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Rivian embraces Tesla's charging standard for EVs

377 points by belltaco 3y ago

1970-01-01 3y ago
Excellent news! Domino effect in progress?
genericone 3y ago
Tesla owns the electric gas station! for now... Now that unity is achieved in the US, I think we're about to see an explosion in charging stations and designs of various charging hubs (drive-in movies's revival?) as Tesla won't be allowed to own the network 100% come soon.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Who else is going to invest in a fast DC network? The closest competitor was Electrify America, and they can't make the economics work. Tesla made it work by subsidizing their $1B+ global fast DC charging network cost out of robust vehicle margins. Most EV users will charge at home, some at their place of work and businesses, with fast DC charging filling the remaining gap (people who can't charge at home or people on road trips/high utilization driving patterns). https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2022/10/26/electrify-america-chargers-are-rarely-usedwhats-up-with-non-tesla-fast-charging/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2022/10/26/electr...
  - thatfrenchguy 3y ago
    Funnily enough, EA has the opposite problem in California: they’re frequently full.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - ZacharyPitts 3y ago
      Same in Oregon. I've had to wait multiple times for a slot to come available while traveling.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    There are many brands of DCFC around me. EA obviously, EVGo, blink, 7Eleven, Road Ranger, Francis, and Volta. There's a few other travel centers on the routes I take which have their own branded chargers as well The earlier non-Tesla charging stations definitely had a rough start as there was practically zero market at all for them. The economics will change as more EVs are on the road. I do agree most early EV owners are going to be those with easy charging at home, but people without home charging may eventually want EVs as well. Public charging station use will probably increase a good bit over the next few years.
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      Those are brands, not networks. No one is going to road trip if they can't trust they can roll into a station at 10% state of charge and charge in 20 minutes off hours. The network uptime is the selling point of Tesla Superchargers. You will never be left stranded. Install the PlugShare app or check out their website and see what comments users leave about reliability with regards to your local stations. https://insideevs.com/news/664737/tesla-superchargers-average-uptime-2022/ https://insideevs.com/news/664737/tesla-superchargers-averag... (Tesla Says That Supercharger Average Uptime Is Near Perfect *100%) https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-supercharger-reliability-dominates-industry/ https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-supercharger-reliability-dom... (Tesla Supercharger reliability continues to dominate industry) https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1136861_tesla-supercharger-network-ranks-highest-in-customer-satisfaction-finds-j-d-power https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1136861_tesla-superchar... (The Tesla Supercharger network was the first comprehensive DC fast-charging network in the United States, and it remains the best in terms of customer satisfaction, according to a new J.D. Power study.)
      - vel0city 3y ago
        > Those are brands, not networks I don't care about "networks". I don't choose Exxon or Shell or whoever because they have the most gas stations, I go to the one that's most convenient for me. I'm not beholden to any particular "brand" or "network" of charger, I just want one close that works. I'm no particular brand fanboy, I'll use whatever works and is convenient. > Install the PlugShare app or check out their website and see what comments users attempting to charge look like. I use the PlugShare app a good bit. All the chargers I referenced are 9.5+, with most of them having 10 ratings. I also have my own personal experiences at those chargers. In all of my public charging sessions I've never once failed to charge at a decent rate at a DCFC. And I'm one who has driving around the city testing out chargers because I've been interested in the tech. I have experienced some of those free L2 chargers at grocery store parking lots being offline, but even then most of the time those have worked flawlessly. And I don't bother with specific apps for charging "networks", all my DCFC has either been plug and charge or phone NFC/EMV payment terminals. I don't personally put a lot of weight on Twitter polls to give me an accurate picture of reality, and if JD Power tells me something I'm likely to think the opposite is true. Most of JD Power's statements are meaningless noise to me. I don't doubt Tesla's chargers have more uptime on average. There's a lot of things they do better historically, like having lower lifetime rated cables they change out more often and they're faster to roll out to places with issues to repair. But its not inherently a Tesla thing, the other chargers can do it and it seems in the past year a number of companies have stepped up their maintenance and reliability considerably. I'm going by the data I can see around me and what I see on PlugShare around me, which shows the non-Tesla chargers near me and on the routes I want to take are generally pretty reliable.
  - enragedcacti 3y ago
    > Tesla made it work by subsidizing their $1B+ global fast DC charging network cost out of robust vehicle margins. VW is doing the same with EA (although with more vehicles and lower margins). I don't know the specifics and I'm sure they would love for every stall to be full but I wouldn't be surprised if they had no expectation of making a profit at this point or even in the next five years. Honestly I think they have some limited upside here which is that if they can fix the quality of their service and add NACS cables then they can compete on price or location with superchargers for NACS owners' business. My guess is that the stalls are empty because few who seriously need to travel long distances would buy a non-supercharger compatible EV specifically because the EA experience sucks. If they fix their UX then they can immediately begin tapping into the NACS market instead of waiting for CCS cars to slowly trickle into the roadtripping segment of the market.
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      VW was required to fund Electrify America ($2B) as part of their Diselgate settlement with the US goverment, and they were prohibited from branding them as VW as part of the deal (hence the EA brand). EA has tried to get additional funding with not so great results. Might be able to salvage the network if they add or swap out for NACS plugs (opening up to the mass market EVs), but if they can't make the unit economics work and increase utilization, those EA stations are going to end up abandoned with the enterprise shuttering. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/10/vws-2-billion-penalty-for-diesel-scam-builds-ev-charging-network-across-us.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/10/vws-2-billion-penalty-for-di... https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/electrify-america https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/electrify-america
      - KennyBlanken 3y ago
        And this is why EA is such a shitshow. VW was required to spend the money. They weren't required to make it a good charging system. So: poor maintenance, buggy software, and overall an experience that makes everyone who tries to use one hate it.
  - itsoktocry 3y ago
    >The closest competitor was Electrify America, and they can't make the economics work. Tesla made it work by subsidizing their $1B+ global fast DC charging network cost out of robust vehicle margins. The economics are going to have to change. Right now, dollar-for-dollar, electricity for your vehicle is cheaper than gasoline. I'm confident that will not be the case in the near future; the charging infrastructure has to be built and maintained, and the government will want their tax money (in Canada, a significant proportion of gas prices are taxes).
    - Rebelgecko 3y ago
      >Right now, dollar-for-dollar, electricity for your vehicle is cheaper than gasoline When I did the math on this, that wasn't necessarily the case in my area, it depended on the situation. $0.40/kWh comes out to around 7 miles per dollar, depending on your vehicle and how you drive it (eg on a road trip going 80mph you'd probably get less than 7, chill city driving with no passengers maybe you get as high as 10 miles per dollar). My current ICE car isn't particularly efficient (around 30mpg on the highway, whereas nowadays even non-hybrids can get 40mpg) but for road trip purposes it would also get around 7 miles per dollar.
  - modeless 3y ago
    Tesla also made it work by making their chargers cheaper with smart engineering. CCS stations are huge monoliths packed full of fancy lights, touchscreens, ridiculously long cables, giant plugs. Superchargers have none of that. A cable no longer than absolutely necessary, a stand just large enough to hold it comfortably, a plug about as small as possible, no blinkenlights or touchscreens.
- simondotau 3y ago
  Actually I think you'll find that the electric gas station is owned by anyone with a car garage and electricity. Fast DC charging is the exception, not the rule.
  - apendleton 3y ago
    Sure, but I'd think that makes the economics of operating fast chargers all the more tenuous. Like, if we assume they're mostly needed for people away from home, that means both that they're essential to adoption of EVs in general (people want to be able to go on road trips) and that they suddenly go from being a thing people need all the time to a thing whose demand has extreme fluctuations seasonally, or with the economy insofar as it affects people's seasonal income, etc., just like other travel-oriented businesses like hotels. (I should also note: so far the EV adoption story has been much better for people who own their homes and have dedicated parking, but as someone who lives in an urban neighborhood where most car-owners park on the street, I think expending to markets like mine will necessarily mean more public chargers are needed.)
