[HN Gopher] Rivian embraces Tesla's charging standard for EVs
___________________________________________________________________
Rivian embraces Tesla's charging standard for EVs
Author : belltaco
Score : 318 points
Date : 2023-06-20 13:16 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ev-edition.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ev-edition.com)
| bpodgursky wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Is NACS superior to CCS in any way apart from install base? I
| was under the impression NACS was inferior.
| zodo123 wrote:
| NACS is dramatically easier to maneuver into the port on the
| car, and supports higher amperage. CSS requires an extra
| internal flap on the car side that you have to open and close
| manually, as well. It's a seriously underwhelming design.
| simondotau wrote:
| NACS is smaller and lighter than CCS1.
|
| By combining DC and AC onto the same pins, it reduces the
| part count and weight of bus bars / conductors which run from
| a car's charging socket and the battery.
|
| NACS is a better user experience for people and significantly
| so for people with mobility issues, disabilities, etc.
|
| The pre-eminent NACS fast charging network is markedly better
| than the totality of all CCS1 charging networks.
| xp84 wrote:
| Suggest to watch the Technology Connections video. TL;DW:
| it's fine, it has some advantages and no real disadvantages.
|
| It's annoying that the US will once again be out of sync with
| the rest of the world, that's the main drawback.
| AlgorithmicTime wrote:
| [dead]
| bombela wrote:
| With a bit of luck they will be able to name the connector
| in inches, making it even more patriotic.
| vel0city wrote:
| Even with CCS1 the US was out of sync with "the rest of the
| world", which uses a few different connectors.
|
| And in the end it doesn't really matter. I'm not driving my
| car across the ocean very often. Import processes already
| tend to make taking a car from one continent to the other a
| huge hassle, so to the vast majority of people its probably
| easier to just sell the car in one place and buy another on
| the other shore.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| The rest of the world does not mean Europe, no matter how
| much euro nationalists think it does. (China and Japan for
| example don't use the CCS plug).
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| 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.
| rblatz wrote:
| The form factor is significantly smaller, which means it's
| easier to use. But more importantly the charging connector
| has no moving parts. A common failure on CCS chargers is that
| the locking pin breaks and the charger will no longer stay
| firmly attached to the vehicle causing charging issues. On
| the NACS adapter the locking pin is on the vehicle.
|
| Charging infrastructure sees significantly more duty cycles
| than an individual car so it makes sense to move the wear
| part to the vehicle.
| option wrote:
| install base matter A LOT.
| belval wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| My understanding is that NACS is open:
| https://www.tesla.com/blog/opening-north-american-
| charging-s...
| simondotau wrote:
| It's open in every respect that matters, but pedants will
| rightly point out that it hasn't been submitted to a
| classic standards body (like SAE) to formalise in the way
| that satisfies middle management and expensive
| consultants.
| shmoe wrote:
| its called NACS because they opened it up.. didn't really
| have much of a name before.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| And/or, since automakers evidently need some sort of agreement
| with Tesla[1], if it takes a while, it could be due to
| negotiations.
|
| For example, if there are fees for using the connector (not
| sure), an automaker might hold out to get the best price. There
| may be terms related to the rates that will be paid for using
| Tesla's charging stations.
|
| There might be other issues. Maybe Tesla wants to qualify
| automakers' designs so cars don't cause problems with their
| charging network, or vice versa. The automaker might want
| access to Tesla engineers or facilities for help with designing
| or testing stuff.
|
| Also, I don't know who's supplying the connectors (that will be
| built into the cars), but if it's Tesla, the automaker may want
| commitments about how many will be delivered by what date and
| at what cost.
|
| There could also be some sort of IT integration, like charging
| location map data or maybe allowing customers a different way
| to pay for charging (through the automaker's app or something).
|
| ---
|
| [1] Rivian's press release (https://www.businesswire.com/news/h
| ome/20230620267452/en/Riv...) says they "signed an agreement
| with Tesla".
| vel0city wrote:
| > Maybe Tesla wants to qualify automakers' designs so cars
| don't cause problems with their charging network, or vice
| versa.
|
| I shouldn't need Exxon and Shell and Phillips and Wawa and
| Sheetz and whoever to qualify my car to get gas. I shouldn't
| need Tesla and EA and whoever to qualify my car to get
| electricity.
|
| I don't see how anyone can see that and think its a good
| thing.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| I don't like that a single private company is in charge of
| this standard, but I think this sort of thing is pretty
| common and necessary when two companies integrate
| technologies.
|
| For example, look at how USB C compatibility worked at
| first. There was a standard, but there were still lots of
| problems. In practice, implementers may not correctly
| understand certain parts of the standard, may not grasp the
| importance of doing something a specific way, or may try to
| cut corners. Also, the standard may have omissions or
| errors.
|
| All of this should theoretically be fed back into a future
| version of the standard, but with evolving technologies, it
| takes time to get there.
| vel0city wrote:
| Yeah but Google doesn't need to certify Anker or whoever
| to make a charger and there's no on-going agreement to
| make this charging brick work with my phone. Anker can't
| just later decide to not work with Samsung devices and
| suddenly not work. They all just speak USB-PD and it
| works.
|
| Tesla chargers shouldn't care if the car is a Tesla or
| Rivian or GM or VW or whatever, if it plugs in and it
| speaks CCS it should charge.
| MrMetlHed wrote:
| Hopefully government funding of any type will be withheld
| from Tesla until this happens. I don't care about the
| port as much as I care about anything with the right
| connector should be able to charge anywhere. Having to
| have the proper "agreement" between your car manufacturer
| and the charging company seems ridiculous. Especially
| with how mercurial some of the leaders of these companies
| can be.
| rangestransform wrote:
| maybe google should've, i remember it was basically
| "buyer beware" with cables. there was this benson
| something guy who was testing cables and found that a
| bunch of them would blow up your phone, until he
| literally had his test equipment blown up by a bad cable.
| compared to the usb-c situation, apple mfi is a godsend.
| breischl wrote:
| They all need to agree how it's done though. And gas cars
| were the same - did you think the size and shape of the gas
| pump nozzle were handed down from God or something?
| Everyone had to agree on that at some point. Apparently
| that was in 1930, or around 30 years after cars were
| invented. https://www.cspdailynews.com/csp-
| magazine/industry-views-all...
|
| We are at that point right now. That is the process
| happening in front of us. Eventually it will all be settled
| enough that nobody will have to check that devices work
| with each other, but we aren't there yet.
| vel0city wrote:
| > did you think the size and shape of the gas pump nozzle
| were handed down from God or something?
|
| No, but you'd just have the fuel tank opening large
| enough that you can put in any particular handle. And in
| the end you didn't need Gulf saying this brand or that
| brand could buy gas, but _not_ that brand. So while there
| were a lot of different handles before U842, they usually
| all actually worked with all the different brands and the
| gas stations didn 't have to pre-approve the different
| cars to get gas there.
|
| I've had a few gas tools and gas tanks which didn't have
| a gas port that was shaped for a U842 handle and yet I've
| still managed to fuel them just fine. I didn't need to
| get Shell's authorization every time I wanted to fuel a
| Toro.
|
| I'm kind of amazed people think its a good thing for
| Shell to have the ability to say "no, that brand of car
| isn't allowed to buy gas here anymore". Imagine if Ford
| operated most of the pumps in the US and could just
| decide Toyotas could no longer get gas at the majority of
| pumps. Sound like a good idea?
|
| Imagine if Tesla operated most of the DCFC dispensers and
| could just decide Toyotas could no longer get gas at the
| majority of dispensers? Oh wait, they already made that
| decision. Despite the majority of Tesla dispensers
| technically supporting CCS communications a Toyota
| couldn't possibly charge on most of those dispensers even
| if they had an adapter, because Toyota and Tesla don't
| have an agreement.
| zodo123 wrote:
| I'd say that's the case for Stellantis (Dodge etc), but I
| suspect the big European automakers will be slower to get
| onboard due to the greater investment in CCS in the EU. It'll
| require a bigger mental shift, as their leadership may not have
| as strong a grasp on the North American situation, and will
| probably have a greater bias toward "standards". (Yes I realize
| we're talking about CCS1 vs CCS2, but it doesn't practically
| matter).
| pornel wrote:
| Nah, Stellantis is just bad. Their EV tech is poor. They have
| no dedicated EV platform, and they struggle to make profit on
| EVs. They're not invested in CCS at all -- they're still
| hoping EVs are a fad.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Stellantis has dedicated EVs in Europe. That largely why
| Stellantis was created in the first place. So FCA would not
| be totally lost on EVs. The PSA group does have EVs.
|
| But you are correct, they are not much invested in CCS in
| the US. Unlike say Volkswagen.
| pornel wrote:
| By lack of a dedicated platform I mean that all of their
| EVs share the platform with ICE/hybrid versions of
| vehicles. They're either available with an engine of your
| choice (like Peugeot and DS), or are only a new body on
| an older ICE+EV shared platform (like Jeep Avenger is
| built on Opel/Vauxhall Astra).
|
| Contrast this with VW MEB, Hyundai/Kia eGMP, Porsche J1,
| Mercedes EVA, etc. that were all ground-up EV skateboards
| without ICE support.
| panick21_ wrote:
| I thought PSA already had that. But maybe I was wrong.
| [deleted]
| thepasswordis wrote:
| 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.
| harshaw wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| No technical reason. But the adapter might not be "small"
| vel0city wrote:
| I dunno, this adapter doesn't seem to be exceptionally large.
|
| https://i.ytimg.com/vi/BdukzpR7_ao/maxresdefault.jpg
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| 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.
| bilsbie wrote:
| Won't the chargers get overcrowded?
| deelowe wrote:
| Tesla sure hopes so.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| 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.
| jsight wrote:
| 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.
| DueDilligence wrote:
| [dead]
| pathartl wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| See Sandy Munro's rant:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VBCpAHvOpQ
| satrday wrote:
| Having used both, NACS is more compact, so both the port on the
| car and the end of the cable are significantly smaller than
| CCS. The cable itself is also lighter and more "usable" than
| CCS. At least at the newest V3 superchargers, the NACS cable is
| so much more flexible and easier to manage.
|
| Munro Live took both connectors apart and did an overview:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmjofPpThWU
| vel0city wrote:
| > the NACS cable is so much more flexible and easier to
| manage.
|
| Nothing stops CCS from using smaller cables. Tesla tends to
| have cables which aren't rated for as long of lives with the
| plans on replacing them more often. Most CCS dispenser
| manufacturers chose beefier cables which were supposedly
| rated for longer lives, but environmental factors and people
| (ab)using the cables seems to lead to those cables not having
| anywhere near their rated lives.
|
| I've seen some 50kW CCS chargers with downright flimsy
| cables, much smaller and thinner than most Tesla cables.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| v4 are the new Superchargers, but they're mostly being
| installed in Europe where everything has been CCS for ages
| and Tesla needs the longer cable to support cars with ports
| in random corners.
|
| Unless all these other manufacturers move their charging
| ports around in addition to switching connectors, the short
| cables on all the v3 Supercharger infrastructure is going to
| be an issue here for a while. If your port is in the wrong
| spot there's no way to reach without blocking two spaces.
| sunflowerfly wrote:
| Note that the CCS in Europe is different than the CCS in
| the US. We were already on our own unique standard.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _Technology Connections did a deep dive on CCS and it seems
| like it 's a more flexible connector with a truly open
| standard._
|
| He did a video on this _Connextras_ channel about this news:
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjny4u5THpU
|
| While he thinks the Tesla physical connector is probably
| better, the CCS communications standard is better (AIUI). So
| once Telsa adopts that, it will probably be a good system.
|
| Also: he's talking about CCS1, and not CCS2, which can do
| things like handle three-phase power.
| erinnh wrote:
| Wait. CCS1 cant handle three-phase power?
|
| I just read about it and no wonder its not that popular.
|
| You can charge 7.4kw maximum in the US at home with CCS1.
|
| In Europe you can charge up to 22kw without going DC.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| I think in the EU its CCS2 including the tesla super
| charger. They have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_C
| harging_System#/medi... the left hand plug.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _Wait. CCS1 cant handle three-phase power?_
|
| CCS1 = SAE J1772 + DC.
|
| J1772 has L1, L2/neutral, ground, control pins:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J1772
|
| J1772 is popular where one-phase is popular in residences
| (i.e., US, CA). CCS2 has L1, L2, L3, and neutral+ground:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_2_connector
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J3068
|
| Technically there was nothing stopping the use of CCS2 in
| the US, as the L2 and L3 pins would simply not be used at
| people's homes. But one-phase J1772 was already around, and
| it was decided to go with legacy compatibility.
|
| I'm sure CCS2 exists in more commercial settings with heavy
| duty EVs, e.g., Volvo Trucks:
|
| * https://www.volvotrucks.us/news-and-stories/press-
| releases/2...
|
| Though high/er capacity (DC) plugs are being worked on:
|
| * https://insideevs.com/news/535918/megawatt-charging-
| system-e...
