found nothing. I love my Tesla but I’ve learned to check primary sources when it comes to any claim made by Tesla or Elon Musk.
- vel0city 4y ago
  They've continued to push their patent pledge. If you want to use "NACS", you've got to turn over all your IP. This was true years ago, its true today. While they published some schematics on their website for the connector, there's still patents and other proprietary bits to actually communicate and get the charging infrastructure to work. Without that associated IP, the schematics are effectively useless. This isn't a huge deal for a company like Aptera, they're probably going to use a good bit of Tesla's IP in other situations for their EV and don't have large teams constantly cranking out IP. But companies like Ford, VW, Stallantis, etc., they've got like a combined billion dollars worth of IP they'd be turning over to all their competitors. A big win for Tesla and smaller companies like Aptera, but not necessarily a big win for the legacy companies to essentially write down all that IP value. If they had just asked for normal kind of licensing, I imagine there probably could have been more support for the connector years ago. But they put it behind the patent pledge to try and eliminate intellectual property rights in the automotive industry assuming it would be a juicy enough carrot for everyone to chase. Turns out, it wasn't.