- martythemaniak 3y ago
  An ordinary 120V 15A plug can add 100km to a car over night when electricity is 1/2 to 1/4 the price of a DC fast charger. Tesla's mobile charger is $200. The superchargers are essential is giving people the peace of mind to make the EV switch and for enabling long-distance road trips, but they just can't complete with the economics of home charging, which is where the bulk of EVs will be charged.
  - abfan1127 3y ago
    there are many home situations where home charging is not immediately feasible. Apartments and condos (both medium density or high density) are not conducive to personal charging installations.
martin_a 3y ago
Meh... shrugs Just a niche automaker adapting a niche plug while the rest of the world has adopted CCS for its cars, enabling universal charging all over the place...
- jeffnappi 3y ago
  Ford and GM have also announced they are adopting NACS.
- ot 3y ago
  How often do you drive your car from North America to Europe?
  - 0_____0 3y ago
    I chafe at the US (and NA) tendency to stray from otherwise global standards, but in this case I'm not convinced it really matters. Car companies are already really good at localizing vehicles to regions, so that's not an argument either.
- gwbas1c 3y ago
  In the US, Tesla + GM + Ford represent over 70% of electric vehicle manufacturing. Tesla represents the vast majority of high-speed charging stations. Hardly niche.
- deleted 3y ago
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- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  CCS1 (North America) has approximately a 1% worldwide market share. It's not surprising that it is dying. CCS2 (Europe) has a sizeable market share. CCS1 and CCS2 are incompatible.
- simondotau 3y ago
  This is false on multiple levels. • There is no such thing as a "CCS" plug. Most countries outside North America and China have adopted CCS2, which is incompatible with the CCS1 plugs found in North America. • China use their own standard for DC fast charging, GB/T. With respect to dreams of a "global" standard, this isn't mere trivia as China has significantly more EVs on the road than any other country. • Japan still uses CHAdeMO. • In North America, there are significantly more cars on the road with NACS plugs than with CCS1, and there are more DC fast charging stalls deployed with NACS connectors than with CCS1. (And that's including the many CCS1 stalls which aren't currently working.)
simondotau 3y ago
Everyone saw that coming a mile away. Now prepare yourselves for an imminent announcement by Lucid sometime in the next two years.
bpodgursky 3y ago
At this point, the rate at which automakers NACS support is a good proxy for corporate malaise. Everyone sees the writing on the wall for CCS, and if an automaker takes another couple months to announce a migration it simply means the executive leadership has no clue what they are doing with regards to EVs.
- echelon 3y ago
  Is NACS superior to CCS in any way apart from install base? I was under the impression NACS was inferior.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    NACS is superior to CCS1 (North America) in every way. Size, install base, robustness and more. CCS2 (Europe) has few (if any) of the drawbacks of CCS1.
  - option 3y ago
    install base matter A LOT.
  - belval 3y ago
    I've used both and while from a technical standpoint CCS might be superior (I have no idea), in practice NACS is sleeker and feels less clunky. Is that a good reason to adopt a standard that isn't open? Probably not. Does the average customer cares and will it have an impact on their day to day? Probably not. EDIT: Seems like NACS is open after all so I don't really understand why we would bother with CCS.
    - tensor 3y ago
      My understanding is that NACS is open: https://www.tesla.com/blog/opening-north-american-charging-standard https://www.tesla.com/blog/opening-north-american-charging-s...
      - simondotau 3y ago
DueDilligence 3y ago
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pathartl 3y ago
I'm not an EV user, so I need some clarification. Is NACS actually a better connector? Or is it just more abundant at the moment? Technology Connections did a deep dive on CCS and it seems like it's a more flexible connector with a truly open standard. The argument for NACS I've seen is that it's a little sleeker (does this really matter all that much?) and it's already on Tesla's supercharger network.
- hindsightbias 3y ago
  See Sandy Munro's rant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VBCpAHvOpQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VBCpAHvOpQ
- pornel 3y ago
  The physical shape of Tesla/NACS is way better: it's more compact, and easier to plug in. The CCS connector OTOH is a lazy retrofit of a design-by-committee plug. The wire protocol of CCS is a bit overengineered, but it's a standard, and it's a sunk cost (all cars, including current Teslas, are already compatible with it). So physical NACS + CCS protocol seems like the best of both. It's also worth pointing out that the US uses CCS1, while Europe standardized on a slightly improved CCS2. So the US is alone in its (non)standard connector either way.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    Not all Tesla's can speak CCS. Older Teslas need a $400 retrofit to be able to use the Tesla CCS1 adapter. https://shop.tesla.com/en_ca/product/ccs-combo-1-adapter https://shop.tesla.com/en_ca/product/ccs-combo-1-adapter
    - wlesieutre 3y ago
      Not much of a practical problem until some other charging network builds out enough NACS chargers that a Tesla driver would try using anything other than a Supercharger. Looks like the cutoff for this is vehicles before May 1, 2019.
mastax 3y ago
I'm going to assume all these companies did their homework and NACS is a real open standard, not something under Tesla's boot. In which case, great! This is the outcome I was hoping for. NACS is the better and more popular connector, it should become the standard in NA. CCS1 isn't that bad, but when you have a choice, choose the better one. Nissan leafs are still using Chademo, which shows how serious they are about EVs.
- deleted 3y ago
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kozziollek 3y ago
Offtopic: could people that write news titles please learn how to capitalize words? Or can we make sure that at AI will know it, when most of news are written by it? Took me 3 tries to parse the title. "Rivian Joins Forces" - is that name of an organization? - "with Tesla"... nope, that doesn't make sense. "Rivan Joins forces" (somebody to do something), syntax error got "with". "Rivan joins forces with Tesla" - yay! And you know that person who wrote this knows about lowercase, because of "with" and "for"...
- Tagbert 3y ago
  In titles, almost all words are capitalized (except for small word like articles of speech).
  - sputter_token 3y ago
    I think "with" should be capitalized but "for" should not. I believe AP style guide says that propositions that are four or more letters should be capitalized.
    - DFHippie 3y ago
      > ... propositions that are four or more letters ... So "yes" and "no" but "Maybe"? :-)
- rafram 3y ago
  Title case is standard in news headlines.
- thepasswordis 3y ago
  Don't be so smug. This title follows the AP style guide for headlines, which is the norm. So it's not so much that "people that write news titles" need to learn to capitalize words, it's that you need to learn how to read them.
- pipnonsense 3y ago
  It is called Title Case and part of a lot of (American?) news organizations style guides. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_case It confuses me, a non-native English speaker, a lot too. I hate it.
piinbinary 3y ago
I wonder if Tesla is repositioning from being a Ford to being an Exxon
- SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
  Tesla has been the the vertical integration and power supply business for a while now. Or at least has wanted to be. See the Tesla PowerWall and Solar Roof projects.
  - martin8412 3y ago
    Both of which are customer nightmares?
    - SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
      I said "has wanted to be" - because intent is not always the same as outcome.
- bushbaba 3y ago
  Tesla was always closer in vision to an energy company than auto maker. Wouldn’t surprise me if they leverage the healthy EV competition to growing their battery, supercharger, and energy generation capabilities. With these one day overtaking car sales revenue.
  - rootusrootus 3y ago
    What battery capability? Do they even make the top 10? And superchargers are pretty sweet, but there is no moat at all there, anybody can make a NACS fast charger. EA hasn't done great, but that doesn't mean anything other than EA kinda sucks, there are plenty of manufacturers capable of building reliable DC chargers.
    - 93po 3y ago
      Tesla's Nevada plant makes 37 gWh per year and is currently expanding to 100 gWh per year. 100 gWh would put that at #2 if it was operational today, however the current leaders will also continue to grow rapidly so it's unlikely they'd go above the middle of the top 10 list.
jancsika 3y ago
Would love to hear fast how charging stations will scale in a way that beats the current price and speed of filling up a car with gasoline. I mean, even in a small town with, say, three gas stations, there are peak times when all the spots are taken. Average fueling time is probably a few minutes. How to switch that to an all-electric system? + build a significantly higher number of fast electric charges than there are gas pumps. But apparently fast charging stations are rather expensive to build, and that's reflected in prices-- they are higher than current gas prices. There's also the significant increase in the time to fuel the vehicle compared to gas, and that's not going to change any time soon. + ramp up at-home charging as well as "at-business" charging for things like landscapers/etc. who use a lot of vehicles. But if you do this at scale electricity costs go through the roof and you're back to the same pricing problem as above. I'm just thinking of this in terms of a kind of soft-realtime system. You've got something like "blocks" of vehicles all of which need to be fueled on deadlines which can generally get met currently. If there's a massive switch to EV I don't see how those deadlines get met without an enormous increase in charging prices. And without massive subsidies there's no way to build the infrastructure needed to meet the deadlines. (And let's just assume zero risk of a fast-charger monopoly or cartel...)