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megawatt_Charging_System
| ianburrell wrote:
| Level 2 can charge up to 19kW (240V at 80A) but 12kW (50A)
| is more common.
|
| NACS also can't do three-phase power. Three-phase power is
| rare in the US, it is only found in commercial locations
| that need it.
| erinnh wrote:
| How does the US get to 240v if you guys don't have
| multiple phases at home?
|
| Not an electrician, but here In Europe we get to 400v by
| combining the three 240v phases we get.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Tesla start charging much much faster. Tesla communication is
| perfectly fine for Tesla to Tesla connection and Tesla has no
| need to change that.
|
| Teslas start charging within 5-8s, CCS often take 30s to
| start charging.
|
| Tesla will follow the standard for other cars, but I hope
| they improve on the implementation.
| shmoe wrote:
| So much better. Not to mention, same connector for AC (home)
| charging and DC fast charging (on the road at the super
| chargers). Whereas now with CCS you have a little cover over
| the fast charging pins you remove from your usual AC port to
| plug in the DC fast charging combo. So much nicer.
| zlsa wrote:
| CCS1 (the variant of CCS used in the US; basically J1772 + HVDC
| pins) has a lot of flaws that can't easily fixed in a
| backwards-compatible way:
|
| 1. It's gigantic, making it a lot harder to handle and plug in
| [0] 2. CCS1 has a mechanical latch on the handle side (as
| opposed to NACS, which puts an electronic latch in the vehicle
| side). This results in a few problems: a. The CCS1 latch is is
| exposed and easily broken, allowing the vehicle to begin
| charging without being physically latched in (meaning it can be
| unplugged without pressing the lever to unlatch, while still
| carrying HVDC at hundreds of amps - there is protection against
| this but it's not great practice to rely on the control/ground
| pins being unplugged first, rather than making a latch that
| isn't so easily circumvented) b. The latch is long and requires
| a lot of force to unlatch (this may just be my bad experiences
| speaking, but I've always needed to wiggle the connector a bit
| to relieve the friction.)
|
| Unrelated to the physical connector, Tesla's charging network
| in the US is far larger and more reliable than everyone else's
| CCS1 networks combined, and the only way to use the network is
| NACS (at the moment, anyway. Magic Dock[1] is being added to
| some superchargers and will most likely be rolled out wider in
| the near future.)
|
| 0: https://digitalassets.tesla.com/tesla-
| contents/image/upload/... 1:
| https://electrek.co/2023/02/23/tesla-supercharger-magic-dock...
| kotaKat wrote:
| I have had a colleague describe to me the lingering smell of
| ozone when he was able to unplug CCS1 while charging. The
| charger and car dutifully stopped charging and the charger
| nagged to Not Do That but it certainly left that ozone
| wafting...
| pseudosavant wrote:
| If I compare it to USB-based connectors where USB-C never came
| along.
|
| NACS is like a Lightning plug. From a practical/pragmatic
| perspective, it was clearly the best plug at the time it was
| created. It solved real user problems.
|
| CCS a micro-USB 3.0 plug. Maybe you've never seen one[0], but
| they are a real thing. Let's take an awful plug (micro USB /
| J1772) and clumsily add a few more wires on to it to make it
| both more capable and even worse. It does what you need it to
| do, but nobody has ever thought it was good at it.
|
| [0]
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Connecto...
| pathartl wrote:
| IMO then let's standardize on what the replacement to
| NACS/CCS should be. Personally, I don't see the big deal
| behind a larger connector, especially if it's a bit more
| future proof without requiring extremely clever engineering.
| I mean we've dealt with huge gasoline/diesel pump handles for
| nearly a century.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| NACS is perfectly fine. It's open now, unlike Lightning
| gibolt wrote:
| NACS can be plugged in one handed by a child. CCS1 needs
| perfect alignment which can be a struggle for a large man using
| 2 hands in optimal conditions.
|
| NACS cables are lighter and thinner, which really matters when
| it is cold and the cables harden.
|
| This article shows some visual comparisons:
| https://www.motortrend.com/news/tesla-opens-charging-connect...
| conk wrote:
| CCS current spec/design can deliver up to 350kW (although few
| if any cars can take advantage of that today).
|
| NACS claims it can provide up to 1MW (1000A @ 1000V). I think
| it will be a while before we see cars able to charge anywhere
| near this, but there is a trend right now of big EV pickups
| with massive batteries. Higher power chargers means faster
| charge times.
|
| The only downside I see with NACS is you can't level 2 charge
| using 3-phase power. This isn't really an issue in North
| America because it's super rare to see 3 phase power at
| someone's home. In most of Europe homes do have 3-phase power
| and large loads like an EV are required to use it. This is one
| reason why Tesla uses CCS2 in Europe. The NACS connect doesn't
| have the space for a 3rd power pin.
| sebazzz wrote:
| Actually NACS doesn't claim anything regarding current, see
| the spec[0]. It only claims 1000 volts, and the current is
| left implementation-defined citing that 900A with a non-
| liquid cooled inlet.
|
| [0]: https://tesla-
| cdn.thron.com/static/HXVNIC_North_American_Cha...
| wlesieutre wrote:
| CCS1 already doesn't support 3-phase power, so it's not like
| switching from CCS1 to NACS in the US is losing anything
| there.
|
| It wouldn't work as-is for Europe because of that, but
| they're so far into CCS2 adoption that they wouldn't consider
| it regardless.
| sebazzz wrote:
| To clarify:
|
| 3-phase power is irrelevant when it comes to CCS. The point
| of the Combined Charging System is the "combined". It is
| the signalling pins in the upper part of the Mennekes or
| J1772 connector and the large DC connectors in the bottom
| part.
|
| For slow charging, 3-phase power is relevant (the IEC Type
| 2 / Mennekes connector in this case).
| jsight wrote:
| He was saying that CCS1 in the US uses J1772 which does
| not support 3-phase power.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| To note, the J1772 connector (the mainstream AC charging port
| in most cars in the US) also does not have 3 phase support.
| For commercial charging, the typical approach is to just use
| 2 phases of a 3 phase commercial supply for AC charging. This
| basically means commercial charging is limited to 208V (2
| phases of 120V that are 120 deg out of phase).
|
| So, there's no loss of function going from CCS in the US to
| NACS.
| jaclaz wrote:
| >In most of Europe homes do have 3-phase power and large
| loads like an EV are required to use it.
|
| Yes and no, distribution is usually 3-phase so the 3 phases
| do arrive to the building, but in a number of countries in
| Europe inside the home only 1 phase is used and the amount of
| available power (by contract) is a fraction of what the US
| are used to (of course depending by country, but it is rare
| that a house has a contract in excess of 3 or 6 kW).
|
| Most detached homes (the small subset that have a garage)
| won't likely be upgraded to more than 12 kW or so, still 1
| phase, leaving not that much for charging.
|
| Possibly larger buildings with common parking space may be
| able to take advantage of the 3-phases distribution, still,
| particularly in cities, the big problem (once the EV's will
| be more common) will be the low voltage distribution lines
| and the transformers/cabins from medium to low voltage.
|
| EDIT: replaced "usually" with "in a number of countries in
| Europe" did not want to generalize
| Symbiote wrote:
| Please don't generalize "Europe" when you aren't sure.
| (Also goes for the GP.)
|
| I have three-phase power in an 80m2 apartment, as that's
| standard in Denmark.
|
| I never saw three-phase power in a house or flat in
| Britain, but part of the terrible plumbing is 7-9kW
| electric showers. (Cheaper to install than a shower
| connected to hot water, landlord doesn't care about the
| price to run it.)
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > Please don't generalize "Europe" when you aren't sure.
| (Also goes for the GP.) I have three-phase power in an
| 80m2 apartment, as that's standard in Denmark.
|
| Now now kids, play nicely. ;-)
|
| I think the underlying question we should _really_ be
| asking here is not willy-waving over whether you have a
| three-phase supply or not, but rather how large your main
| fuse is (there 's a euphemism for you !).
|
| I'm not familiar with Denmark, but I suspect even your
| fancy 80m2 apartment with its three-phase supply will
| still only have a (relatively) tiny main fuse.
|
| TL;DR you're still not going to have a supercharger at
| home any time soon.
| jaclaz wrote:
| >TL;DR you're still not going to have a supercharger at
| home any time soon.
|
| Yep, and even if you have 3 phases and a large main fuse,
| the issue remains when you sum all the power needed on a
| same street in a city.
|
| And I apologize if I seemed to improperly generalize.
| davrosthedalek wrote:
| I hope I am wrong on that, but this is exactly one of the
| two largely unaddressed problems for a complete change to
| an EV fleet in countries like Germany. 1) Do you have
| enough power delivery available, especially with the push
| to electric heat-pump based heating. That seems to be a
| serious problem, I heard from some people that they are
| not allowed to connect their heat-pumps, even in newly
| constructed areas! Solvable, with political will, but I
| don't see the will. 2) Where will people charge who park
| on the streets. It seems there are technical solutions
| (electrified curbstones), but again, political will to
| change much infrastructure is required.
| Symbiote wrote:
| 40A on each phase, so 120A total -- at least as I
| understand it [1]. I think that's plenty to charge a car,
| but good luck parking on the 4th floor. The oven and hob
| use all three phases. I think tumble driers used to, but
| they're now so efficient in the EU it's no longer
| worthwhile.
|
| Several ordinary 3-phase sockets have been installed by
| parking spaces in the basement, and are rented by
| residents with EVs.
|
| [1] The main breaker:
| https://www.se.com/ww/en/product/A9Z61440/residual-
| current-c...
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > TL;DR you're still not going to have a supercharger at
| home any time soon.
|
| true, but a three phase CCS will do 22kw. the EU has the
| advantage that 240v needs half the current to get the
| same power as the US
| Y_Y wrote:
| An electric kettle can draw about 3kW, I've only once seen
| a home with a limit this absurdly low
| legulere wrote:
| Apparently there exists even 1.5 kW in Italy:
| https://tariffe.segugio.it/guide-e-strumenti/domande-
| frequen...
| bombcar wrote:
| As an aside, Europe/UK electric kettles are much better
| and faster and hotter than American ones, because they
| are twice the voltage.
|
| For real, compare them. The only ones in America that can
| even compete are hard-wired commercial deals.
| legulere wrote:
| I would say in many places in Europe three phase power is
| normal inside the home. In fact electric stoves including
| induction usually rely on three phases.
|
| I'm currently building a house in Germany and 34 kW was the
| smallest option and 86 kW the biggest option. 11 kW
| 3-phases is pretty much the standard for a Wallbox at your
| home.
|
| In Italy I know there's usually only very few power like 3
| kW
| saalweachter wrote:
| I'm a little confused by fast charging standards, to be
| honest.
|
| 1MW is 20x the maximum draw of a standard house, and 800x the
| average draw of a US house. The hydro plant down the road
| generates 5MW.
|
| It just sounds crazy to plan to pull that much power charging
| a car at a time.
| bloggie wrote:
| It is indeed totally insane, but this is what is being
| worked on, not necessairly for cars but trucks and semi
| trucks for example that have much larger batteries than a
| car. Already to achieve 250+ kW charging stations have to
| have huge cables and watercooled connectors, here's one
| such installation I saw some years ago
| https://i.imgur.com/BpG4QAa.jpg and an example of a cooled
| connector for 0.5 MW https://www.phoenixcontact.com/en-
| ca/products/dc-charging-ca...
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I assume the next jump in power will come from voltage. A
| Model 3 pulls ~600A when charging at 250kW, because it's
| relatively low voltage. If they alter the charging design
| to accept 800 or 1000V we could see over half a MW
| without a change in cable design. But I'd guess at this
| point that would be moot because the cell charging rate
| is the real limit anyway.
| panick21_ wrote:
| All indication point to that the Cybertruck will be the
| first new architecture with a 1000V architecture.
|
| Many others have standardized on 800V, for example the
| Koreans.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| Migrating to higher voltage doesn't do anything to charge
| batteries faster. The only advantage is that you can
| decrease the size of the cabling since current goes down.
| On the other side though, you need to move all drive
| circuitry, motors, etc, to handle higher voltage
| architecture, which may end of costing more overall.
| cyberax wrote:
| Not necessarily. Ford uses a 400V-based architecture, but
| it can charge at 800V by connected two sections of the
| battery in series.
| bloggie wrote:
| Yes Porsche has started with this, they have ~800 V
| batteries, as you said batteries themselves are the
| practical limit at the moment but both larger batteries
| (as with trucks) and new battery technology can help to
| lift that limit. There are enough engineering challenges
| at 1000 A I don't think we will see higher currents than
| that for a while!
| Symbiote wrote:
| For a comparison the other way, high speed trains in Europe
| are around 10-16MW.
|
| Typical railway locomotives used for freight trains in
| Britain can draw a maximum of around 5MW.
|
| Ordinary-speed electric trains (for commuters, regional
| trains etc) with a limit of about 180km/h (110mph) draw
| 1.5-2MW.
|
| Presumably the full power is only needed when starting off
| on a hill.
| NickM wrote:
| DC charging stations sometimes have batteries on site so
| that they can charge up from the grid and then deliver
| bursts of power from the batteries during charging.
| Apparently this is often worth it to avoid the high demand
| fees that utilities charge when you draw a lot of power at
| once.
|
| I assume this will become more ubiquitous as charging
| speeds continue to increase.
|
| (You're right that a megawatt is a high power draw in the
| context of normal household electricity usage, but keep in
| mind that if you can pump ten gallons of gas in a minute
| you're effectively drawing the equivalent of something like
| 20MW, so in the context of vehicle refueling it's not so
| crazy.)
| Alupis wrote:
| The problem is obvious though, isn't it? Our current
| infrastructure simply cannot handle a ton of EV's all
| wanting to charge up all day long - as is done currently
| with gas stations all over the country.
|
| It'll take decades to bring our infrastructure up to
| where it needs to be to support this - yet people act
| like we're already there. Some states still struggle just
| to keep the lights on during major parts of the year...
| recursive wrote:
| It's only the highest peaks of demand that cause problems
| for the grid. EV charging, on average, is one of the
| least time sensitive loads there is. People charge in the
| middle of the night when its cheap.
| wilg wrote:
| The load is spread out in a completely different way than
| gas, because 100% of gas cars get gas at a station, while
| 80% of people with EVs slow-charge at home (or work or
| whatever). Fast chargers are for road-trips only.
|
| Obviously, if we're going to move to cleaner energy we
| will need infrastructure investment. Worrying that it's
| not already there makes no sense. The demand for improved
| electrical infrastructure will be a forcing function.
| There's no need to wait for it. But again, most charging
| isn't fast charging and likely never will be.
|
| (Charging for apartments and stuff still has a bit of a
| way to go, so sometimes those people use fast chargers as
| part of their regular routine, but the solution to that
| is easy and underway: just put chargers in the apartment
| parking lot and/or on the streets.)
