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Tesla’s Magic Has Been Reduced to Its Chargers
- linusg789 3y agohttps://ghostarchive.org/archive/YZpcW https://ghostarchive.org/archive/YZpcW
- linusg789 3y agoIn a gold rush, sell the tools. Looks like Musk is priming himself to do similar with electric car charging.....
- CyrsBel 3y agoThis is what their stated mission has been - to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. They’ve been selling cars for a long time already.
- cramjabsyn 3y agoIf that were truly the case they’d have started with plug-in hybrids.
- Turskarama 3y agoThe one bit of credit I will give Tesla is proving to the large manufacturers that pure EVs can have mass market appeal. I think for the stated goal, skipping right past hybrids was a great idea.
- AtlasBarfed 3y agoI strongly disagree that skipping hybrids was a great idea. IMO a 40-50 mile PHEV would have effectively electrified 60-80% of car trips by 2020 if the US had mandated their use in all cars back in 2002 (about 5 years after the Prius and Insight were introduced). I think carbon emissions could have been greatly reduced by 2015 with good foresight. Of course we're talking the Bush Administration in 2005, so that wasn't happening, and Obama didn't have the political firepower either. Really within a year of the viability of the Prius Congress should have passed CAFE laws that basically forced hybrids in every consumer car segment as soon as possible, and then followed up 5 years later with a PHEV requirement, and then 5 years later with a 40 mile all electric requirement. Why is that such an amazing idea? Simple, it maximizes the impact of the battery manufacturing supply. Instead of a Tesla Model S with a 350 mile range toting around 85% of its batteries daily for no reason, all of those batteries would have gone to actual daily use. But now the industry is not going to do that, everyone is replatforming or replatformed for pure EVs.
- Turskarama 3y agoSure, the government should have done a lot of things. But we weren't talking about government, we were talking about Tesla. I don't think Tesla releasing a plugin hybrid instead of the Model S would have led to everyone having a hybrid today, much in the same way everyone doesn't have a BEV today. I think ironically PHEVs (or more realistically, range extended BEVs) will actually gain popularity as the proportion of people with BEVs begins to cross the 50% threshold. For them to really make sense to sell there needs to be a big enough market that making the low power engines required becomes dirt cheap per unit. As it stands the difference in cost between a pure BEV and a PHEV is so low that paying that little bit more for the BEV makes sense basically every time.
- jfengel 3y agoThe problem for PHEVs is that as BEVs cross 50%, there will be more electric vehicle infrastructure, and the hybrid becomes moot. Either you have access to cheap (overnight, at-home) charging, or you don't. The hybrid extends the range of batteries, but the use case is small and becomes smaller. The vast majority of people will plug in overnight. Very long trips use quick chargers. The hybrid case is reduced to places where you don't think you can plug in (which will be few when BEVs become the majority). There are corner cases: "Yes, I like to haul my enormous boat to the lake hundreds of miles every single week and so the quick chargers still require hours". But in the end I think that such corner cases will be reduced to "Fine, go buy an old ICE car, and plan your trip around the diminishing number of gas stations".
- AtlasBarfed 3y agoYeah, which is why now the play is full EV. But 10-15 years ago there is a generation or two of ICE still to go. Making all those PHEVs would have been a massive improvement to emissions.
- ChatGTP 3y agoMaybe trains?
- aerio 3y agoMusk hates trains. https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-awkward-dislike-mass-transit/ https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-awkward-dislike-mass-t... Both hyperloop and underground tesla tunnels were both just a means to an end to stop California/US from focusing more on trains/public transport.
- signatoremo 3y agoBecause they considered anything short of pure electric was net negative emission wise: [0] The CO2 content of any given source fuel is well understood. Natural gas is 14.4 grams of carbon per mega-joule and oil is 19.9 grams of carbon per mega-joule. Applying those carbon content levels to the vehicle efficiencies, including as a reference the Honda combusted natural gas and Honda fuel cell natural gas vehicles, the hands down winner is pure electric [0] - https://www.tesla.com/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-plan-just-between-you-and-me https://www.tesla.com/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-plan-j...
- cramjabsyn 3y agoAnd? A plug-in hybrid runs from electric the vast majority of the time.
- CyrsBel 3y agoThey succeeded, I'm not about to argue with Elon Musk's business muscle or American tech muscle lol. You can if you wanna! But he succeeded in a way that Chevy failed when they had a huge head start with the ev1. With less money. That's amazing and maybe plug-in hybrids matter or maybe they don't. He kept stating even in really early interviews what the goal is and they made it - massive charging network and now everyone will have standard connectors to it. And most of it is solar powered. Come on man.
- adgjlsfhk1 3y agobad take. hybrids make a lot of sense but they are way harder for a new company to design.
- spikels 3y agoReminds me of AWS. Take a key component your business, open it up to outsiders, and turn it into a profit center. Tesla has clearly been working towards this for years.
- clouddrover 3y ago> CCS is all but done ... The EV revolution has never hinged more on Tesla than right now. No. What all of the reporting around this misses is that it will be the CCS protocol. The chargers will be CCS chargers with Tesla's plug. CharIN will probably standardize the Tesla plug eventually. Europe had the right idea by setting a common plug standard. North America is going to live with its silly multi-plug situation for years yet.
- throwawaymobule 3y agoI too watched the video by Alec of technologyconnections. I actually looked it up after that, and the EU rules on it are that it needs at least a CCS2 connector to be called a car charger. You can still add addition standards. useful for anyone still driving an old Nissan leaf around. (I've seen chademo connectors on charge points myself)
- clouddrover 3y ago> I too watched the video by Alec of technologyconnections. I didn't watch a video by Alec of technologyconnections. > and the EU rules on it are that it needs at least a CCS2 connector Yes. All brands of charger charging all brands of EV is sensible infrastructure. Europe's done it correctly, North America is still behind.
- mlwiese 3y agoExcept pretty much everyone thinks the CCS2 connector sucks compared to the Tesla connector. The EU ought to mandate the Tesla connector instead. We're still in early days, no need to worry about the tiny number of cars that have already shipped.
- clouddrover 3y ago> Except pretty much everyone thinks the CCS2 connector sucks They don't, it doesn't, it works, and it's deployed internationally on all cars and chargers. No point making up a false narrative.
- worrycue 3y agoHmmm, I wonder when power companies will make a move. Why go through a middleman like Tesla when you can get all the profit?
- maximus-decimus 3y agoThe same day oil companies will go through the middle man and own the gas stations?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- yumraj 3y agoThere’s a subtle difference. Oil companies are not involved in direct last mile delivery. Electricity providers are already doing that.
- maximus-decimus 3y agoThat's a good point. But that means they do already sell people the electricity for their ev if they charge at home, which is probably most of the ev charging. So the question is would they bother invest in building charging stations to get the whole market.
- yumraj 3y ago> So the question is would they bother invest in building charging stations to get the whole market. I think that would depend on how the market evolves. Currently I believe they are content, as you say, just delivering to the homes and business (offices which provide charging to employees). If this market starts leaning towards solar and the charging station market becomes huge, I think it’d be trivial for these utilities to set up last mile charging stations, or perhaps create a subsidiary to do just that.
- HWR_14 3y agoThe oil companies certainly do own the gas stations. Do you think BP, Shell, Exxon, Mobile, Phillips 66,, Marathon and Chevron are named after giant oil companies for no reason?
- ploden 3y agoMcDonald's or Starbucks will eventually add EV charging to stores nationwide. It'll draw customers, and chargers are so much easier and cheaper than gas pumps.
- dirkt 3y agoSupermarkets are already doing that in Europe.