- thrtythreeforty 3y ago
  I have no data, but I suspect we underestimate the impact of at-home charging. Essentially, all vehicles parked at a residence start every day with a full charge. This eliminates most of the demand on fast-charge stations for around-town use. Granted, they still consume power that the grid has to supply, so pricing may change, but I suspect gas station traffic will go way down, in aggregate, as EV adoption climbs. One thing the government hasn't noticed yet (afaik) is that electric cars aren't taxed like gasoline cars. The per-gallon tax (which pays for important things like roads) is a substantial portion of the overall cost. Nobody factors that eventual cost in when they claim EVs are sooo much cheaper. They will probably continue to be cheaper, just less aggressively cheaper than Tesla claims.
  - dreamcompiler 3y ago
    Oh they've definitely noticed. https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2023/05/16/texas-ev-registration-fee-abbott/70224830007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2023/05/16/texas-e...
harshaw 3y ago
Is there any technical reason you can't build an adapter from NACS to CCS1? We have adapters for Tesla destination chargers (NACS without fast charging??) to J1772 and they work just fine.
- pornel 3y ago
  The wire protocol of classic Tesla supercharging is custom, so it'd require electronic components, not just a physical adapter. It may be technically hard, e.g. ChaDeMo and CCS speak a different wire protocol, and there are no adapters for them. However, when the charging station can use the CCS protocol, it's only a matter a of physical adapter. Tesla's "Magic Dock" is it.
- bushbaba 3y ago
  No technical reason. But the adapter might not be “small”
  - vel0city 3y ago
    I dunno, this adapter doesn't seem to be exceptionally large. https://i.ytimg.com/vi/BdukzpR7_ao/maxresdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/BdukzpR7_ao/maxresdefault.jpg
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  According to the press release, they will be building those adapters and they will be available in 2024. Pre ~2020 North American Tesla's can't speak the CCS protocol and need a $200 upgrade to speak it. Presumably many of the Superchargers don't either. I imagine the delay is to upgrade the Superchargers to speak the CCS protocol so that a dumb adapter may be used rather than having to build an expensive smart adapter that can do protocol conversion.
thepasswordis 3y ago
This is great news both for EV users and Tesla investors. Superchargers vs everything else isn't even a contest. Opening up those chargers to more users is a Big Deal.
alistairSH 3y ago
Is Tesla planning to update Supercharger stations to accommodate non-Tesla vehicles. Charge plug notwithstanding, the placement of Supercharger stands is usually for the left-rear charge port on all current Teslas. The stand location and cable length is a problem for vehicles with different designs. Demonstrated here (particularly the F-150 Lightning)... https://youtu.be/W-oaVLRH-js?t=519 https://youtu.be/W-oaVLRH-js?t=519
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  Yes. https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/19/23689247/tesla-v4-supercharger-ev-first-specs-rollout https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/19/23689247/tesla-v4-superch...
- londons_explore 3y ago
  I hope that part of the standard is that all vehicles shall have a charge plug on either front/right or back/left corners. Making the cable longer makes the experience worse for everyone - it makes the cable heavier (harder to use), more expensive (which will end up in power prices), easier to damage (as it is dragged across the floor or driven over), more electrical losses in the cable (again, higher prices). There are plenty of other things we have standardized for similar reasons - for example, imagine if different banks had credit cards that were different sizes so wouldn't fit in your wallet.
  - alistairSH 3y ago
    I never understood why front-center didn't become the standard here. That would obviate more stand placement and cable length issues. The only people who stand to lose are those weirdos who reverse into parking places. ;) (Rear-center would work too)
    - londons_explore 3y ago
      One day, on street parking will want to have charging, and that is nearly all parallel parking, for which front/rear center would be suboptimal.
dagmx 3y ago
I’m glad there finally seems to be a push to a better standard in North America. I’m really curious how this affects Teslas market share though going forward. Their supercharger network is why we continue with them despite countless other issues. It’s their biggest moat as far as I’m concerned. Now I have significantly more options, and my next car will not be a Tesla. I’m sure I’m not alone in that. Is the brand name of being effectively the gas station of EVs worth it to them? I assume there’ll be a surcharge , so is it better for them to have the biggest slice of much smaller pies?
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  > I’m sure I’m not alone in that. Definitely not alone. I'm on my second Tesla, and from what I can see of Tesla's plans for the future, I think it is likely I will not buy another for my next car. I'm very happy that everyone else is jumping on board with NACS.
- dahfizz 3y ago
  The long term future of Tesla is a battery manufacturer and a charging network. Those are the two things they are good at. The cars themselves are quickly being beaten out by the larger players.
  - techdmn 3y ago
    I'm happy to consider a non-Tesla (mostly because I'd really prefer a more traditional gauge cluster and more physical controls), but have struggled to find anything that beats the price for performance of the Model 3 Performance. And yes, I realize I'm a niche buyer.
    - dahfizz 3y ago
      You're right that the model 3 performance is still a convincing product, but cars like the Mustang Mach-E and BMW i4 are coming close. A few years ago there was no good option besides tesla, but in another couple years tesla will have fallen behind the competition
djleni 3y ago
I firmly don’t care which plug wins as long as there is _a_ standard… But with the wind blowing this way will there be an adapter for CCS vehicles already on the road? Or does one already exist?
- ezfe 3y ago
  There's not an official adapter but one has been announced by Ford & GM. The word on the street is that the Tesla plugs will start speaking the CCS protocol so an adapter is trivial.
  - gwbas1c 3y ago
    It kinda-sorta already exists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-oaVLRH-js&pp=ygUWcml2aWFuIGF0IHN1cGVyY2hhcmdlcg%3D%3D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-oaVLRH-js&pp=ygUWcml2aWFuI... (I've been there, too.) TLDR: Basically, there's a CCS adapter hidden in the Supercharger stall. If you want to charge a CCS car, all you do is start the session from your phone. The CCS adapter unlocks, and it's on the end of the cable when you pull it out of the holder. I didn't notice it at first when I arrived, until I recognized the location from the video. It's really compact.
- cptskippy 3y ago
  There are adapters both ways. CCS1 and CCS2 use the same communication protocol and Tesla adopted it for NACS in the North America market because they had to for the European market. Older NA Tesla's can get a body module upgrade to support their CCS to NACS adapter. It sounds like the adapter will be used at least initially to restrict which cars can use Superchargers. I would imagine this is partially due to the lack of payment terminals but also to prevent untested configurations of EVs.
josefresco 3y ago
Tesla fans before 2023: The Supercharger network is just supplemental! Most charging is done at home, range anxiety is BS! Tesla fans after 2023: The Supercharger is our most important competitive advantage! Any automaker not adapting our standard will die!
- e36 3y ago
  You don't have to like "Tesla fans," but you're just being dishonest with comments like this.
- mardifoufs 3y ago
  This does not even make sense, even beyond the weird strawman. If the "Tesla fans" think the superchargers are their most competitive advantage... Why would they want other automakers to adopt it?
- Kirby64 3y ago
  When has this ever been true? The supercharger network was always one of the key advantages of a Tesla over any other EV: you could actually have a reliable fast charging network, as opposed to the patchwork of other questionable charging networks. You actually could, reliably, expect a road trip to not have any issues.
- 93po 3y ago
  Tesla haters before 2023: Tesla is bad because X Tesla haters after 2023: Sure X is fixed, but Tesla is bad because of Y
- revscat 3y ago
  I truly abhor strawman comments such as this. They offer nothing other than a false sense of superiority. They are like buzzing mosquitos on a hike: annoying, distracting, and useless.
bilsbie 3y ago
Won’t the chargers get overcrowded?
- deelowe 3y ago
  Tesla sure hopes so.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  Tesla adds about a million Tesla's to the road every year in North America. Supporting a few hundred thousand non-Tesla's will have less impact than adding a million Tesla's.
- _ea1k 3y ago
  Tesla adds ~1 site per day in the US at the moment, and this may even help them accelerate that. They also do a pretty good job of fixing hotspots when they start to develop. I don't expect it to be a big problem.
mdasen 3y ago