| saalweachter wrote:
| > but keep in mind that if you can pump ten gallons of
| gas in a minute you're effectively drawing the equivalent
| of something like 20MW, so in the context of vehicle
| refueling it's not so crazy
|
| If 15 Teslas pass through a stretch of road per minute
| with full 100kWh battery packs, you could also describe
| that as 90MW of current, but it's also not really.
| jorvi wrote:
| I always forget just how energy dense petroleum and its
| derivatives are..
| athenot wrote:
| This is true. Though the electric batteries do have the
| advantage of having already paid the "thermodynamics
| tax". Some of the energy in gas will go towards heat
| losses; energy that cannot be converted to movement.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| But that thermodynamic tax is a negative in very cold
| climates where the electric vehicle will see a major
| change in total travel distance compared to ICE.
| davrosthedalek wrote:
| And they are very efficient over a much larger rpm band.
| But the real win is the energy recovery from regenerative
| breaking.
| davrosthedalek wrote:
| Yes. One of the usual YT channels had this interesting
| picture. Gas mileage is miles per gallon. Or in this
| case, do it the European way: l/100km. The unit of that
| is an area. Typically a rather small one, ca 0.1mm^2.
|
| That's the area of a trench you have to dig along your
| path if you want to supply your car from the trench
| instead of your gas tank.
| matthewfcarlson wrote:
| When charging, the Tesla shows you a little miles per
| hour figure (how many miles of range you gain per hour of
| charging) and it can often reach 1000 or so on the super
| chargers I use frequently. It's fun to calculate the
| miles per hour of gas (around 12,000).
| philg_jr wrote:
| You'll never need that much power at home. Level 2 AC 240V
| 30-50A is fine for overnight charging.
|
| The way Tesla Supercharging works is by using a large bank
| of batteries for the heavy bursts of power draw (>100kW)
| during the initial periods of charging when the battery is
| warm and at a low percent. The batteries at the station are
| backfilled with less current from the grid in the
| background during periods of low use. At least that is how
| I understand it.
|
| but yeah, maybe trucks with huge batteries may be able to
| take advantage of it down the road.
| bombcar wrote:
| It could also be useful at homes to regulate power
| (assuming the grid connections/solar/batteries were all
| available), allowing you to charge faster when power is
| cheap, and pull way back (or even backfeed) when power is
| expensive.
|
| But it's mainly to try to get EV fillups to be gas-
| station like. If you can recharge a Tesla to 80% in 5
| minutes, you've won.
| vegardx wrote:
| I don't know about the NA, but that is definitively not
| the case for most superchargers (or any other brand of
| fast chargers, for that matter) in Europe. Batteries are
| expensive so this is only done in very special cases. I
| know they've used battery banks at some of the electrical
| ferries in Norway, simply because the cost of running new
| high-voltage power lines was deemed more expensive and
| the schedule of the ferries makes it very easy to model.
|
| Power grids are quite large, so any fluctuations across
| the grid is going to be minimal. They are quite good at
| modeling these things, otherwise we'd have rolling
| blackouts quite often. For homes it's the last mile
| that's usually the biggest limiting factor.
|
| But I agree with what you said, for /most/ people
| anything more than 2kW (so 240V/10A) is more than enough
| to charge up overnight. A perk with CCS2 is the support
| for 3-phase power delivery. With very simple wiring and
| some smart(-ish) electronics you can opportunistically
| deliver around 11kW to a single car, or divide it with
| other house appliances or other cars. It's fairly common
| with 400V TN-system in some parts of Europe, which makes
| the support of 3-phase in CCS2 very handy.
| claar wrote:
| Just a nit pick: 10A @ 240V isn't enough to charge my
| Tesla Model Y overnight from empty - but 30A @ 240V
| (7.2kW) is.
| vegardx wrote:
| Most people don't drive 500km per day, the average is
| closer to 50 or so. So on average, you could easily top
| of your battery pack on 240V/10A circuit. That would be
| around 10kWh, which you'll do in 5 hours. Double the
| average and you'll still be topped up next morning.
| wilg wrote:
| I don't think most NA superchargers have batteries
| either, though some definitely do, but I believe going
| forward they are likely to have "powerpacks" to support
| pickup and semi truck charging.
| dmoy wrote:
| > It just sounds crazy to plan to pull that much power
| charging a car at a time.
|
| For comparison, a normal gas station pump is like about 4MW
| of power (fuel).
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Electric cars are almost 4X as efficient as a gas car, so
| 1MW of electricy and 4MW of gasoline are roughly
| equivalent in miles added per minute.
|
| OTOH the only batteries that can absorb 1MW of
| electricity are those in some Class 8 trucks, and Class 8
| diesel trucks are usually filled with pumps a lot faster
| than a standard gas station pump.
| [deleted]
| saalweachter wrote:
| It's a useful comparison for how long it takes to refuel
| a vehicle, but "moving a liquid storing chemical
| potential energy through a tube" and "move electricity
| through a wire [and re-store it as electro-chemical
| potential energy]" are two such radically different
| activities that it glosses over a lot to equate the two.
| sp332 wrote:
| NACS doesn't have a standard for vehicle-to-home (or vehicle-
| to-grid) charging. When they opened up the standard, Tesla said
| that it was allowed, but they didn't specify any standard way
| to do it. So it might happen, but there's potential for
| incompatibilities between car manufacturers and charging
| systems.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Chademo supports bidirectional charging. But bidirectional
| charging means you basically need a DC fast charger, and
| those are like $10k. (Hard to find an actual number online
| besides Alibaba... it's always an "inquire for price" email
| quote button... which tells you it's gonna be like $10k.)
|
| By far the easiest way to pull power from an EV is from the
| 12V subsystem. The DC-DC converter for EVs usually is like
| 2kW, so it's substantial power. ...although older Teslas make
| it hard to access this much as I think they were worried
| about people abusing free Supercharging... there's a 12 Amp
| fuse for the cigarette lighter port and a 50 Amp fuse for the
| jump posts accessible in the front, even 12V and 12A is
| enough to power a fridge for weeks if you buffer it through
| one of those "solar generator" things. That's what I did
| during a recent power outage for my 2013 Model S. My 2013
| Nissan Leaf has a 12V battery that's easier to access, and I
| could pull about 1.2kW from that (have to keep the car on so
| the high voltage battery is connected to the DC-DC converter,
| keeping the 12V subsystem charged) using a couple inverters.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Adopting NACS won't prevent Ford from supporting vehicle-to-
| grid, since they build both the truck and the charger, and
| the connector itself doesn't care what direction the
| electrons are flowing.
|
| But it would be really nice if it was standardized for
| interoperability reasons.
| cyberax wrote:
| To do power-to-grid you simply need to connect to the car's
| HVDC bus and tell the car "please don't panic if you see
| current flowing out, not in".
|
| NACS handles the HVDC connection just fine, and simply lacks
| the second part. But it's just software, it can be
| standardized later.
| pornel wrote:
| 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.
| philistine wrote:
| Fast-charging CCS is the Micro-USB 3.0 of car chargers.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_hardware#Connectors
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| 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
| wlesieutre wrote:
| 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.
| tannedNerd wrote:
| It's more like may 2020. I don't know anyone who got a
| car delivered in 2019 ( mine included) that has support
| for ccs
| drewg123 wrote:
| Once you have the retrofit, you can use existing CCS fast
| charger with an adapter. So it is useful in that sense..
| jsight wrote:
| Yeah, only ~80% of Teslas in the US support it without
| modification.
| [deleted]
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| I had the retrofit done on my 2018 MS. Have never once
| successfully charged at a non-Tesla charger. I'm not sure
| if it's me or the charging stations, which are somewhat
| known to be less reliable in general than Tesla's.
| cduzz wrote:
| I got the $450 adapter for my 2016; There's one charger I
| really wanted to use and otherwise I think it'll waste
| space in my trunk. I still haven't used it at that
| charger but I did test it at a CCS1 charger; it worked
| though it was a terrible experience - the CCS1 plug is
| silly huge, the payment processing was terrible, and it
| charged pretty slowly.
|
| I think they're retrofitting the existing supercharger
| network to speak both "NACS" (really CCS1) and the OG
| supercharger protocol. My car, with the retrofit, will be
| able to (HA! good luck believing it'll actually work)
| charge at an EA or other DC Fast charger setup, possibly.
| Non-updated OG S/X cars will just get an error (probably
| I will also, because these other DC Fast chargers simply
| don't have skin in the game -- they're malicious
| compliance).
|
| L2 will be nice -- I'll not have to use the dongle to
| charge at public chargers.
| ajross wrote:
| I bought the adapter off the gray market when it was only
| being sold in Korea, and promptly ran to my local EA
| station to try it out. Of the four plugs, only two
| worked, and one of those was loose and would glitch out
| if I didn't hold it against the car by hand.
|
| I haven't charged via CCS since. It lives in the car as
| an emergency backup, but frankly I wouldn't plan a road
| trip stop at a CCS station if you paid me.
| agloe_dreams wrote:
| FWIIW that is the experience of using an EA station with
| a car that _came_ with a CCS plug.
| Fordec wrote:
| My perception is that CCS2 is better egineering than NACS but
| both are improvements over CCS1 so any alternate adoption is a
| market improvement. Having the pure "best design" is _very_
| rarely the deciding factor to market adoption.
| cyberax wrote:
| CCS2 is... ok. It's not better engineered than NACS, but it's
| adequate.
|
| In particular, it doesn't have the mechanical latch on top
| and has slightly larger DC conductors.
| option wrote:
| yes. just look up photos (to scale) of different connectors on
| the web. All others are UX abominations
| snuxoll wrote:
| AFAICT NACS (read, the "standard" and not Tesla's original
| release) speaks the same protocol as CCS, it just combines the
| AC and DC pins into, yes, a sleeker connector.
|
| So no real "benefit", and it actually adds complexity into the
| car itself. But theoretically one could also make a NACS -> CCS
| adapter, so it wouldn't end up as a CHAdeMO situation.
|
| EDIT: I forgot, the NACS connector is more or less self-
| aligning if you get it in the right general orientation,
| whereas CCS is pretty particular.
| jsight wrote:
| > EDIT: I forgot, the NACS connector is more or less self-
| aligning if you get it in the right general orientation,
| whereas CCS is pretty particular.
|
| This last part is so useful that I'm stunned anyone designed
| a connector without it.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| NACS and CCS currently use different protocols. Older Tesla's
| require a retrofit to support CCS1.
| (https://shop.tesla.com/en_ca/product/ccs-combo-1-adapter).
|
| However, I suspect a big part of the reason why this flurry
| of announcements is happening now is that Tesla is upgrading
| their superchargers to be able to speak the CCS protocol over
| NACS.
| cyberax wrote:
| > Older Tesla's require a retrofit to support CCS1.
|
| This is needed because CCS1 requires special communication
| circuitry for the control data. All Teslas can speak CCS
| protocols.
|
| The initial Supercharger support used different protocols.
| They were simple CAN-based, without any metering or
| billing. In fact, supercharging support was gated by a flag
| on the car's side.
| mavhc wrote:
| NACS uses CCS protocols, see Page 11 of https://tesla-
| cdn.thron.com/static/HXVNIC_North_American_Cha...
|
| For DC charging, communication between the EV and EVSE
| shall be power line communication over the control pilot
| line as depicted in DIN 70121.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Hmmm, we need a good name for the older Tesla plugs that
| aren't NACS compliant. When I said "current NACS", that's
| what I was referring to. I should have been more
| explicit.
|
| Tesla vehicles built before ~2020 do not and can not
| speak CCS without a retrofit.
| jsight wrote:
| Arguably, those are !NACS at all. It wasn't called NACS
| until the specs were delivered, along with the
| requirement to support CCS signaling.
| [deleted]
| outlace wrote:
| I don't know if there are any studies on this but the
| perception amongst EV users that I'm aware of is that NACS is a
| very reliable system (low rate of charging stall breakdowns)
| compared to CCS chargers that seem to break down quite
| frequently. However, it is unclear if this is due to the
| technology difference between CCS and NACS or if it's just due
| to the poor implementation of CCS charger infrastructure.
| dagmx wrote:
| This is anecdotal but:
|
| 1. Whenever I've been on road trips, Tesla chargers outnumber
| CCS chargers by at-least 5:1 and are in much more convenient
| locations
|
| 2. Tesla is much better about repairing their chargers.
| You'll still find busted ones but because there are so many,
| it's easy to go to the next stall. With CCS, there's often
| not a next stall at all nearby.
|
| If you watch YouTube review channels in Canada like The
| Straight Pipes, the number one issue they have with CCS EVs
| is that they can never find working charging stations.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| It's both. The latch on CCS1 is particularly prone to
| breaking, but is responsible for only a small fraction of the
| CCS1 downtime.
| shmoe wrote:
| Also as they age you have to hold the top up for the J1772
| communication pins to initiate the charge and then you can
| let go.
| amluto wrote:
| I think it's incentives. If Tesla chargers break and stay
| broken, then Tesla owners get mad. (And Tesla chargers seem
| to break or malfunction with some regularity -- they're not
| indestructible. But they get fixed, and there are always more
| than one or two chargers at a site.)
|
| The third party chargers don't seem to act like they have a
| reputation to uphold. Also, I'm not convinced they're even
| really motivated to have people use their stations.
| shmoe wrote:
| Like you said, the law of numbers.. if a Tesla stall is out
| theres usually 7 others to choose from. Any other network
| may have one or no alternatives (they're all broken
| sometimes).