The recent moves by Tesla have probably been to force the government to amend regulations that would standardize the CCS Type 1 connector for DC fast charging. These rules were announced in February by the Biden administration for projects funded by the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Program. If Tesla hadn't gotten others on board, the next 5 years would likely see CCS chargers eclipse the Supercharger network many times over with probably 5-7x more CCS chargers as Tesla chargers. As people in this thread have said, the Supercharger network is a big selling point for Teslas. If CCS charging availability were 5-7x greater than Tesla availability, that current advantage would become a liability for Tesla over the long-run. Given that GM, Ford, and Rivian are all announcing that they're adopting the CCS charger, it seems likely that the government will probably change their regulations around charging standards to the Tesla charger. If the three largest American EV companies are all using NACS in 2025, it makes little sense for them to mandate CCS chargers. With Tesla, Ford, Rivian, and GM all going NACS, it seems likely that more will follow. Hyundai is already thinking about it: https://www.autoblog.com/2023/06/20/hyundai-to-consider-joining-teslas-north-american-charging-standard-alliance/ https://www.autoblog.com/2023/06/20/hyundai-to-consider-join.... Stellantis (Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, Fiat) is evaluating it: https://fordauthority.com/2023/06/ford-rival-stellantis-looks-into-nacs-in-wake-of-tesla-deal/ https://fordauthority.com/2023/06/ford-rival-stellantis-look.... In fact, Tesla had to make its connector non-proprietary or they'd be locked out of everything funded by the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Program. The rules allow for non-CCS chargers to be available (as long as there's also a CCS charger) only if they're non-proprietary. If Tesla had kept their connector proprietary, any charger with a Tesla connector would be ineligible for government funding. Now, they can have a Tesla connector as long as they also have a CCS connector. As I've speculated, given that it seems likely most EVs sold in the US will be using NACS from 2025+, it seems likely that the government will even change its rules to favor the NACS connector. Tesla's shift to calling it the North American Charging Standard and opening it up to competitors is probably more about preventing one of their advantages (Tesla vehicles being compatible with the most charging stations) into a major liability (Tesla vehicles requiring an adapter to use the majority of charging stations in 2025+). https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2023-02-28/pdf/2023-03500.pdf https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2023-02-28/pdf/2023-0...
- 3y ago
tango_mike_yank 3y ago
If Tesla's charging network is available to Ford, GM, Rivian, then why would someone buy a Tesla
tw04 3y ago
I view this as very RIM/Blackberry like, only Tesla has learned from history. Eventually the competitor charging networks were going to be "good enough" - Tesla had the option of working with Ford or GM, or letting them dump their combined resources into a competitor (and every other MFG). Sure in the short-term this will make them more vulnerable to competition, but if your only moat was the charging network you were doomed to fail anyway. Had RIM opened up BES/BBM to the iphone early on, they might still be around today.
- speed_spread 3y ago
  BES was possibly a more significant part of RIM's than the charger infrastructure is to Tesla. Opening the charger infrastructure is just them defining their moat, really. Tesla will still sell cars but more importantly they'll keep collecting usage data that they'll resell to the highest bidder.
  - sebzim4500 3y ago
    When Tesla sells someone a car for $50k, what do you think is the value of the data on how often they charge it? $20? Surely it can never be a significant revenue stream.
    - mattmaroon 3y ago
      Well they’ll have data on non-Tesla users now too. The current market leader in the US has about 17% share, so even if Tesla eventually becomes the biggest auto maker, you’d still expect at least 75% of cars to not be made by them. They now have charging data on those 75%. More profitable than the data though will be selling the charges. The rates they’re charging at Tesla Superchargers are far in excess of what they’re paying for the electricity.
    - chung8123 3y ago
      That is an interesting question. If Tesla has a network of cars collecting real world data that can be used to train ML I suspect it might be more than $20 per Tesla in the future (they can sell models to other manufacturers). Maybe not right now but more a future thing.
V__ 3y ago
Why are these automakers pushing to adopt Teslas solution, which isn't standardized or open, instead of creating a new CCS3? I can't imagine NACS to ever be adopted in the EU, so why the additional complexity?
- 015a 3y ago
  Europe's CCS and America's CCS are already incompatible (CCS1 vs 2).
- panick21_ 3y ago
  Tesla solution is open. Why not CCS3, because that would take many years to get going and no charging network for it would exist. Tesla alone has 3000 Superchargers in the US. It would take decades to get CCS3 to that point. > I can't imagine NACS to ever be adopted in the EU, so why the additional complexity? That complexity is already there. NACS will be the standard in North America. CCS2 in Europe. Korea seems to insist in CHAdeMO and China GB/T. A lot of the rest of the world is open to be captured by different standards.
- fomine3 3y ago
  It's happy to avoid xkcd:standards
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
Sounds like Tesla is hurting to start lowering that barrier to competitors.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
javier_e06 3y ago
I am an EV user. My connection is not Tesla compatible. I wish the government would prod manufacturers to create a common connection for all EVs the same way there is a common gas intake for all gas powered vehicles.
- freerobby 3y ago
  What charge port do you have that isn't Tesla compatible with an adapter?
  - Rebelgecko 3y ago
    AFAICT, unless you're in San Francisco, Sacramento, or New York there is currently no adapter that will let a non-Tesla vehicle use a supercharger.
    - simondotau 3y ago
      That's because much of the Supercharger network was deployed with the assumption of only supporting Tesla vehicles. If any third party charging network deployed NACS fast charging stalls in your area, they would absolutely be compatible with any CCS1 vehicle with an adapter.
      - Rebelgecko 3y ago
        Would something like a TeslaTap work with a 350kW charger? Or do new adapters need to be created?
        josephcsible 3y ago
        Adapters like TeslaTap output J1772, not CCS, so new adapters will need to be created (like the Magic Dock).
        simondotau 3y ago
        The most likely outcome is that third party stalls will either mimic Tesla's magic dock or over-provision with two cables per stall, or (most likely) have some ratio of NACS-only, CCS1-only, and CHAdeMO stalls based on demand.
martythemaniak 3y ago
One fact that's not widely appreciated: Tesla is very efficient, and this efficiency is starting to have macro effects such as this. They've been building out their network diligently for over a decade, they have the permitting, assembly, uptime, everything dailed in. Every single dollar of capex they put in the network will get them more connectors and more sites in less time than if EA or any other company will get for that same dollar. They might also be the only major manufacturer outside of China that can build EVs profitably at scale. 5 years ago the Model 3 had no competitors and today they have plenty, when looking at the spec sheets. But no one has been able to ship the sheer numbers of EVs Tesla has, because they either physically can't or won't do it because can't make money (it's hard to say as legacy autos don't break out their EV divisions) The Model 3 now costs $40,240, which is $33,400 in 2018 dollars after inflation. That is, they are making comfortable margins on the $35K base model they aspired to when they started selling the model.
isykt 3y ago
Is there any reason to buy a non-Tesla EV before 2025?
- tdiggity 3y ago
  Buy the car for what it is today, not what it might be tomorrow. Many Tesla owners have been burned hoping for a feature, a retrofit, or even missing out on one taken away.
  - isykt 3y ago
    If I’m evaluating EVs for what they are today, I see little reason to buy a non-Tesla, since the charger is going to require an adapter for the charging infrastructure that appears to be the standard soon.
    - tdiggity 3y ago
      That's a fair point - if you are going to drive long distances, then a Tesla is the best option in terms of network reliability and price. But for most, an adapter with the occasional road trip isn't a deal breaker. Tesla owners have had to use an adapter for charging at non-superchargers since inception.
- elihu 3y ago
  Sure; maybe you want a type of vehicle Tesla doesn't offer, or you want to buy from a vendor who's more open about making parts and service information available to users, or you want a more traditional car interface with normal switches and buttons rather than a big touch screen. Your question is sort of like asking if there's any reason to buy a computer that isn't made by Apple. Of course there is, it just depends on what you're looking for. I'd imagine a lot of people are also explicitly avoiding Tesla due to its association with its increasingly erratic owner.
  - isykt 3y ago
    If any of those conditions are true, why not wait until 2025 when the charging connection is settled?
rednerrus 3y ago
So now Tesla is going to own all of the "Gas Stations" in America?
apexalpha 3y ago
I don't really care whether it's CCS or NACS. What I do care about is that a choice is made. The worst outcome for EV adaption would be to have multiple different charger networks and plugs that all need adapters to be compatible with each other. What's important is that there is single standard, not how thin the cable is or how it looks. For the EU, CCS was chosen a long time ago and this means every car can use every charger without thinking about it. For the US, it makes sense to go with NACS if Tesla opens up their network. Cars are always built to spec for either EU, US or any market. So it matters little if EU and US chose a different plug.