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Right, and Tesla is speedy to fix broken ones usually.
| And an occasional bad charger isn't a huge deal (I talked
| to an electrician who was servicing one of them). Gas
| stations regularly have non-working pumps, and I suspect
| those are more expensive to fix.
|
| The Tesla approach is really another level for charging
| compared to everyone else. And even the mobile chargers &
| Level 2 destination chargers are better.
| panick21_ wrote:
| > The third party chargers don't seem to act like they have
| a reputation to uphold. Also, I'm not convinced they're
| even really motivated to have people use their stations.
|
| They do care but technology is unforgiving. Tesla is many
| iterations into improving their station reliability, they
| are vertically integrated and their station are very
| simple. The production volume is far, far higher leading to
| improve quality.
|
| The competitors like EA, in their effort to scale simply
| have 3-4 different providers put into the same box.
| Different hardware, different software and so on. And then
| also a NextGen version from all these providers.
|
| Their stations are much more complex, with screens and so
| on. So the failure rate is far higher and repair is much
| more difficult.
|
| I think you are underestimate the challenge of how
| difficult it is to role out such an infrastructure and
| maintain it specially when you are just a service provider,
| not an actual engineering company. Tesla just made it look
| easy and everybody expect that any other company could do
| the same, but they can't.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Most people consider NACS to be a better connector, there are
| even CCS1 fans who admit that.
|
| But in reality, they are all fine and it doesn't matter that
| much. What really matters is that there is a standard, whatever
| it is.
|
| And it seems like NACS chargers will speak the CCS protocol, so
| those with CCS cars will just need a passive adapter to charge
| with NACS.
|
| This is for North America, Europe is fine with CCS2, and NACS
| doesn't intent to change that. And compatibility is not that
| much of a problem since cars usually don't travel between
| Europe and North America, plus, for these rare cases, there are
| adapters.
| apearson wrote:
| I believe NACS can do everything CCS can do (same number of
| pins) but in a smaller and easier to handle format. As an EV
| users I much prefer the NACS connector over the CCS connector
| especially in the winter when the cables are much stiffer.
| IceHegel wrote:
| It's not just the connector. It's the whole charging
| experience. NACS + Supercharger network is 10x better than the
| alternatives both in speed of charging and ease of use.
| dagmx wrote:
| 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?
| sangnoir wrote:
| > I assume there'll be a surcharge , so is it better for them
| to have the biggest slice of much smaller pies?
|
| Tesla will be getting billions of Federal dollars[1] for their
| network. IIRC, the law doesn't explicitly state that the
| network has to be CCS, only that it has to be "interoperable".
| If the government insists on CCS as a precondition, I predict
| Tesla taking them to court (and likely winning). As an
| outsider, it appears American manufacturers (NACS) are trying
| to squeeze out foreign manufactures (CCS) from Federal dollars
| for charging networks. I will change my mind if Hyundai, VW,
| Mercedes or BMW sign up for NACS.
|
| 1. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/white-house-says-tesla-
| char...
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > 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.
| huijzer wrote:
| Out of curiosity, what do you dislike about your Tesla?
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I mean, the range/$ seems to be a pretty good moat. Last I
| checked, the only cars with a decent amount of range per dollar
| were at the very low end (Chevy Bolt) and had very little range
| (200 miles vs 300 miles for Tesla M3).
| wilg wrote:
| Market share isn't a good metric for a company that started out
| with 100% market share and therefore has nowhere to go but
| down. I think Tesla will continue to be successful selling cars
| and grow the number of cars they sell at a high rate.
|
| Also, it sounds like this move is a really good incentive from
| a product perspective. If there really are a significant of
| people who only chose Tesla because of Superchargers, then
| they'll be forced to fix those problems. Though, personally, I
| really like my Model Y and someone would have to come up with a
| WAY superior car to get me to switch. I certainly wouldn't want
| to go back to one of these legacy car company's cars with their
| poor software, bad UX, and ugly and overwrought design
| aesthetic. Also, a lot of their competition is still on paper.
| Rivian is probably the nicest option for a non-Tesla EV right
| now.
| 015a wrote:
| I legit believe that many people in these threads haven't
| learned that the Model Y is the best selling vehicle in North
| America during 2023-Q1 [1]. Not just best selling EV, or best
| selling crossover; best selling _vehicle_. It outsold the
| Corrola, at half the price.
|
| This is not a situation of "oh Tesla will continue to do
| well, they'll sell cars" or "what's their moat? they're
| finished": They are #1. Dozens of competitors have hit the
| market over the past five years. They are outselling all of
| them, at substantially higher price points (fed tax credit
| has something to do with it versus gas cars for Q1 here, but
| it impacts all EVs reasonably equally).
|
| If there's something on the horizon which will change that, I
| need that explained to me because I'm not seeing it. That
| Fords and GMs will also get supercharging? Anyone who says
| "the supercharger network significantly influences purchases
| toward Tesla" doesn't own an EV; armchair commentators. To
| some small degree; sure. But the biggest influence, bar none,
| is: "My friend has one." That's it. Few spend significant
| time driving a Mach-E and think "everything about this
| screams I need it". But that is a _not a-typical_ experience
| for Tesla vehicles, because so much about it is so far ahead
| of traditional cars, and even modern competing EVs.
|
| So much about it is also pretty far behind, like quality
| control. But that doesn't come through when you're driving a
| friend's perfectly functional car. And it certainly hasn't
| hurt Tesla up to this point.
|
| [1] https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/26/23738581/tesla-model-
| y-ev...
| cypress66 wrote:
| You said best selling in NA, but the source says best
| selling in the world.
|
| In NA I believe it's F150 first and model Y second.
| wilg wrote:
| I agree, though the data is not exactly apples-to-apples
| because Tesla sells fewer models (which is probably a good
| thing).
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Tesla did not have 100% market share. Nissan Leaf came out
| before the Model S. (And if you want to count the Roadster,
| you should count the EV1, etc.)
|
| But I think the point is that electric cars will take over
| the whole market, and so if Tesla's US market share falls to
| like 20-30% from the current 60% or whatever it is but that
| market is 10-30 times larger, that's a huge win.
| jandrese wrote:
| Yes, in theory the GM's EV-1 beat them to market by a lot.
| But in real terms Tesla had the EV market cornered for
| years. The only real competition was the Leaf and Bolt, and
| even those were low volume vehicles. It remains to be seen
| if the legacy automakers can successfully ramp production
| this year. They have made a lot of promises, but actual
| deliveries are still lagging.
| erikstarck wrote:
| First of all, the mission of Tesla is to transition the world
| to sustainable energy. If you believe them, that should be
| enough.
|
| But, second of all, this also makes business sense. Everyone
| will have to use the Tesla app, where they can get targeted
| offers and become a kind of "Tesla Light" customers. People
| wonder why Tesla doesn't advertise. Well, with these deals, the
| need for advertising is a lot less than without them. Also,
| Tesla is essentially becoming a platform for EVs. How long
| before some OEM license Tesla software?
|
| And, remember that there are over 17000 superchargers in the US
| alone and the deal with Ford and GM only allows access to 12000
| of them in the US and Canada together. To get the full
| Supercharger experience, you still need a Tesla.
| 015a wrote:
| Also worth noting: I don't hear people talking about this.
| Tesla allows non-Teslas to access a very small portion of the
| supercharger network already. They offer a two-tiered plan;
| pay-as-you-go, or a $13/mo subscription which activates the
| lower charging rates Teslas already get. I don't know if its
| been announced yet how this applies to the deal Tesla has
| signed with Ford (and GM/Rivian?); will it look more like how
| EA/evGo operate, where there's a plan you sign up for to get
| the more market-rate charging prices? Or are they doing away
| with that?
| sagarkamat wrote:
| Not sure about other OEMs but at least Ford's CEO has
| clarified Ford customers will be able to use the FordPass app
| to use the tesla chargers.
| NegativeK wrote:
| > People wonder why Tesla doesn't advertise.
|
| They don't advertise because their word of mouth and media
| presence is incredibly strong. It's also the same reason I
| basically had to strong arm the sales center into selling me
| one of their cars -- the demand is incredibly high.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Basically, the iTunes on Windows strategy.
| vxNsr wrote:
| Yup sounds like it. Tesla has always positioned themselves
| as the apple of cars.
| vel0city wrote:
| > Everyone will have to use the Tesla app, where they can get
| targeted offers
|
| Sounds like a nightmare. Want to go on a road trip? Either
| subject yourself to target advertising on your phone or pay a
| monthly fee. Hard pass!
|
| I don't want to have to use an app _at all_ if I want to
| charge. And yes, plug and charge is still using an app, you
| need to use some kind of app somewhere to manage the payment.
| I 'd much rather have the option to just choose what payment
| I'd like to use before I start charging. Sure, optionally
| support plug and charge as well, but at least give me the
| option to _not_ need to go to an app to choose this this card
| or that card and what not.
|
| > remember that there are over 17000 superchargers in the US
| alone and the deal with Ford and GM only allows access to
| 12000 of them in the US and Canada together.
|
| From what I understand, the ~5k chargers that aren't included
| are the older ones which don't speak CCS and they're usually
| the lower power ones. Those will probably be replaced over
| the next few years. Meanwhile all their newer ones will work
| with all the other compatible cars, so this percentage (~29%
| currently) will shrink over time, probably pretty rapidly
| given they're increasing the rate of new charger
| installation.
|
| And in the end, for a lot of people it probably won't even
| actually matter. I've spent 2 years so far with a non-Tesla
| EV and it hasn't been any kind of difficulty for me in the
| slightest. Will it be nice to get access to another 1,500ish
| charging locations with a basic adapter? Sure, there's a few
| more charging locations on the road trip routes I take which
| will be open to me. Will it actually impact me day to day?
| Not in the slightest.
|
| Oh no, there's a few thousand old chargers which charge at
| slower speeds than the new ones a several hundred miles away
| that my car can't charge at? Guess my car is worthless :'(
| echelon wrote:
| Not so sure I believe this strategy.
|
| An app isn't going to make me buy a car or Tesla equipment.
| Aesthetics, utility, and cost are my main purchasing decision
| dimensions, and Tesla isn't winning those for me. I'm not
| buying something shaped like a prune that can't haul gear and
| equipment.
|
| The ads on Uber and other delivery apps are irrelevant to my
| daily life. Uber claims advertising has generating $500M in
| ARR, but that's co-mingled with restaurants seeking placement
| on Uber Eats. Ads for movies and McDonalds on Uber is
| probably generating a small pittance of that sum.
|
| Furthermore, lots of businesses will get into EV charging
| when it takes off. Existing gas stations, restaurants, and
| shopping will undoubtedly join when they believe the timing
| is right.
|
| FWIW, I'm dreading having to buy an EV. Gasoline works better
| for my use cases. I don't have a place to charge at home, and
| I don't want to wait for on-demand fill ups.
|
| I think the push to EVs has been a function of worldwide
| market and regulation, not necessarily consumer choice.
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| Couldn't disagree more. We really wanted an ev. Even bought
| it when there were no incentives available. Nothing to do
| with the global market or regulation.
|
| It's a superior experience in every way. From the
| performance, to the software, to the charging. I just plug
| it in and never think about charging. On long drives it
| needs a topup when our family does.
| echelon wrote:
| I live in place where the parking is super weird.
| Historical building with historical grounds. We're
| literally not allowed to resurface the parking because
| it's all historic. Part of an old steam power plant
| between cotton mill buildings from the 1800s.
|
| How am I going to fuel my vehicle? We won't be able to
| install power at limited distribution sites for everyone.
| 300 residents with their own EVs is going to make shared
| charging stations a nightmare, and everyone will fight. I
| know this because we installed a few charging stations
| and it has already became an issue for the six Teslas on
| campus. Multiply that by 60.
|
| It's easy to spend five minutes at a gas pump on my way
| somewhere. No impact to my day. Having to schedule time
| slots with neighbors is a nightmare.
|
| I don't like any of this.
| 015a wrote:
| > An app isn't going to make me buy a car or Tesla
| equipment. Aesthetics, utility, and cost are my main
| purchasing decision dimensions
|
| The interesting thing is: There's confirmation bias in
| this, but every single person I've talked to who owns a
| Tesla might have said this before owning one, but would now
| _never_ say it afterward. It does things you never know you
| needed, until you have it, and then you 're shopping for
| cars afterward and your standards go up. Wait, the
| infotainment still has a resistive touch-screen which runs
| at 45fps? The maps won't automatically route me to nearby
| chargers and give me a battery charge prediction for
| arrival that learns from my driving habits?
|
| Oh, here's an interesting one: Teslas have (configurable)
| cabin overheat protection. Maybe some other brands have
| this as well, I don't know, but: the cabin never gets above
| 100F, if you have more-than 20% battery, and it doesn't
| cause that much drain (maybe ~3%/day, maybe more in Arizona
| or Texas). In other words; you _never_ have a hot car, and
| you don 't fuddle with remote start / "turn the AC on 10
| minutes before I leave" / whatever. Its just... never all
| that hot; and you don't notice it until you get in a
| traditional car that's been sitting in the parking lot all
| day, sticky leather seats and its 120F inside.
|
| All I can say is: Your mindset is probably more a
| reflection of your environment than any more foundational
| principals; and if you want to keep it that way, I'd
| recommend that you don't spend any significant length of
| time driving a Tesla.
| jsight wrote:
| > FWIW, I'm dreading having to buy an EV. Gasoline works
| better for my use cases. I don't have a place to charge at
| home, and I don't want to wait for on-demand fill ups.
|
| Yeah, if you don't have home or workplace charging, EVs
| really don't have significant advantages at the moment.
|
| They tend to be pretty aggravating, tbh.
| Marsymars wrote:
| > Everyone will have to use the Tesla app, where they can get
| targeted offers
|
| This sounds like a dystopian nightmare. I have no interest in
| charging an EV where using an app is a requirement.
| bluSCALE4 wrote:
| I think they don't use ads because they already get a ton of
| money with green credits. I recall all the Tesla doomsayer a
| few years back saying Tesla was going broke then Tesla sold
| these credits to other companies for millions. If Tesla loses
| these edges, which will happen if other car companies go 100%
| green, then we'll see a more hate-able Tesla with ad-ware.
| dahfizz wrote:
| 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.
| brianstorms wrote:
| I sometimes suspect what's really going on with Tesla is that
| they want to become the world's manufacturer of EVs of all
| sorts, utility-scale energy storage systems, and software for
| EVs including ADAS.
|
| Musk has said it: "the factory is the product." I kinda
| wonder if the real goal is, as the legacy OEMs quake, rattle,
| flail around begging for government handouts, and start to
| fail, Tesla knocks on their door and says "hey we can build
| your cars for you, with your brand on them, using our
| charging standard, our batteries, and our software. Just sign
| here."
| starik36 wrote:
| My wife drives a Tesla and I drive newish rental cars on a
| reasonably frequent basis. So I have a basis for comparison.
| They are definitely not being beaten by larger players. At
| least not at this stage.
|
| Their software is top notch compared to the mish-mash of home
| grown and Car Play on other vehicles. And the implementation
| of AutoSteer (free cut down version of self driving) is far
| superior to what I've seen in other cars.
|
| I can see other automakers catching up in 2-3 years, but that
| is not the case right now.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I've never seen "software" (by which I assume you mean the
| consumer facing stuff in the cabin) that made me want to
| buy a car. Yes, I've seen Tesla's. It looks fine. So does a
| radio with 6 buttons.
|
| If I want anything, I have a cellphone. It's impossible to
| compete with "put that UX through better
| speakers/mic/screen"
| MostlyStable wrote:
| So much this. I was ecstatic to hear the articles a few
| months ago saying that car manufacturers are going back
| to buttons. I prefer my car to have essentially no
| software. It needs to have a modestly sized screen and
| then whatever is necessary to display my navigation app
| and media app from my phone. Climate control and media
| control should both be physical buttons.
|
| I recently bought an EV and a secondary concern (as in,
| not one of the primary concerns of size, range, charging
| speed, and price), was the control interface. I went with
| a model that has nearly all physical controls. Had the
| choice between otherwise equivalent vehicles been
| available, I'd have paid a non-trivial sum to get a
| button interface option.
|
| From my Tesla-owning friends, I hear that their software
| is the "best", which seems to be like being the tallest
| dwarf. I literally can't imagine a pure software/touch
| interface being better than a physical button interface
| for the most important driving controls.
| pkulak wrote:
| I've personally enjoyed auto steer on every car I've driven
| not a Tesla. Some let you keep your hands off the wheel,
| and none of them phantom break every couple hundred miles,
| which is the ultimate deal breaker.
| flutas wrote:
| > I've personally enjoyed auto steer on every car I've
| driven not a Tesla. Some let you keep your hands off the
| wheel, and none of them phantom break every couple
| hundred miles, which is the ultimate deal breaker.
|
| I'm actually curious what systems you're using. I have
| very limited experience, I have a M3 and a 21 Corolla
| with Toyota's version.
|
| My M3 has never once just given up on the lanes and
| stopped steering, but it's a very common occurrence on
| the Toyota. It just gives up and suddenly you're back to
| controlling it with no real rhyme or reason to it that I
| can find.
| xeromal wrote:
| When you say M3, do you mean the BMW M3 or Tesla Model 3?
| pkulak wrote:
| Oh, yeah, that doesn't bother me either. When the lanes
| get really faint and I have to drive for a bit, that's
| fine.
|
| I guess it comes down to preference. I see it as
| assistance. I want a helper who maybe can't do it all,
| but never fucks up.
| vel0city wrote:
| I've used Hyundai's adaptive cruse control on an older
| model. It doesn't do anything with the steering wheel,
| but it beeps when you leave the lane without using a turn
| signal. As far as tracking the speed of the cars in front
| of you and coming to a complete stop in traffic, it works
| great. I've never had a phantom braking incident with
| many thousands of miles driven on that mode. But that's
| not auto-steering at all.
|
| I've used Blue Cruise a good bit which supports hands-off
| modes. This system works very well on highways hands-
| free. It seems to want me to put my hands back on the
| wheel when approaching the toll gantries and goes back to
| hands-free a few seconds after the toll gantry, but
| otherwise I've been able to go well over 100 miles at a
| time without touching the wheel or brakes. I've never had
| any kind of phantom braking situation or slow downs, it
| works well in stop and go traffic, and has overall been a
| great experience.
| kanbara wrote:
| i only ever want CarPlay. i want my own apps that i already
| have, my own settings, integration into my calendar without
| leaking data to some random third party.
|
| on my smart tv i use apple tv, and never their own ui. i
| trust apple for privacy and dont want to log in or
| configure 20 apps on my car. i want my iPhone and its
| features, period.
| starik36 wrote:
| CarPlay is fine. The disconnect is that for all car
| related functionality, you have to break out from it to
| go back to the car UI.
| chaostheory wrote:
| Tesla also bought solar city a while back
| almost_usual wrote:
| I thought most Tesla batteries were CATL, LG, and Panasonic.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Tesla is working with those companies. But Tesla also has
| its own batteries, their own battery IP, their own
| manufacturing lines and so on. They even manufacture some
| of their own manufacturing equipment.
|
| The have factories in Germany and Canada building dedicated
| battery manufacturing equipment.
|
| They have their own battery factory in California, in Texas
| and in Berlin. Model Y are already being sold with these
| batteries in it.
|
| And Tesla own batteries are very innovative specially in
| terms of their manufacturing.
| panick21_ wrote:
| > The cars themselves are quickly being beaten out by the
| larger players
|
| Based on what exactly?
|
| Tesla cars are wildly popular in their segments. They have
| elite efficiency, high margin, they lead in costumer loyalty
| and costumer satisfaction ratings. Model Y is literally the
| most sold car in the world.
|
| What actual evidence are you basing these claims on?
|
| Tesla is making a huge amount of money because of vertical
| integration, why would they give that up to be a contract
| manufacturer or sell batteries.
| adventured wrote:
| Keep in mind it was extremely common on HN to proclaim
| Tesla was going to go bankrupt, that the Model S would
| never be manufactured at any scale, that the Model 3 would
| fail and would also never be manufactured at great scale.
|
| Sure Tesla has plenty of flaws and always have, and yet
| they remain ahead of the competition in what's going to be
| a multi-trillion dollar market (EVs) segment.
|
| Tesla's primary business problem is that they only have one
| killer product, the Model 3 (meaning they're too easy to
| cripple if sales fall out from under that one thing). They
| massively screwed up on the truck, when they should have
| just made a normal EV truck with some Tesla touches (Elon's
| ego on Cybertruck cost them hundreds of billions of dollars
| in sales over the next decade; it will go down as one of
| the dumbest business mistakes in recorded history). The
| truck should have been their key diversification,
| especially in the huge US market for trucks. The truck
| segment should have been mainstream and borderline boring,
| yielding tens of billions of dollars in annual global
| sales. Instead it's going to be a mocked niche product that
| trails off rapidly in sales after the initial splash
| (assuming they actually bring the Cybertruck to market).
|
| But if Tesla knew what they were doing, they would have
| bought a large chunk of Ford while the valuations were at
| peak mismatch (or all of it, via their hyper overvalued
| stock; de facto bribe the Ford family with a huge number to
| take the acquisition offer), electrified Ford's truck
| lineup in a long-term partnership, and yielded epic scale
| profit from it for decades to come.
| panick21_ wrote:
| > Tesla's primary business problem is that they only have
| one killer product, the Model 3
|
| Their killer product is the Model Y.
|
| > meaning they're too easy to cripple if sales fall out
| from under that one thing
|
| Common car platforms like Civic or F150 stay pretty can
| stay pretty consistant for decades.
|
| And Tesla is actively working on other things.
|
| Also remember, they make money from car service, that
| will increase over the years. They also do grid storage
| both large and small and that business is already big and
| growing fast.
|
| They have other products already developed, like the
| Semi. And are currently building a factory for a 'Model
| 2' in Mexico.
|
| > They massively screwed up on the truck
|
| I would disagree. People now just assert that Cybertruck
| is bad. But the reason they went with that are still
| valid and it still has a lot of preorders and a lot of
| interest. In the long run that architecture could save
| them lots of money and be very profitable.
|
| > Elon's ego on Cybertruck cost them hundreds of billions
| of dollars in sales
|
| That's just an opinion. And if the really need to they
| could just design a normal truck and put it on the
| Cybertruck platform. They would cost a few billion but it
| wouldn't be that bad.
|
| > it will go down as one of the dumbest business mistakes
| in recorded history
|
| Or it will go down as one of the best. You clearly don't
| like the vehicle, but its numbers in terms of interest,
| people searching for it, preorders and so on are very
| good.
|
| Remember when nobody was gone follow threw on their Model
| 3 preorders?
|
| > But if Tesla knew what they were doing
|
| Growing 50% over almost 20 decades and being one of the
| most profitable car companies in the world while still
| growing fast for the next couple years but they are
| apparently idiots.
|
| > they would have bought a large chunk of Ford while the
| valuations were at peak mismatch
|
| That's a terrible idea for so many reason. That like
| Compaq buying DEC.
|
| > electrified Ford's truck lineup in a long-term
| partnership, and yielded epic scale profit from it for
| decades to come.
|
| They can have epic sales profit without Ford. They can
| make something called the E150 and make it look like the
| F150 and sell just as well without taking on all the
| legacy.
|
| I remember when everybody said 'Tesla should just let a
| contract manufacture build their cars' and that just as
| bad an idea.
| jandrese wrote:
| The Model Y seems to be their real killer product. The
| Model 3 is a solid #2 for the business.
| chris222 wrote:
| And bots/autonomy.
| techdmn wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| vxNsr wrote:
| BMW in my circles has the reputation as being a brand you
| buy when you can afford to have a car in the shop most of
| the time. Most American brands have reputation as just
| being really poorly built and bad value props. Not sure
| how either of those two options overcomes that view.
| w0m wrote:
| >a brand you buy when you can afford to have a car in the
| shop most of the time
|
| TBF, unless you are in a Niche market (off roading a land
| rover) - it's generally _hard_ to buy a bad car today.
|
| Is a Camry more reliable than a 3 series? Yes. But you're
| talking 4 9s vs 5 under warranty; being near a _good_
| dealership with good service is markedly more important
| than brand reputation. If my Audi /BMW/Volvo are in the
| shop for a week every other year and they easily give a
| loaner to cover, does it really matter? At that point,
| the cup holder being 5% better placed for convenient
| access matters more.
| vxNsr wrote:
| Once you're out of warranty BMW tend to "implode" like
| everything breaks at once. But even in warranty dealing
| with going to the dealership and getting the repair is a
| huge hassle vs just having a car that stays out of your
| way.
|
| Time is our most valuable asset and giving it up to
| stupid things like waiting in dealership waiting rooms,
| regardless of how much free coffee and popcorn they have
| just isn't my idea of time well spent.
| w0m wrote:
| We had a first-year X1. Starter went after ~10,000 miles.
| Dealership was garbage (hence my comments above), but
| still towed us home and dropped off a loaner-car for the
| ~week it took to fix. Annoying, wasted ~hour waiting for
| toe truck to pick us up; but overall not a horrendous
| experience (despite piling 3 adults and 2 dogs into toe
| truck).
|
| I had a 2010 Impreza, ~first month or two of ownership -
| dashboard went nuts and i pulled over. Car got towed to
| dealership - they found nothing wrong. Lost an evening
| and no loaner car in the ~48h it took them to determine
| 'nothing wrong'. Two 'new' cars - vastly better
| experience with one than the other.
|
| Anecdotal of course; but
|
| > even in warranty dealing with going to the dealership
| and getting the repair is a huge
|
| You get that with _any_ car - my Tacoma was
| indestructible and still had multiple recalls I had to
| drop it off for.
|
| You are correct if you're talking driving a car into the
| ground though - I'd vastly rather have a 10 y/o v6 Taco
| than an 8 y/o supercharged Dakota.
| dahfizz wrote:
| Tesla also has quite the reputation for cheaply built
| cars that are outrageously expensive to repair
| vxNsr wrote:
| Outrageously expensive to repair sure (though which car
| isn't these days, my corrolla got into a fender bender
| and fixing the bumper was north of $1000), but I'm
| talking about always in the shop due to shoddy
| construction. Afaik that doesn't really apply to teslas.
| jandrese wrote:
| The flipside is that you hardly ever have to bring a
| Tesla into the shop. In the end they are fairly cheap to
| maintain.
|
| https://www.automoblog.net/research/maintenance/tesla-
| mainte...
| w0m wrote:
| Mach E looks like a Boat in comparison to me (I also
| dislike the Y), doesn't feel like a direct competitor. I
| should test drive regardless though.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" A few years ago there was no good option besides
| tesla, but in another couple years tesla will have fallen
| behind the competition"_
|
| Much of the competition still struggles with software.
| Sure you can use Apple CarPlay or whatever for the
| basics, but as far as the full software suite goes, there
| isn't yet much that comes close to Tesla's performance,
| ease-of-use, UX, functionality, hardware integration,
| automatic over-the-air updates, etc...
| dahfizz wrote:
| This is my point. Tesla is good at a small handful of
| things, and making cars is not one of them.
|
| They could sell batteries, charging infra, software, and
| whatever else to the companies that are competent at
| building (and fixing!!) cars. They aren't going to remain
| competitive on the cars themselves
| jdminhbg wrote:
| I still cannot figure out what Car People mean when they
| say Tesla is bad at making cars. What are you looking at
| that normal people don't see? The one thing I agree about
| is the yoke steering wheel, but that's on a high-end car
| nobody seems to actually buy.
| xeromal wrote:
| Everyone loves to complain about panel gaps and that's
| usually what drives them mad. lol. I've never cared for
| panel gaps or minimalists interiors though.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| I have heard the phrase "panel gap" a million times and
| don't think I have ever seen or (or I guess, noticed) one
| on any car in my entire life.
| xeromal wrote:
| Same. Sadly I don't break out the calipers when I pick up
| my new car. lol
| NoGravitas wrote:
| I'm not a Car Person (I hate cars, electric ones
| included), but what I often hear said is that they feel
| very cheaply made, in terms of fit and finish, both
| interior and exterior. Panel gaps, water leaking into the
| trunk, squeaks and rattles. Mostly not very serious (not
| powertrain issues or anything), but nevertheless, not
| something you want to see on a car you're paying as much
| for as a Tesla.