377 points by belltaco 3y ago

1970-01-01 3y ago

Excellent news! Domino effect in progress?

Tesla owns the electric gas station! for now... Now that unity is achieved in the US, I think we're about to see an explosion in charging stations and designs of various charging hubs (drive-in movies's revival?) as Tesla won't be allowed to own the network 100% come soon.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
Who else is going to invest in a fast DC network? The closest competitor was Electrify America, and they can't make the economics work. Tesla made it work by subsidizing their $1B+ global fast DC charging network cost out of robust vehicle margins. Most EV users will charge at home, some at their place of work and businesses, with fast DC charging filling the remaining gap (people who can't charge at home or people on road trips/high utilization driving patterns). https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2022/10/26/electrify-america-chargers-are-rarely-usedwhats-up-with-non-tesla-fast-charging/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2022/10/26/electr...
- thatfrenchguy 3y ago
  Funnily enough, EA has the opposite problem in California: they’re frequently full.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - ZacharyPitts 3y ago
    Same in Oregon. I've had to wait multiple times for a slot to come available while traveling.
- vel0city 3y ago
  There are many brands of DCFC around me. EA obviously, EVGo, blink, 7Eleven, Road Ranger, Francis, and Volta. There's a few other travel centers on the routes I take which have their own branded chargers as well The earlier non-Tesla charging stations definitely had a rough start as there was practically zero market at all for them. The economics will change as more EVs are on the road. I do agree most early EV owners are going to be those with easy charging at home, but people without home charging may eventually want EVs as well. Public charging station use will probably increase a good bit over the next few years.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Those are brands, not networks. No one is going to road trip if they can't trust they can roll into a station at 10% state of charge and charge in 20 minutes off hours. The network uptime is the selling point of Tesla Superchargers. You will never be left stranded. Install the PlugShare app or check out their website and see what comments users leave about reliability with regards to your local stations. https://insideevs.com/news/664737/tesla-superchargers-average-uptime-2022/ https://insideevs.com/news/664737/tesla-superchargers-averag... (Tesla Says That Supercharger Average Uptime Is Near Perfect *100%) https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-supercharger-reliability-dominates-industry/ https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-supercharger-reliability-dom... (Tesla Supercharger reliability continues to dominate industry) https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1136861_tesla-supercharger-network-ranks-highest-in-customer-satisfaction-finds-j-d-power https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1136861_tesla-superchar... (The Tesla Supercharger network was the first comprehensive DC fast-charging network in the United States, and it remains the best in terms of customer satisfaction, according to a new J.D. Power study.)
    - vel0city 3y ago
      > Those are brands, not networks I don't care about "networks". I don't choose Exxon or Shell or whoever because they have the most gas stations, I go to the one that's most convenient for me. I'm not beholden to any particular "brand" or "network" of charger, I just want one close that works. I'm no particular brand fanboy, I'll use whatever works and is convenient. > Install the PlugShare app or check out their website and see what comments users attempting to charge look like. I use the PlugShare app a good bit. All the chargers I referenced are 9.5+, with most of them having 10 ratings. I also have my own personal experiences at those chargers. In all of my public charging sessions I've never once failed to charge at a decent rate at a DCFC. And I'm one who has driving around the city testing out chargers because I've been interested in the tech. I have experienced some of those free L2 chargers at grocery store parking lots being offline, but even then most of the time those have worked flawlessly. And I don't bother with specific apps for charging "networks", all my DCFC has either been plug and charge or phone NFC/EMV payment terminals. I don't personally put a lot of weight on Twitter polls to give me an accurate picture of reality, and if JD Power tells me something I'm likely to think the opposite is true. Most of JD Power's statements are meaningless noise to me. I don't doubt Tesla's chargers have more uptime on average. There's a lot of things they do better historically, like having lower lifetime rated cables they change out more often and they're faster to roll out to places with issues to repair. But its not inherently a Tesla thing, the other chargers can do it and it seems in the past year a number of companies have stepped up their maintenance and reliability considerably. I'm going by the data I can see around me and what I see on PlugShare around me, which shows the non-Tesla chargers near me and on the routes I want to take are generally pretty reliable.
- enragedcacti 3y ago
  > Tesla made it work by subsidizing their $1B+ global fast DC charging network cost out of robust vehicle margins. VW is doing the same with EA (although with more vehicles and lower margins). I don't know the specifics and I'm sure they would love for every stall to be full but I wouldn't be surprised if they had no expectation of making a profit at this point or even in the next five years. Honestly I think they have some limited upside here which is that if they can fix the quality of their service and add NACS cables then they can compete on price or location with superchargers for NACS owners' business. My guess is that the stalls are empty because few who seriously need to travel long distances would buy a non-supercharger compatible EV specifically because the EA experience sucks. If they fix their UX then they can immediately begin tapping into the NACS market instead of waiting for CCS cars to slowly trickle into the roadtripping segment of the market.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    VW was required to fund Electrify America ($2B) as part of their Diselgate settlement with the US goverment, and they were prohibited from branding them as VW as part of the deal (hence the EA brand). EA has tried to get additional funding with not so great results. Might be able to salvage the network if they add or swap out for NACS plugs (opening up to the mass market EVs), but if they can't make the unit economics work and increase utilization, those EA stations are going to end up abandoned with the enterprise shuttering. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/10/vws-2-billion-penalty-for-diesel-scam-builds-ev-charging-network-across-us.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/10/vws-2-billion-penalty-for-di... https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/electrify-america https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/electrify-america
    - KennyBlanken 3y ago
      And this is why EA is such a shitshow. VW was required to spend the money. They weren't required to make it a good charging system. So: poor maintenance, buggy software, and overall an experience that makes everyone who tries to use one hate it.
- itsoktocry 3y ago
  >The closest competitor was Electrify America, and they can't make the economics work. Tesla made it work by subsidizing their $1B+ global fast DC charging network cost out of robust vehicle margins. The economics are going to have to change. Right now, dollar-for-dollar, electricity for your vehicle is cheaper than gasoline. I'm confident that will not be the case in the near future; the charging infrastructure has to be built and maintained, and the government will want their tax money (in Canada, a significant proportion of gas prices are taxes).
  - Rebelgecko 3y ago
    >Right now, dollar-for-dollar, electricity for your vehicle is cheaper than gasoline When I did the math on this, that wasn't necessarily the case in my area, it depended on the situation. $0.40/kWh comes out to around 7 miles per dollar, depending on your vehicle and how you drive it (eg on a road trip going 80mph you'd probably get less than 7, chill city driving with no passengers maybe you get as high as 10 miles per dollar). My current ICE car isn't particularly efficient (around 30mpg on the highway, whereas nowadays even non-hybrids can get 40mpg) but for road trip purposes it would also get around 7 miles per dollar.
- modeless 3y ago
  Tesla also made it work by making their chargers cheaper with smart engineering. CCS stations are huge monoliths packed full of fancy lights, touchscreens, ridiculously long cables, giant plugs. Superchargers have none of that. A cable no longer than absolutely necessary, a stand just large enough to hold it comfortably, a plug about as small as possible, no blinkenlights or touchscreens.
simondotau 3y ago
Actually I think you'll find that the electric gas station is owned by anyone with a car garage and electricity. Fast DC charging is the exception, not the rule.
- apendleton 3y ago
  Sure, but I'd think that makes the economics of operating fast chargers all the more tenuous. Like, if we assume they're mostly needed for people away from home, that means both that they're essential to adoption of EVs in general (people want to be able to go on road trips) and that they suddenly go from being a thing people need all the time to a thing whose demand has extreme fluctuations seasonally, or with the economy insofar as it affects people's seasonal income, etc., just like other travel-oriented businesses like hotels. (I should also note: so far the EV adoption story has been much better for people who own their homes and have dedicated parking, but as someone who lives in an urban neighborhood where most car-owners park on the street, I think expending to markets like mine will necessarily mean more public chargers are needed.)
martythemaniak 3y ago
An ordinary 120V 15A plug can add 100km to a car over night when electricity is 1/2 to 1/4 the price of a DC fast charger. Tesla's mobile charger is $200. The superchargers are essential is giving people the peace of mind to make the EV switch and for enabling long-distance road trips, but they just can't complete with the economics of home charging, which is where the bulk of EVs will be charged.
- abfan1127 3y ago
  there are many home situations where home charging is not immediately feasible. Apartments and condos (both medium density or high density) are not conducive to personal charging installations.