| labcomputer wrote:
| I had heard the same things. And then I actually rented a
| Model 3 for a week (twice actually). Aside from panel
| gaps (the Trunk lid was slightly misaligned on one of the
| cars I rented), I think the whole "Tesla is bad at cars"
| is promulgated by people who have never actually sat in a
| Tesla.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" Tesla is good at a small handful of things, and
| making cars is not one of them."_
|
| Tesla is manufacturing EVs at much greater volumes than
| almost anyone else, and doing so very profitably. They
| also score consistently high on customer satisfaction.
| Seems like making cars is exactly what Tesla has become
| very good at in recent years?
|
| Sure, Tesla may not make the most luxurious, nor the
| cheapest cars on the market. But right now they seem to
| be very successfully hitting a sweet spot in the middle.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > The long term future of Tesla is a battery manufacturer and
| a charging network. Those are the two things they are good
| at.
|
| Agree 100%.
|
| At present, Tesla really feels like a bit of a "Jack of all
| trades, master of none" job.
|
| I'm certainly no Elon fanboi, but I will happily state that
| there are clearly a number of things they do well (certain
| core components and the charging network).
|
| But the cars themselves as a whole. They feel like what they
| are. Cheaply built, but sold at a premium price.
|
| Tesla would do well if they became the OEM's OEM.
|
| You know, a bit like how Dell, HP and everyone else ship
| servers with Seagate drives. Tesla should become the Seagate
| and leave the outer shell bit to others.
| minhazm wrote:
| > At present, Tesla really feels like a bit of a "Jack of
| all trades, master of none" job.
|
| That's an odd take. Model Y is the best selling vehicle in
| the world, and the second best selling vehicle in the US
| after the Ford F-150. It outsells the Corolla, Camry, Rav4,
| Civic, etc. Look at Mercedes, BMW and Audi sales, they've
| been plummeting because everyone is buying a Tesla instead.
|
| They're also the leading battery storage company and their
| battery storage business has been growing like crazy.
|
| > But the cars themselves as a whole. They feel like what
| they are. Cheaply built, but sold at a premium price.
|
| This has become such a meme that I think anyone who says it
| has never driven a Tesla for more than a few hours. The
| interior quality is not on par with Mercedes/BMW and maybe
| there's a few panel gaps, but every other part of the car
| is significantly better. The handling, infotainment system,
| performance, efficiency, autopilot, maintenance, etc. A
| $50k Model Y competes with $70-80k cars, but has the
| interior of a $35k car. Most people are more than happy
| with that trade off and that's why it sells so well.
| [deleted]
| bbgm wrote:
| I've had a Tesla (Model S) since early 2020 and once the
| initial allure wore offI've missed driving a BMW and once
| the i5 is here I'll be backing to driving BMW. The
| supercharger network is by far the reason I've stuck with
| the Tesla this long, but there's enough options now. The
| build quality, the drive quality, service quality, all of
| it is subpar. The Model 3 is a zippy car but the lack of
| an instrument cluster is a deal breaker for me.
|
| Tesla deserve all the credit for getting everyone else to
| wake up. But they are so so at making a car I actually
| want to drive.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| According to the 2022 numbers I was able to find, the
| Model Y was number 9 in the US, behind the Tacoma, CR-7,
| Sierra, Camry, Rav4, Ram, Silverado, F-150.
|
| And the numbers on most non-Teslas seemed down because of
| chip supply.
|
| I don't think it's controversial to say that cars have
| been supply constrained in the past few years.
| minhazm wrote:
| I guess I should have been specific that I'm referring to
| the last quarter. Tesla's sales growth has been ~50% YoY
| so comparing to 2022 numbers won't be so accurate going
| forwards.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/26/23738581/tesla-model-
| y-ev...
| almost_usual wrote:
| > They're also the leading battery storage company and
| their battery storage business has been growing like
| crazy.
|
| Do you have a source on this? I assumed Tesla outsourced
| most of their batteries from CATL, Panasonic, and LG.
|
| https://www.yicaiglobal.com/news/2023060514-catl-drops-
| despi...
|
| CATL seems to be ahead of everyone.
|
| https://thedriven.io/2023/04/21/worlds-largest-battery-
| maker...
| minhazm wrote:
| I wasn't referring to the cells, but the products
| themselves. CATL produces cells, and yes Tesla uses cells
| from many of those companies. But a battery storage
| system is more than just the cells. I was specifically
| referring to Tesla's PowerWall & PowerPack/Megapack
| products, which has been growing at a fast rate. Just in
| the last ~3 weeks there were two several hundred million
| dollar battery storage projects announced that use Tesla
| Megapack[1][2].
|
| In terms of cell technology, it's really hard to say
| whether those press releases announcing major break
| throughs actually matter or not. Tesla is also producing
| its own cells, but they'll happily buy whatever cells are
| available since at this point they're constrained by
| cells.
|
| [1] https://electrek.co/2023/06/20/tesla-megapack-2xl-
| power-new-... [2] https://electrek.co/2023/05/31/tesla-
| power-massive-500-milli...
| theFletch wrote:
| > Cheaply built, but sold at a premium price.
|
| How many successful brands have been built off that one
| sentence alone?
| adventured wrote:
| That means they have no future of consequence. Charging
| networks will be a mediocre low margin business and they'll
| be hyper plentiful with little to no serious moat. It'll be
| like owning gas pumps as a convenience store (yielding
| pennies on the dollar; the money will be in generation there,
| as it's in oil/gasoline in gas pumps). Batteries are and
| always will be a horrific business with low margins (just ask
| eg Panasonic and all the other players what their battery
| businesses are worth, especially compared to what Tesla has
| been making from automobiles).
| MattRix wrote:
| Not a big fan of Tesla myself, but surely if they figure out
| self driving that'll make their cars relevant for the
| forseeable future? On top of that they seem to be able to
| make cars cheaper and more quickly than most of the
| incumbents.
| afavour wrote:
| For sure. But that's an absolutely massive "if". Almost
| guaranteed we'll be transitioning to EVs (I mean, we
| already are at a small scale) before full self driving is
| reliable.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| That 'if' is a big one.
|
| Musk said, in 2015: "Self-piloting cars are a solved
| problem." "I view it as a solved problem. We know exactly
| what we need to do and we will be there in a few years."
|
| Last year, though, he was backpedaling: "Our focus is on
| solving the problem."
| dehrmann wrote:
| 2023, his focus is on Twitter.
| rasz wrote:
| and Twitter bot spam is a solved problem
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > they seem to be able to make cars cheaper and more
| quickly than most of the incumbents
|
| And that's exactly what the output of their factories feel
| like. Cheap and quickly built. ;-)
|
| More haste, less speed and all that ...
| skrtskrt wrote:
| I think the vast vast majority of people (non HN techies)
| at this stage don't care that nearly as much about self
| driving as they do about having an electric/Hybrid/PHEV car
| that's just a great total package of a car - something that
| the existing car manufacturers are far, far better at than
| Tesla.
|
| Even manufacturers like Chevy and Ford can run circles
| around Tesla in terms of overall quality.
|
| Anecdotally in LA which has tons of electric cars, people
| that originally had interest in the status symbolism of
| Tesla jumped back to Mercedes, BMW, and Volvo(Polestar) the
| instant those manufacturers had viable electric options.
|
| People are banging down Toyota's doors for the plugin
| hybrids. Those people are not buying a Tesla in the
| meantime. People are just waiting for their existing
| trusted manufacturers to produce enough capacity.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > Those people are not buying a Tesla in the meantime
|
| I've noticed people signing leases on ICE cars to wait
| out the delivery of their preferred EV solution.
| skrtskrt wrote:
| it would be amazing if more people realized that keeping
| the car you have is still the most environmentally
| friendly solution.
|
| I'm going to keep my ICE car until it is unreasonably old
| or impractical for me, which is probably at least 8 more
| years.
|
| At that point who knows what the electric car landscape
| will look like, but certainly production will be
| massively more ramped up. PHEVs will be the perfect car
| for most people. It will do 99.9% of people's trips on
| pure electric, and not have any compromises on long road
| trips either.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| In fairness, the people I know doing this want a new car.
| They are not trying to do the most environmentally
| friendly thing.
|
| But I believe in old ICE as opposed to new EV, on
| environmental, economic and other grounds.
| zdragnar wrote:
| My driveway is windy and gravel. I live at the end of a
| windy, gravel road with a steep drop off on one side. The
| road it connects to is a back country road with NO lane
| markings at all. Deer are prone to watching you approach,
| then jumping out at the last minute. You need to slow down
| when you first see them, not when they start moving.
|
| I doubt FSD will get to the point I would ever fully trust
| it outside of a freeway or city, and almost certainly never
| for the 2-3 miles closest to my house.
|
| Now, if they can get the cars cheap enough that I can
| actually afford one, I might be interested. There are 4-6
| trips I take a year in the 250-400 mile range, with zero
| public transport available inbetween (rural-ish to rural-
| ish areas), and not paying for the gas would be nice.
| wsatb wrote:
| The big players are just late to the game, but have been
| making cars for decades. They will easily overtake Tesla on
| number of EVs built as they transition.
|
| Tesla isn't good at making cars. And every year my
| confidence in full self driving goes down. They are good at
| charging though and will print money doing that.
| mywittyname wrote:
| I wouldn't call the established players "late to the
| game" vis-a-vis self-driving. They've been dumping plenty
| into research and acquisition and are probably near
| parity with Telsa.
|
| The perception of the larger players as laggards comes
| from the fact that they aren't as keen to lie consumers
| and investors. Their leadership doesn't enjoy the same
| privileges as Musk does.
| jandrese wrote:
| Sometimes I feel like people live in a different universe
| than me. Do you know how many electric vehicles Tesla is
| likely to deliver in 2023? 2 million.
|
| Do you know how many GM is hoping to deliver? 150,000. Do
| you know how many they have delivered YTD? 40,000. And
| they're ahead of Ford, Rivian, and all other US EV
| manufacturers. Only cheap Chinese only EV brands have a
| similar volume.
|
| "Easily overtaking" Tesla is not happening at this point.
| It will be a real fight to ramp production up to Tesla
| numbers. Did you know that the Tesla model Y was the best
| selling car in the world thus far in 2023? Not EV, car.
| It beat out the gas powered Toyota Corolla.
|
| https://www.motor1.com/news/669135/tesla-model-y-worlds-
| best...
| Reason077 wrote:
| The big incumbents (US, EU, Japanese) have high cost
| bases and may struggle to compete on price with Tesla, as
| well as emerging Chinese competition.
|
| The real "secret sauce" behind Tesla right now is that
| they've figured out how to produce affordable, desirable
| EVs at scale while maintaining industry-leading margins.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Are you a time traveler from 2014?
|
| Tesla is now closing in on run rates of 1.5-2 million.
| They are on bath to overtake companies like BMW in total
| sales. They are already far more profitable.
|
| You seem to still think of Tesla as some small fish.
| Tesla is the biggest BEV producer in the world by a large
| margin. They produce more EV then all of the major German
| producers put together and at better margins.
|
| Volkswagen is the 2nd largest car company in the world
| and they have been all in on EV for many years now, and
| Tesla is highly competitive with them and actually makes
| far higher profits.
|
| A high level Toyota engineer said of the Model Y 'its a
| piece of art' (and that was not even the newest
| generation). Volkswagen CEO said that Tesla is beating
| them on production efficiency.
|
| If you want a reality check, go look at Toyota first EV
| and compare it to Model Y. They are not even in the same
| class, Tesla beats it on literally every metric.
|
| If you still think large car companies can just easily
| spin up millions of EV per year, you are deluding
| yourself. You are even more optimistic then the car
| companies own incredibly optimistic predictions. Ford and
| GM have even stopped saying they will catch Tesla, its
| now a race for Nr.2.
|
| > Tesla isn't good at making cars.
|
| Based on what? Your subjective insights?
|
| Tesla cars have very high margin and are cheaper then
| competitors in the same class. But they suck at building
| cars?
|
| Tesla cars have high costumer loyalty and high consumer
| satisfaction in every survey? But they suck at making
| cars?
|
| Are you sure your not mixing up your personal feeling
| with the real world.
|
| > And every year my confidence in full self driving goes
| down.
|
| They don't need self driving to be highly profitable.
|
| > They are good at charging though and will print money
| doing that.
|
| Actually charging doesn't make much money, its a terrible
| business.
| sunflowerfly wrote:
| If you include PHEV, Tesla is second behind BYD. Even if
| you look at EV only, the margin is not insurmountably
| large. When the big automakers (Ford, GM) truly change
| over they will dwarf Tesla.
|
| https://www.ev-volumes.com
| panick21_ wrote:
| But I'm not including PHEV as those are a very different
| supply chain.
|
| > the margin is not insurmountably large
|
| Mhh sorry what?
|
| Look at how tiny Ford is. And you have to understand that
| Ford was very, very late at doing battery partnership.
| Their battery factories are very late. So they will not
| scale very fast the next 3-5 years because of battery
| constraints.
|
| At the same time, GM on this diagram looks way larger
| then it is in reality. The reason GM looks big is because
| of one tiny China only micro-car that yields almost no
| profit and will never be exported (and sales have gone
| down this year already). Their actual Ultium sales are
| barley existing.
|
| You keep thinking these companies are so much bigger then
| Tesla, they are not. Ford and GM have less then 2x the
| revenue of Tesla. Tesla has faster growth and less debt
| and less aging infrastructure (they have brand new
| factories) and now legacy business. In terms of available
| capital Tesla can actually deploy far more, and raise
| money far more then Ford or GM.
|
| Let me give you an example, Volkswagen. The ID.3 is
| comparable to the Model 3 and it came out in 2019. It was
| part of their MEB platform, something they had majority
| invested years before that. In 2018 they said they would
| invest 50 billion $ and have since increased that.
| Clearly they matched Tesla in spending for the last 8
| years or so. And yet look at the chart, they have half
| the BEV sales of Tesla. And Volkswagen is consider very
| successful in the EV world.
|
| You vastly underestimate how hard it is to transition to
| EV. Just because Ford, GM, Honda and so on are bigger
| then Tesla, does not magically mean they can just start
| mass producing EV. Go at actually look at how hard it is
| to scale, even for large companies with huge ability to
| invest.
|
| > (Ford, GM) truly change
|
| Have you looked at Ford and GM own predictions. Because
| you seem to have a higher opinion on these companies then
| they themselves have.
|
| Ford just talked about how they would be losing money for
| many more years and then only just match what Tesla is
| doing just now.
|
| Large companies often over promise what they can do. But
| you actually go beyond that and claim that they under
| promised and will do significantly better then they
| themselves believe.
|
| Of course GM just learn a hard lessen with their initial
| battery factory, scaling is hard and that why Ultium had
| almost no sales in Q1.
| jandrese wrote:
| Musk absolutely underestimated the difficulty of full self
| driving. He's still doing it today. FSD is one of those
| techs that makes for awesome demos but it has thousands of
| edge cases that are hard to test for even with millions of
| vehicle miles recorded in their big AI datacenter.
|
| The tell for me is Hyperloop. That is an optimal
| environment for FSD, a closed and contained track that has
| only identical vehicles on it, and yet they still use a
| human driver.
|
| I only wonder how long it will take before Elon becomes
| disillusioned, maybe it will never happen. Maybe they'll
| pull a rabbit out of their hat and actually get it to work.
| I'm still skeptical.
| cypress66 wrote:
| I agree with the difficulty of self driving.
|
| However I wouldn't d pay attention to the hyperloop
| thing. It would be trivial to "hardcode" a car to drive
| at least the tunnel part. It's almost certainly that the
| FSD team doesn't want to waste time with that.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Maybe only optimists can do it
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I mean, that same sentence structure justifies a lottery
| based retirement plan. You only have to get the numbers
| once after all.
|
| I haven't seen any evidence they are able to make cars more
| cheaply and quickly than the incumbents.
| MattRix wrote:
| Just look up the margins on Tesla's cars vs EVs from
| other manufacturers. For example, Tesla's net profit
| margin in Q1 2023 was 13%, meanwhile Ford is hoping that
| their electric vehicle division can get to 8% net profit
| by 2026 (they currently lose money on them)
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Aren't those margins including amortization of capital
| expenses? And don't those decrease as cars/year goes up?
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| > a better standard in North America
|
| Is a global standard not better for everyone in the long run?
| occamrazor wrote:
| It doesn't really matter. Nobody brings their car overseas,
| and the costs for having different chargers in Europe and NA
| are negligible.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| Nobody?
|
| I shipped my car several times back and forth between USA,
| Europe, and Australia because the rental cost would have
| been more than the shipping cost.
|
| RoRo shipping my car cost round trip $1,600 last year
| USA/Europe plus $300 insurance rider.
|
| Three month rental, plus rental insurance versus rider on
| my insurance? Rental would be approximately $3,100 car and
| about another $1,800 for insurance.
|
| I am nobody.
| vel0city wrote:
| There's no registration headaches about the car not
| meeting the differing safety/emissions regulations in the
| different markets? It seems like its a massive hassle for
| people to even bring kei cars from JP to US, I routinely
| hear about how expensive it is to import cars across
| markets.
| jmgao wrote:
| There isn't a global standard anyway, CCS1 (North America)
| and CCS2 (Europe) are physically incompatible.
| johndhi wrote:
| Pretty sure Tesla's moat is that people think they are cool and
| other EVs aren't.
| 93po wrote:
| Or that they have, by far, the best products at given prices.
| jameshart wrote:
| JD Power has Rivian, MINI and Kia scoring higher than any
| Tesla model.[1]
|
| Polestar, Ford VW, Audi and Hyundai are in the same
| ballpark for ratings.
|
| Several of those manufacturers have cars in the 30K range,
| well below the prices Tesla is starting at.
|
| That moat seems pretty small these days.
|
| [1] https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-
| releases/2023-us-elec...
| 93po wrote:
| I believe these studies to be problematic for many
| reasons. The first is because they measure owner
| satisfaction, but they make zero effort to measure owner
| expectations. Are the expectations for people buying
| Teslas much higher than people who buy from other
| manufacturers? Are they more sophisticated of a buyer and
| think more deeply about their car?
|
| The second issue is they also do things like compare the
| Rivian R1T to the Model 3, which is half the retail price
| and less than a _quarter_ of the manufacturing cost
| (Rivian takes huge losses on their sales).
|
| The final issue I'll mention is that JD Power makes
| almost all of its money from traditional car
| manufacturers. This is a huge conflict of interest and
| there is zero legal accountability.
| andruby wrote:
| Do they have electric cars in the 30K range? What's the
| battery range for their entry level cars?
|
| (I only know Rivian's pricing by heart, which starts at
| 75K)
| jameshart wrote:
| Most people don't need Tesla range. The MINI Cooper does
| 114 miles for under $30K, and Hyundai, Kia and Ford all
| offer 240 mile + ranges for under $40K.
|
| Tesla Model 3 has 270 miles on the base model but you're
| paying over $40k for that.
| jandrese wrote:
| JD Power is also a marketing arm for the auto industry.
| Their numbers have been a joke since at least the 80s.
| "#1 in initial quality" is such a laughable claim yet car
| companies pay JD Power to award it every year.
| lewisgodowski wrote:
| For me, it's hard to find anyone else that matches Tesla
| on price, range, and performance. It seems like with the
| other EVs you get to pick two of those.
| travisporter wrote:
| I agree. I think Hyundai/Kia got close until Tesla
| dropped their prices.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Just to clarify, in business terminology, that's not a moat.
|
| A moat is something difficult/impossible for other
| competitors to cross, something strategically defensive.
|
| Being cool isn't a moat because anyone else can become cool.
| In contrast, network effects are a classic example of a moat,
| because no matter how much cooler/better your product is,
| people won't switch until the majority of the rest of their
| network switches. So nobody moves, hence a defensive moat.
| cjblomqvist wrote:
| That's not strictly correct. It's (very!) hard for someone
| to replicate the brand of Apple or Coca-Cola. Moats are all
| on a scale, and branding is one of the generally harder
| ones to compete with.
| mkozlows wrote:
| The thing about how this is affects Tesla is "compared to
| what?"
|
| Compared to the historic status quo where there were no other
| chargers, and Tesla had exclusive access to a large-ish
| proprietary charging network, it looks like Tesla giving up
| their advantage, and seems bad.
|
| But the forward-looking status quo was going to be a gigantic
| network of CCS chargers that makes Tesla's proprietary network
| look small, with every other car maker using CCS. In that
| world, Tesla would have had to switch their cars over to CCS
| eventually and retrofit their existing chargers to CCS, and
| people who bought Teslas with the proprietary plug have a
| terrible UX of needing adapters everywhere.
|
| Compared to _that_ status quo, this is a huge win for Tesla
| (and one that back-foots every other carmaker, which -- if NACS
| does take off -- need to do their own migration to a new
| charging port and strand their existing customers with the
| adapter life, making their earliest adopters angry and
| frustrated). So yeah, this is a great move for Tesla, and GM
| and Ford in enabling it are total idiots. (Rivian is just going
| along with the semi-inevitable at this point.)
| hinkley wrote:
| My friend who is not an EV driver got stuck with an EV rental
| (Bolt) for a semi-rural trip and boy was that a ton of drama.
|
| I've been thinking hard about an EV myself and now I'm
| looking at PHEVs instead. I've gotten a crash course in EV
| charging around here and it's not good. Level 2 chargers are
| not for spontaneous trips and level 1 chargers are fucking
| pointless. It estimated two and a half days to charge from
| 40-80% at my house. My house was wired for level 2 charging
| by the previous owners but the plug is 220 3 prong rather
| than the NEMA 14-50 plug that seems to be de rigeur lately.
| At least I could probably get an electrician to fix that
| cheap.
|
| If anything the non CCS chargers are made by idiots.
| jliptzin wrote:
| You just need a good EV. PHEV is like buying a typewriter
| with a screen when everyone is already buying computers. I
| have had a pure EV since 2019 and never had charging
| problems like that and I drive a lot. I have the 14-50 at
| home and it charges quickly, every morning I'm at 80%
| charge. Spend $100 to get an electrician to fix that for
| you.
| jwagenet wrote:
| I don't have either, but it seems to me a PHEV is a great
| EV alternative for people who do a lot of local (city)
| driving and also occasionally need a vehicle to do
| weekend trips for camping, etc, where charging is not
| available or an inconvenience.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| My household has an EV, a home level 2 charger, and I
| still wouldn't mind getting an PHEV. Not even for the
| weekend trips, but just because it's cheaper than another
| full EV, and I don't really drive enough to need the
| range beyond the battery on a PHEV.
| hinkley wrote:
| The part of my brain that doesn't understand how
| photovoltaics work really wants solar panels on EVs but
| aside from keeping the cabin at ambient, which does in
| fact have some mileage value, all they would really
| achieve is keeping self discharge at bay.
|
| If you parked it with a 50 mile range and came back a
| week later, it might still have 50 miles of range.
| unregistereddev wrote:
| Different people have different driving patterns and
| different needs.
|
| Some parts of the country have less (and crappier)
| charging infrastructure. Those parts of the country
| coincide with areas where places are further apart and
| you need more range. For some of us who happily live in
| flyover states, a PHEV is an awesome in between.
|
| I'm glad that an EV works out for you. Hopefully charging
| times (and charging infrastructure) will improve so that
| an EV works out for me as well. Until then, a PHEV works
| well for me and is far more efficient than a pure ICE.
| jliptzin wrote:
| I lived in a rural location and now in suburbs and still
| never had any issues, even 4 years ago when there were
| far fewer chargers. Here is a map of the level 2+
| chargers in the country:
|
| https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/electricity_locations.html#
| /fi...
|
| With 300 miles of range all you have to do is get to the
| next charger and if you're willing to spend 5 minutes in
| advance to plan your road trip it really doesn't add any
| extra time if you stop to charge while eating, using the
| restroom, etc. I like the extra cargo space not having an
| internal combustion engine gives me.
| hinkley wrote:
| Who has a real 300 mile range? That Bolt was going to get
| lucky making over 180.
| carcostthrow wrote:
| > I lived in a rural location and now in suburbs and
| still never had any issues, even 4 years ago when there
| were far fewer chargers. Here is a map of the level 2+
| chargers in the country:
|
| As he said, different circumstances can shift the
| solution point. What you have someone that doesn't have a
| data plan on their phone, or doesn't carry a smartphone
| and thus doesn't have access to a mapping app? Or the
| charge point requires a smartphone app that I don't
| connectivity to use with?
|
| For me as well an EV is questionable. My gas burning SUV
| is $1100 a year to insure, tax included. A Tesla Model 3
| at the same level insurance would could me $6014 a year
| before taxes. I don't drive enough to save $5000 in gas
| and maintenance a year.
|
| Then there's my garage. Long story short, the best it can
| do right now is 120V 6A charge speed. To properly upgrade
| my garage to support a full EV would cost an additional
| $2500. Assuming if I also have to upgrade the electrical
| mains from 100A to 200A, it's $15,000 to $25,000. And my
| electricity costs 20 cents a kilowatt hour.
|
| Does buying an EV it still make sense after all that if
| you were in my circumstances?
| revscat wrote:
| > A Tesla Model 3 at the same level insurance would could
| me $6014 a year before taxes.
|
| I find that incredibly difficult to believe. According to
| [1], the average cost to insure a Model 3 is $2500, which
| tracks with what I am paying.
|
| Who quoted you $6k/year?
|
| [1] https://www.forbes.com/advisor/car-
| insurance/vehicles/tesla/...
| abc_lisper wrote:
| If your commute is less than 100 miles, you have nothing to
| worry, if you get a proper charger at home. Owned Tesla for
| 3.5 years with 60 mile commute, it has been very nice.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| If this is true, what is EV replacing?
|
| If my commute is less than 100 miles should I not be
| using train, light rail, trolley, bus, or similar public
| transport?
|
| The historical use for me and my family and those who has
| a car, for generation was "road trips", anything _over_
| 100 miles.
| dvdkon wrote:
| Plenty of people drive a car for short trips and those in
| rural areas will likely continue to do so. Also, consider
| company vehicles for workers transporting heavy equipment
| or delivery vehicles. All within the range of current EVs
| for a full day. EVs won't fix car traffic issues in
| cities, but public transit won't cover 100% of cases
| effectively.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Where do you live?
|
| In my current city, taking a 10 mile bus ride would take
| more than an hour, vs. 10 minutes in a car.
|
| I do not live in New York.
| frumper wrote:
| For fun, I just looked up my route tomorrow using public
| transportation.
|
| I typically leave around 6:30am, drive 45 miles and
| arrive at work about 7:15am.
|
| Using Google and a host of websites to plan, I could walk
| a mile to catch a regional bus, ride and arrive there 1
| hour after I began. I can then walk to another bus
| station, ride a local bus to a the main bus station,
| connect to another bus that drops me off pretty much at
| my workplace. I'd arrive 2.5 hours after I began this
| journey. The earliest I can get to work by this route is
| 9:30am. The regional bus system doesn't run any earlier.
|
| Alternatively, if I take our non-ev, it's the same time,
| but costs 5x as much as our Model Y. The ICE car cost
| about the same as the EV.
| mkozlows wrote:
| The Atlantic had a piece about the "surprise EV rental": ht
| tps://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/06/elect.
| ..
|
| What they say is dead on -- EVs are great, but getting an
| EV in a rental situation that's not optimal for an EV
| without notice and without planning for it is a terrible,
| terrible situation.
|
| Level 2 chargers are great in your garage, or in a place
| you're going to park for a long time anyway (hotels, say),
| but for quick top-offs on a road trip, yeah, not good.
| hinkley wrote:
| Well the quarter of that article I could read seemed
| interesting.
|
| The 80/20 rule made them furious. Academically I knew
| about it but I never had to experience it.