martin_a 3y ago

Meh... shrugs Just a niche automaker adapting a niche plug while the rest of the world has adopted CCS for its cars, enabling universal charging all over the place...

jeffnappi 3y ago
Ford and GM have also announced they are adopting NACS.
ot 3y ago
How often do you drive your car from North America to Europe?
- 0_____0 3y ago
  I chafe at the US (and NA) tendency to stray from otherwise global standards, but in this case I'm not convinced it really matters. Car companies are already really good at localizing vehicles to regions, so that's not an argument either.
gwbas1c 3y ago
In the US, Tesla + GM + Ford represent over 70% of electric vehicle manufacturing. Tesla represents the vast majority of high-speed charging stations. Hardly niche.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
bryanlarsen 3y ago
CCS1 (North America) has approximately a 1% worldwide market share. It's not surprising that it is dying. CCS2 (Europe) has a sizeable market share. CCS1 and CCS2 are incompatible.
simondotau 3y ago
This is false on multiple levels. • There is no such thing as a "CCS" plug. Most countries outside North America and China have adopted CCS2, which is incompatible with the CCS1 plugs found in North America. • China use their own standard for DC fast charging, GB/T. With respect to dreams of a "global" standard, this isn't mere trivia as China has significantly more EVs on the road than any other country. • Japan still uses CHAdeMO. • In North America, there are significantly more cars on the road with NACS plugs than with CCS1, and there are more DC fast charging stalls deployed with NACS connectors than with CCS1. (And that's including the many CCS1 stalls which aren't currently working.)

simondotau 3y ago

Everyone saw that coming a mile away. Now prepare yourselves for an imminent announcement by Lucid sometime in the next two years.

bpodgursky 3y ago

At this point, the rate at which automakers NACS support is a good proxy for corporate malaise. Everyone sees the writing on the wall for CCS, and if an automaker takes another couple months to announce a migration it simply means the executive leadership has no clue what they are doing with regards to EVs.

echelon 3y ago
Is NACS superior to CCS in any way apart from install base? I was under the impression NACS was inferior.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  NACS is superior to CCS1 (North America) in every way. Size, install base, robustness and more. CCS2 (Europe) has few (if any) of the drawbacks of CCS1.
- option 3y ago
  install base matter A LOT.
- belval 3y ago
  I've used both and while from a technical standpoint CCS might be superior (I have no idea), in practice NACS is sleeker and feels less clunky. Is that a good reason to adopt a standard that isn't open? Probably not. Does the average customer cares and will it have an impact on their day to day? Probably not. EDIT: Seems like NACS is open after all so I don't really understand why we would bother with CCS.
  - tensor 3y ago
    My understanding is that NACS is open: https://www.tesla.com/blog/opening-north-american-charging-standard https://www.tesla.com/blog/opening-north-american-charging-s...
    - simondotau 3y ago

DueDilligence 3y ago

[dead]

pathartl 3y ago

I'm not an EV user, so I need some clarification. Is NACS actually a better connector? Or is it just more abundant at the moment? Technology Connections did a deep dive on CCS and it seems like it's a more flexible connector with a truly open standard. The argument for NACS I've seen is that it's a little sleeker (does this really matter all that much?) and it's already on Tesla's supercharger network.

hindsightbias 3y ago
See Sandy Munro's rant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VBCpAHvOpQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VBCpAHvOpQ
pornel 3y ago
The physical shape of Tesla/NACS is way better: it's more compact, and easier to plug in. The CCS connector OTOH is a lazy retrofit of a design-by-committee plug. The wire protocol of CCS is a bit overengineered, but it's a standard, and it's a sunk cost (all cars, including current Teslas, are already compatible with it). So physical NACS + CCS protocol seems like the best of both. It's also worth pointing out that the US uses CCS1, while Europe standardized on a slightly improved CCS2. So the US is alone in its (non)standard connector either way.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  Not all Tesla's can speak CCS. Older Teslas need a $400 retrofit to be able to use the Tesla CCS1 adapter. https://shop.tesla.com/en_ca/product/ccs-combo-1-adapter https://shop.tesla.com/en_ca/product/ccs-combo-1-adapter
  - wlesieutre 3y ago
    Not much of a practical problem until some other charging network builds out enough NACS chargers that a Tesla driver would try using anything other than a Supercharger. Looks like the cutoff for this is vehicles before May 1, 2019.

mastax 3y ago

I'm going to assume all these companies did their homework and NACS is a real open standard, not something under Tesla's boot. In which case, great! This is the outcome I was hoping for. NACS is the better and more popular connector, it should become the standard in NA. CCS1 isn't that bad, but when you have a choice, choose the better one. Nissan leafs are still using Chademo, which shows how serious they are about EVs.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

kozziollek 3y ago

Offtopic: could people that write news titles please learn how to capitalize words? Or can we make sure that at AI will know it, when most of news are written by it? Took me 3 tries to parse the title. "Rivian Joins Forces" - is that name of an organization? - "with Tesla"... nope, that doesn't make sense. "Rivan Joins forces" (somebody to do something), syntax error got "with". "Rivan joins forces with Tesla" - yay! And you know that person who wrote this knows about lowercase, because of "with" and "for"...

Tagbert 3y ago
In titles, almost all words are capitalized (except for small word like articles of speech).
- sputter_token 3y ago
  I think "with" should be capitalized but "for" should not. I believe AP style guide says that propositions that are four or more letters should be capitalized.
  - DFHippie 3y ago
    > ... propositions that are four or more letters ... So "yes" and "no" but "Maybe"? :-)
rafram 3y ago
Title case is standard in news headlines.
thepasswordis 3y ago
Don't be so smug. This title follows the AP style guide for headlines, which is the norm. So it's not so much that "people that write news titles" need to learn to capitalize words, it's that you need to learn how to read them.
pipnonsense 3y ago
It is called Title Case and part of a lot of (American?) news organizations style guides. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_case It confuses me, a non-native English speaker, a lot too. I hate it.

piinbinary 3y ago

I wonder if Tesla is repositioning from being a Ford to being an Exxon

SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
Tesla has been the the vertical integration and power supply business for a while now. Or at least has wanted to be. See the Tesla PowerWall and Solar Roof projects.
- martin8412 3y ago
  Both of which are customer nightmares?
  - SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
    I said "has wanted to be" - because intent is not always the same as outcome.
bushbaba 3y ago
Tesla was always closer in vision to an energy company than auto maker. Wouldn’t surprise me if they leverage the healthy EV competition to growing their battery, supercharger, and energy generation capabilities. With these one day overtaking car sales revenue.
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  What battery capability? Do they even make the top 10? And superchargers are pretty sweet, but there is no moat at all there, anybody can make a NACS fast charger. EA hasn't done great, but that doesn't mean anything other than EA kinda sucks, there are plenty of manufacturers capable of building reliable DC chargers.
  - 93po 3y ago
    Tesla's Nevada plant makes 37 gWh per year and is currently expanding to 100 gWh per year. 100 gWh would put that at #2 if it was operational today, however the current leaders will also continue to grow rapidly so it's unlikely they'd go above the middle of the top 10 list.

jancsika 3y ago

Would love to hear fast how charging stations will scale in a way that beats the current price and speed of filling up a car with gasoline. I mean, even in a small town with, say, three gas stations, there are peak times when all the spots are taken. Average fueling time is probably a few minutes. How to switch that to an all-electric system? + build a significantly higher number of fast electric charges than there are gas pumps. But apparently fast charging stations are rather expensive to build, and that's reflected in prices-- they are higher than current gas prices. There's also the significant increase in the time to fuel the vehicle compared to gas, and that's not going to change any time soon. + ramp up at-home charging as well as "at-business" charging for things like landscapers/etc. who use a lot of vehicles. But if you do this at scale electricity costs go through the roof and you're back to the same pricing problem as above. I'm just thinking of this in terms of a kind of soft-realtime system. You've got something like "blocks" of vehicles all of which need to be fueled on deadlines which can generally get met currently. If there's a massive switch to EV I don't see how those deadlines get met without an enormous increase in charging prices. And without massive subsidies there's no way to build the infrastructure needed to meet the deadlines. (And let's just assume zero risk of a fast-charger monopoly or cartel...)

thrtythreeforty 3y ago
I have no data, but I suspect we underestimate the impact of at-home charging. Essentially, all vehicles parked at a residence start every day with a full charge. This eliminates most of the demand on fast-charge stations for around-town use. Granted, they still consume power that the grid has to supply, so pricing may change, but I suspect gas station traffic will go way down, in aggregate, as EV adoption climbs. One thing the government hasn't noticed yet (afaik) is that electric cars aren't taxed like gasoline cars. The per-gallon tax (which pays for important things like roads) is a substantial portion of the overall cost. Nobody factors that eventual cost in when they claim EVs are sooo much cheaper. They will probably continue to be cheaper, just less aggressively cheaper than Tesla claims.
- dreamcompiler 3y ago
  Oh they've definitely noticed. https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2023/05/16/texas-ev-registration-fee-abbott/70224830007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2023/05/16/texas-e...

harshaw 3y ago

Is there any technical reason you can't build an adapter from NACS to CCS1? We have adapters for Tesla destination chargers (NACS without fast charging??) to J1772 and they work just fine.

pornel 3y ago
The wire protocol of classic Tesla supercharging is custom, so it'd require electronic components, not just a physical adapter. It may be technically hard, e.g. ChaDeMo and CCS speak a different wire protocol, and there are no adapters for them. However, when the charging station can use the CCS protocol, it's only a matter a of physical adapter. Tesla's "Magic Dock" is it.
bushbaba 3y ago
No technical reason. But the adapter might not be “small”
- vel0city 3y ago
  I dunno, this adapter doesn't seem to be exceptionally large. https://i.ytimg.com/vi/BdukzpR7_ao/maxresdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/BdukzpR7_ao/maxresdefault.jpg
bryanlarsen 3y ago
According to the press release, they will be building those adapters and they will be available in 2024. Pre ~2020 North American Tesla's can't speak the CCS protocol and need a $200 upgrade to speak it. Presumably many of the Superchargers don't either. I imagine the delay is to upgrade the Superchargers to speak the CCS protocol so that a dumb adapter may be used rather than having to build an expensive smart adapter that can do protocol conversion.

thepasswordis 3y ago

This is great news both for EV users and Tesla investors. Superchargers vs everything else isn't even a contest. Opening up those chargers to more users is a Big Deal.

alistairSH 3y ago

Is Tesla planning to update Supercharger stations to accommodate non-Tesla vehicles. Charge plug notwithstanding, the placement of Supercharger stands is usually for the left-rear charge port on all current Teslas. The stand location and cable length is a problem for vehicles with different designs. Demonstrated here (particularly the F-150 Lightning)... https://youtu.be/W-oaVLRH-js?t=519 https://youtu.be/W-oaVLRH-js?t=519

bryanlarsen 3y ago
Yes. https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/19/23689247/tesla-v4-supercharger-ev-first-specs-rollout https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/19/23689247/tesla-v4-superch...
londons_explore 3y ago
I hope that part of the standard is that all vehicles shall have a charge plug on either front/right or back/left corners. Making the cable longer makes the experience worse for everyone - it makes the cable heavier (harder to use), more expensive (which will end up in power prices), easier to damage (as it is dragged across the floor or driven over), more electrical losses in the cable (again, higher prices). There are plenty of other things we have standardized for similar reasons - for example, imagine if different banks had credit cards that were different sizes so wouldn't fit in your wallet.
- alistairSH 3y ago
  I never understood why front-center didn't become the standard here. That would obviate more stand placement and cable length issues. The only people who stand to lose are those weirdos who reverse into parking places. ;) (Rear-center would work too)
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    One day, on street parking will want to have charging, and that is nearly all parallel parking, for which front/rear center would be suboptimal.

dagmx 3y ago

I’m glad there finally seems to be a push to a better standard in North America. I’m really curious how this affects Teslas market share though going forward. Their supercharger network is why we continue with them despite countless other issues. It’s their biggest moat as far as I’m concerned. Now I have significantly more options, and my next car will not be a Tesla. I’m sure I’m not alone in that. Is the brand name of being effectively the gas station of EVs worth it to them? I assume there’ll be a surcharge , so is it better for them to have the biggest slice of much smaller pies?

rootusrootus 3y ago
> I’m sure I’m not alone in that. Definitely not alone. I'm on my second Tesla, and from what I can see of Tesla's plans for the future, I think it is likely I will not buy another for my next car. I'm very happy that everyone else is jumping on board with NACS.
dahfizz 3y ago
The long term future of Tesla is a battery manufacturer and a charging network. Those are the two things they are good at. The cars themselves are quickly being beaten out by the larger players.
- techdmn 3y ago
  I'm happy to consider a non-Tesla (mostly because I'd really prefer a more traditional gauge cluster and more physical controls), but have struggled to find anything that beats the price for performance of the Model 3 Performance. And yes, I realize I'm a niche buyer.
  - dahfizz 3y ago
    You're right that the model 3 performance is still a convincing product, but cars like the Mustang Mach-E and BMW i4 are coming close. A few years ago there was no good option besides tesla, but in another couple years tesla will have fallen behind the competition

djleni 3y ago

I firmly don’t care which plug wins as long as there is _a_ standard… But with the wind blowing this way will there be an adapter for CCS vehicles already on the road? Or does one already exist?

ezfe 3y ago
There's not an official adapter but one has been announced by Ford & GM. The word on the street is that the Tesla plugs will start speaking the CCS protocol so an adapter is trivial.
- gwbas1c 3y ago
  It kinda-sorta already exists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-oaVLRH-js&pp=ygUWcml2aWFuIGF0IHN1cGVyY2hhcmdlcg%3D%3D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-oaVLRH-js&pp=ygUWcml2aWFuI... (I've been there, too.) TLDR: Basically, there's a CCS adapter hidden in the Supercharger stall. If you want to charge a CCS car, all you do is start the session from your phone. The CCS adapter unlocks, and it's on the end of the cable when you pull it out of the holder. I didn't notice it at first when I arrived, until I recognized the location from the video. It's really compact.
cptskippy 3y ago
There are adapters both ways. CCS1 and CCS2 use the same communication protocol and Tesla adopted it for NACS in the North America market because they had to for the European market. Older NA Tesla's can get a body module upgrade to support their CCS to NACS adapter. It sounds like the adapter will be used at least initially to restrict which cars can use Superchargers. I would imagine this is partially due to the lack of payment terminals but also to prevent untested configurations of EVs.

josefresco 3y ago

Tesla fans before 2023: The Supercharger network is just supplemental! Most charging is done at home, range anxiety is BS! Tesla fans after 2023: The Supercharger is our most important competitive advantage! Any automaker not adapting our standard will die!

e36 3y ago
You don't have to like "Tesla fans," but you're just being dishonest with comments like this.
mardifoufs 3y ago
This does not even make sense, even beyond the weird strawman. If the "Tesla fans" think the superchargers are their most competitive advantage... Why would they want other automakers to adopt it?
Kirby64 3y ago
When has this ever been true? The supercharger network was always one of the key advantages of a Tesla over any other EV: you could actually have a reliable fast charging network, as opposed to the patchwork of other questionable charging networks. You actually could, reliably, expect a road trip to not have any issues.
93po 3y ago
Tesla haters before 2023: Tesla is bad because X Tesla haters after 2023: Sure X is fixed, but Tesla is bad because of Y
revscat 3y ago
I truly abhor strawman comments such as this. They offer nothing other than a false sense of superiority. They are like buzzing mosquitos on a hike: annoying, distracting, and useless.

bilsbie 3y ago

Won’t the chargers get overcrowded?

deelowe 3y ago
Tesla sure hopes so.
bryanlarsen 3y ago
Tesla adds about a million Tesla's to the road every year in North America. Supporting a few hundred thousand non-Tesla's will have less impact than adding a million Tesla's.
_ea1k 3y ago
Tesla adds ~1 site per day in the US at the moment, and this may even help them accelerate that. They also do a pretty good job of fixing hotspots when they start to develop. I don't expect it to be a big problem.

mdasen 3y ago

The recent moves by Tesla have probably been to force the government to amend regulations that would standardize the CCS Type 1 connector for DC fast charging. These rules were announced in February by the Biden administration for projects funded by the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Program. If Tesla hadn't gotten others on board, the next 5 years would likely see CCS chargers eclipse the Supercharger network many times over with probably 5-7x more CCS chargers as Tesla chargers. As people in this thread have said, the Supercharger network is a big selling point for Teslas. If CCS charging availability were 5-7x greater than Tesla availability, that current advantage would become a liability for Tesla over the long-run. Given that GM, Ford, and Rivian are all announcing that they're adopting the CCS charger, it seems likely that the government will probably change their regulations around charging standards to the Tesla charger. If the three largest American EV companies are all using NACS in 2025, it makes little sense for them to mandate CCS chargers. With Tesla, Ford, Rivian, and GM all going NACS, it seems likely that more will follow. Hyundai is already thinking about it: https://www.autoblog.com/2023/06/20/hyundai-to-consider-joining-teslas-north-american-charging-standard-alliance/ https://www.autoblog.com/2023/06/20/hyundai-to-consider-join.... Stellantis (Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, Fiat) is evaluating it: https://fordauthority.com/2023/06/ford-rival-stellantis-looks-into-nacs-in-wake-of-tesla-deal/ https://fordauthority.com/2023/06/ford-rival-stellantis-look.... In fact, Tesla had to make its connector non-proprietary or they'd be locked out of everything funded by the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Program. The rules allow for non-CCS chargers to be available (as long as there's also a CCS charger) only if they're non-proprietary. If Tesla had kept their connector proprietary, any charger with a Tesla connector would be ineligible for government funding. Now, they can have a Tesla connector as long as they also have a CCS connector. As I've speculated, given that it seems likely most EVs sold in the US will be using NACS from 2025+, it seems likely that the government will even change its rules to favor the NACS connector. Tesla's shift to calling it the North American Charging Standard and opening it up to competitors is probably more about preventing one of their advantages (Tesla vehicles being compatible with the most charging stations) into a major liability (Tesla vehicles requiring an adapter to use the majority of charging stations in 2025+). https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2023-02-28/pdf/2023-03500.pdf https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2023-02-28/pdf/2023-0...

3y ago

tango_mike_yank 3y ago

If Tesla's charging network is available to Ford, GM, Rivian, then why would someone buy a Tesla

tw04 3y ago

I view this as very RIM/Blackberry like, only Tesla has learned from history. Eventually the competitor charging networks were going to be "good enough" - Tesla had the option of working with Ford or GM, or letting them dump their combined resources into a competitor (and every other MFG). Sure in the short-term this will make them more vulnerable to competition, but if your only moat was the charging network you were doomed to fail anyway. Had RIM opened up BES/BBM to the iphone early on, they might still be around today.

speed_spread 3y ago
BES was possibly a more significant part of RIM's than the charger infrastructure is to Tesla. Opening the charger infrastructure is just them defining their moat, really. Tesla will still sell cars but more importantly they'll keep collecting usage data that they'll resell to the highest bidder.
- sebzim4500 3y ago
  When Tesla sells someone a car for $50k, what do you think is the value of the data on how often they charge it? $20? Surely it can never be a significant revenue stream.
  - mattmaroon 3y ago
    Well they’ll have data on non-Tesla users now too. The current market leader in the US has about 17% share, so even if Tesla eventually becomes the biggest auto maker, you’d still expect at least 75% of cars to not be made by them. They now have charging data on those 75%. More profitable than the data though will be selling the charges. The rates they’re charging at Tesla Superchargers are far in excess of what they’re paying for the electricity.
  - chung8123 3y ago
    That is an interesting question. If Tesla has a network of cars collecting real world data that can be used to train ML I suspect it might be more than $20 per Tesla in the future (they can sell models to other manufacturers). Maybe not right now but more a future thing.

V__ 3y ago

Why are these automakers pushing to adopt Teslas solution, which isn't standardized or open, instead of creating a new CCS3? I can't imagine NACS to ever be adopted in the EU, so why the additional complexity?

015a 3y ago
Europe's CCS and America's CCS are already incompatible (CCS1 vs 2).
panick21_ 3y ago
Tesla solution is open. Why not CCS3, because that would take many years to get going and no charging network for it would exist. Tesla alone has 3000 Superchargers in the US. It would take decades to get CCS3 to that point. > I can't imagine NACS to ever be adopted in the EU, so why the additional complexity? That complexity is already there. NACS will be the standard in North America. CCS2 in Europe. Korea seems to insist in CHAdeMO and China GB/T. A lot of the rest of the world is open to be captured by different standards.
fomine3 3y ago
It's happy to avoid xkcd:standards

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

Sounds like Tesla is hurting to start lowering that barrier to competitors.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

javier_e06 3y ago

I am an EV user. My connection is not Tesla compatible. I wish the government would prod manufacturers to create a common connection for all EVs the same way there is a common gas intake for all gas powered vehicles.

freerobby 3y ago
What charge port do you have that isn't Tesla compatible with an adapter?
- Rebelgecko 3y ago
  AFAICT, unless you're in San Francisco, Sacramento, or New York there is currently no adapter that will let a non-Tesla vehicle use a supercharger.
  - simondotau 3y ago
    That's because much of the Supercharger network was deployed with the assumption of only supporting Tesla vehicles. If any third party charging network deployed NACS fast charging stalls in your area, they would absolutely be compatible with any CCS1 vehicle with an adapter.
    - Rebelgecko 3y ago
      Would something like a TeslaTap work with a 350kW charger? Or do new adapters need to be created?
      - josephcsible 3y ago
        Adapters like TeslaTap output J1772, not CCS, so new adapters will need to be created (like the Magic Dock).
      - simondotau 3y ago
        The most likely outcome is that third party stalls will either mimic Tesla's magic dock or over-provision with two cables per stall, or (most likely) have some ratio of NACS-only, CCS1-only, and CHAdeMO stalls based on demand.

martythemaniak 3y ago

One fact that's not widely appreciated: Tesla is very efficient, and this efficiency is starting to have macro effects such as this. They've been building out their network diligently for over a decade, they have the permitting, assembly, uptime, everything dailed in. Every single dollar of capex they put in the network will get them more connectors and more sites in less time than if EA or any other company will get for that same dollar. They might also be the only major manufacturer outside of China that can build EVs profitably at scale. 5 years ago the Model 3 had no competitors and today they have plenty, when looking at the spec sheets. But no one has been able to ship the sheer numbers of EVs Tesla has, because they either physically can't or won't do it because can't make money (it's hard to say as legacy autos don't break out their EV divisions) The Model 3 now costs $40,240, which is $33,400 in 2018 dollars after inflation. That is, they are making comfortable margins on the $35K base model they aspired to when they started selling the model.

isykt 3y ago

Is there any reason to buy a non-Tesla EV before 2025?

tdiggity 3y ago
Buy the car for what it is today, not what it might be tomorrow. Many Tesla owners have been burned hoping for a feature, a retrofit, or even missing out on one taken away.
- isykt 3y ago
  If I’m evaluating EVs for what they are today, I see little reason to buy a non-Tesla, since the charger is going to require an adapter for the charging infrastructure that appears to be the standard soon.
  - tdiggity 3y ago
    That's a fair point - if you are going to drive long distances, then a Tesla is the best option in terms of network reliability and price. But for most, an adapter with the occasional road trip isn't a deal breaker. Tesla owners have had to use an adapter for charging at non-superchargers since inception.
elihu 3y ago
Sure; maybe you want a type of vehicle Tesla doesn't offer, or you want to buy from a vendor who's more open about making parts and service information available to users, or you want a more traditional car interface with normal switches and buttons rather than a big touch screen. Your question is sort of like asking if there's any reason to buy a computer that isn't made by Apple. Of course there is, it just depends on what you're looking for. I'd imagine a lot of people are also explicitly avoiding Tesla due to its association with its increasingly erratic owner.
- isykt 3y ago
  If any of those conditions are true, why not wait until 2025 when the charging connection is settled?

rednerrus 3y ago

So now Tesla is going to own all of the "Gas Stations" in America?

apexalpha 3y ago

I don't really care whether it's CCS or NACS. What I do care about is that a choice is made. The worst outcome for EV adaption would be to have multiple different charger networks and plugs that all need adapters to be compatible with each other. What's important is that there is single standard, not how thin the cable is or how it looks. For the EU, CCS was chosen a long time ago and this means every car can use every charger without thinking about it. For the US, it makes sense to go with NACS if Tesla opens up their network. Cars are always built to spec for either EU, US or any market. So it matters little if EU and US chose a different plug.