| lettergram wrote:
| I have a hybrid, basically get 30 miles on a charge. It's
| frankly perfect!
|
| To put it simply, there are two types of modes I drive -
| short & in town or long (100+ mile round trip).
|
| There is absolutely zero chance I'll be using an EV to
| drive over 100 miles as there's a risk I get stuck for
| hours or even need a tow.
|
| For in town trips, 20-30 miles is more than fine and I
| never even switch to gas. There's very little trips in
| between.
|
| Tesla holds a decent spot for suburban regions where you
| drive 10-120 miles round trip. Arguably that's probably
| fine for half of America. Particularly, if you have two
| cars (one gas, one electric) as most households with EVs
| do.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > Level 2 chargers are not for spontaneous trips
|
| What do you mean by this? Do you mean "public L2 chargers"
| or private in-home L2 chargers? If public, I agree--it
| would take 4 hours to charge your car on a road trip, but
| if private then just keep your car charged to 80-90%.
|
| > My house was wired for level 2 charging by the previous
| owners but the plug is 220 3 prong rather than the NEMA
| 14-50 plug that seems to be de rigeur lately. At least I
| could probably get an electrician to fix that cheap.
|
| There are multiple NEMA 3-prong 220V standards, at least
| one of which is 50V and at least Tesla sells charger
| adapters for all of them. If you're buying an EV though you
| may as well shell out the extra $500 + labor and have an
| electrician install the dedicated charger (so you can keep
| your portable charger in the car for traveling).
|
| > If anything the non CCS chargers are made by idiots.
|
| I'm not sure what this means either. The Tesla charger
| isn't CCS and I haven't had any problems with it. Also,
| plenty of CCS chargers suck (at least one of the CCS
| standards is exclusively L2).
| jp191919 wrote:
| A Bolt is about the worst EV someone could use for a road
| trip.
| hinkley wrote:
| Oh it was terrible even by proxy. It would drop estimated
| range at about 2 miles per mile. Took all day to get
| between two metropolitan areas. Spent several hours at a
| level 2 to ensure they didn't get stuck in the woods with
| crap cell coverage.
| evanelias wrote:
| Eh, it's not great but it's totally doable as long as it
| isn't winter. My understanding is that a Nissan Leaf is
| much much worse than a Bolt for road trips...
|
| I just did an NYC to Cleveland trip in my Bolt EUV, along
| a route with only a few DC charging locations, and never
| once had to wait for an available charger -- even on
| Memorial Day.
|
| That said, if you need to use the heater, then yeah it's
| not viable for a road trip. No heat pump, so major
| battery drain.
|
| The other key to a Bolt road trip is to avoid speeding
| too much. There's an absolutely tremendous difference in
| range when going 65 mph vs 80 mph.
| outworlder wrote:
| > My understanding is that a Nissan Leaf is much much
| worse than a Bolt for road trips...
|
| As a Nissan Leaf owner, yes. Because of CHADeMO (that is
| going to be a big problem in a few years, as existing
| stations fail and don't get replaced) and because of the
| passively cooled battery pack. I can do one DC fast
| charging no problem without much change in battery temps
| (CA weather). 2 or 3 in the same day? Might get toasty.
|
| That said, all EVs have issues during winter(Tesla
| included, their EPA ranges are way overstated). It's just
| that, for a Tesla, it's easier to find a supercharger.
|
| The consumption difference due to speed affects all cars,
| no matter their drivetrain. For ICE, that burns a hole in
| your pocket as it causes you to stop at gas stations more
| often.
| evanelias wrote:
| re: winter range, my understanding is that EVs with heat
| pumps (including Teslas) tend to have much more efficient
| heaters than ones without heat pumps (e.g. Bolts).
|
| re: speed and consumption, for sure. But because the
| Bolt's DC fast charging rate maxes out at a fairly lame
| 50-55 kW, and speeding => reduced range => more charging
| time required, so on a long Bolt road trip there's
| diminishing returns from speeding a ton. I suppose it
| depends a lot on terrain and climate though, since e.g.
| speeding can be more beneficial if it means you're
| running the heater for less time.
| snapetom wrote:
| Dumb you're getting downvoted, because the charging
| infrastructure is bad. I was "EV curious" and recently
| rented a Kia EV with a 250 mile range for a trip to
| Northern California. I had two purposes - drive to/from San
| Francisco and Sacramento. Drive all around the Sacramento
| metro area. I figured California, probably having the best
| EV infrastructure, would make the experience a good one. I
| was wrong.
|
| 1) Half the stations we attempted to charge at were broken
| for various reasons. Sometimes it was the payment system.
| Sometimes it was charging as a whole. sometimes the CCS
| side was broken, sometimes the Tesla side was broken.
| Sometimes the screen was broken. The point is these are
| not-simple machines with massive amounts of electricity
| going through them. Many things break.
|
| 1/1 Davis 2/4 Davis 1/2 El Dorado Hills 0/3 Palo Alto 1/1
| Palo Alto
|
| 2) Vendors. All terrible. All except one municipal L2
| required you to download their app. Thankfully all allowed
| guest charging, but if I was evil, I'd require users to
| register. Good chance they're desperate, and good chance
| you're the only charger in the area.
|
| The experience didn't put me off on EVs, and I'm still
| considering getting one because I can charge at home.
| Relying on infrastructure, though, is a terrible idea.
| asdgaisofgnoi wrote:
| For the large majority of driving PHEVs are superior. They
| offer identical efficiency for short (<50 mile) trips at a
| large cost savings. They can handle longish trips where a
| BEV would wind up dead on the side of the road. Even in the
| rare circumstances where BEVs are better the advantages are
| slight.
| acomjean wrote:
| Hybrids are great.
|
| There are downsides: extra weight of a gas engine, more
| mechanical complexity, and weird maintenance, especially
| if its an gas engine your not using very often. The
| person I know who has one went a couple months without
| using much gas. Does gas go bad?
| Marsymars wrote:
| It does, but smart cars can use pretty simple math to
| work out how old your gas is and burn gas as needed to
| keep the age of your gas low enough.
| delecti wrote:
| That's a great point to raise, because yes, gas does go
| bad. Without added stabilizer, it lasts 3-6 months.
| bombcar wrote:
| As for your plug, that's cheap and easy to replace
| (literally the homeowner can do it in most jurisdictions,
| be safe) - the question is the size of the breaker/wire
| routed to the plug.
|
| If your breaker is fifty amps, then changing for NEMA 14-50
| shouldn't be more than $100-200 even if you hire a master
| electrician.
|
| If the breaker is NOT fifty amps, then you have to
| carefully check that the wire is the sized correctly all
| the way from the box to the outlet (it can LOOK right
| coming out of the breaker box, and look right going into
| the outlet box, but somewhere hidden in the walls it
| changes to an incorrect size).
| JoshTko wrote:
| Assuming Ford and GM are not inept and their adoption of NACS
| is driven by necessity rather than choice. This implies a
| significant lead by Tesla in charging technology. Essentially
| like Android adopting lightning connectors. Huge, long term
| positive impact to Tesla as market leader.
| marsokod wrote:
| > In that world, Tesla would have had to switch their cars
| over to CCS eventually and retrofit their existing chargers
| to CCS, and people who bought Teslas with the proprietary
| plug have a terrible UX of needing adapters everywhere.
|
| It should be noted that in any case Tesla will have to
| support CCS, though in its CCS2 version. It is the de facto
| standard in Europe and is in the process of making their
| chargers in Europe fully compatible since the M3 comes with
| CCS2 by default here. And it is unlikely to change any time
| soon, CHAdeMO is dying here and all the other networks are
| using CCS2 (which seems to be much better than CCS1 if I
| trust the complaints about CCS1 I read on HN).
| vidarh wrote:
| In fact Type 2 or Combo2 (CCS2) is an EU requirement for
| the charging stations so while you can offer alternatives,
| all new charging stations must offer of those two.
|
| Directive 2014/94/EU:
|
| https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
| content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...
| marsokod wrote:
| Yes. CCS2 has not technically won yet as being the
| default port for all EVs in Europe, but any other option
| would have to have significant advantages over CCS2 to
| win, features that a potential CCS3 version would not be
| able to support.
| Lramseyer wrote:
| I think this alternate future of a gigantic CCS network is a
| really long ways off. Have you ever tried to use non-Tesla DC
| fast charging? It's a mess! There aren't a lot of stalls, one
| of them is usually broken, and the payment processing is a
| mess! I thought people were exaggerating until I experienced
| it first hand. While I think they will eventually get their
| act together, I don't think it's unreasonable to claim that
| the terrible DC fast charging experience is a huge deterrent
| to non-tesla EV buyers right now. This ultimately creates a
| chicken and egg problem that results in such slow progress in
| the EV charging world (outside of Tesla.) It's why Tesla's US
| EV market share is around 60%.
|
| I actually think this is great for Tesla in other ways in the
| nearer term. With other automakers switching to NACS, this
| removes a huge concern for would be non-Tesla EV buyers. Now
| you may think this would erode Tesla's market share, but I
| think it will convert far more ICE customers than Tesla
| customers. The net effect is a faster EV adoption, faster
| cultural acceptance of EVs, and more people considering Tesla
| in the near-mid term.
|
| I fail to see how this negatively affects Ford, GM, and
| Rivian. They can retrofit the charge port relatively cheaply
| or deal with an adapter. Yes, it affects resale value of
| early customers. But that's how it goes with new technology,
| and buyers are naive to think otherwise. Besides, when
| compared to their ICE counterparts, they're probably still
| coming out ahead on maintenance.
| agloe_dreams wrote:
| Also one other detail: There's a hell of a lot more money in
| the car 'fuel' industry than the car making business. R&D
| costs are way lower, you don't need that many employees, and
| you can always charge these third party automakers more.
| Tesla is going to make bank off these adopters.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Most EVs charge at home most of the time, so there isn't
| that much money in the "fuel" industry, they are mostly
| needed for long distance trips (and so crowd up on holiday
| weekends), not daily driving.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| Sure, although Tesla is in this market as well, with
| solar panels, battery packs, and wall chargers.
| logifail wrote:
| > Most EVs charge at home most of the time
|
| Umm, there's a _significant_ chunk of the world 's
| population who will likely never be able to charge at
| home, because they live in apartments and park on-street.
|
| "EV owners who live in apartment buildings and park on
| the street will rely heavily on public chargers--in 2021,
| 42 percent of European EV owners living in cities had no
| access to home charging points."
|
| https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/automotive-and-
| assembly/...
| two_handfuls wrote:
| True but these people mostly don't go to superchargers,
| they go to slower & cheaper chargers near their apartment
| or work.
| chris222 wrote:
| Yah this is where people get stuck in their way of
| thinking about current technology limitations.
|
| Really fast <10m charge times are only about 5 years away
| which means people will use DC fast chargers like gas
| stations.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I wouldn't make investment decisions on that kind of
| prediction. Slower (cheaper) chargers will take much of
| the load, and unless outlawed, are going to heavily bite
| into fuel station margins. The best they can do is charge
| more for DC fast charging when it is needed (during
| holiday weekends).
| 6DM wrote:
| Also, surprisingly there are HoA's that are fighting
| people that want to install an outlet for their car e.g.
| town home owners without a garage.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| I offered to pay for a charger to be installed in my
| spot, and the hoa board flat out refused. Granted,
| they're _old_ , and are probably still upset about the
| switch to unleaded gasoline...
| bombcar wrote:
| Keep badgering them each and every month/year until they
| give in.
|
| Some states are moving to make it illegal for HOAs to
| prohibit it the way the FCC did with satellite dishes.
| earthboundkid wrote:
| In the US, most apartment dwellers park in a garage,
| which can and will be retrofitted with chargers. Street
| parking is the major challenge. In Park Slope Brooklyn, I
| often see a lone cable coming out of a brownstone out to
| a Tesla on the street. :-)
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| What is your stats for most apartment people Park in a
| garage? Where I live garages cost a hefty amount extra
| and the apartment complex doesn't even have enough for
| more than a quarter of the residents anyway
| earthboundkid wrote:
| Most of the US has aggressive parking minimums.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| We have plenty of outside parking. I've just never seen
| majority garage parking
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| LA is notorious for their parking minimums (two car spots
| for a two bedroom apartment), Seattle in contrast lacks
| parking minimums at all.
| bombcar wrote:
| https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/fact-958-january-2-2
| 017...
|
| It's lower for renters (who are more likely in an
| apartment), but it's still overall decently high.
|
| Every apartment I've lived in had a garage or carport
| that could easily have had a charger installed (and
| probably does, by now).
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| On street parking is very much allowed only in some
| countries, the biggest one being the USA, but much of
| western Europe it is disallowed (or at least, you pay for
| it by the hour). Many countries require proof of parking
| spot before they will let you even buy a car.
|
| Even in that case, it isn't hard for cities to put out L2
| charging pylons at each on-street parking space. They can
| just combine it with street light infrastructure or
| whatever (they would also be able to monetize street
| parking at that point, which is inevitable anyways).
| davrosthedalek wrote:
| At least in Germany, most city areas where people live
| are "Anwohnerparken", so people who live on the street
| are allowed to park on the street, nobody else.
| Marsymars wrote:
| > Even in that case, it isn't hard for cities to put out
| L2 charging pylons at each on-street parking space.
|
| How does this work for physical logistics? e.g. I'm a
| two-car household that can't practically reduce to a
| single car, with a driveway that only fits one car. (That
| my partner uses.) I street park in front of my house, and
| there's street/sidewalk/lawn. The only place I can think
| of to put a charging station is in my lawn with some kind
| of arch over the sidewalk to reach my car. Also becomes
| problematic as street parking spots aren't reserved. (I
| could potentially remove a tree from my front yard and
| pave over it to provide another parking space, but that's
| not a very appealing solution.)
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Are your electric lines all buried? I guess if they are
| that would make it much more difficult. Otherwise, you
| have poles or something to keep the lines in the air.
|
| I'm just amazed America has so much free parking still.
| People buy houses, even if they have garages, they use
| the garage as storage and park their car on the street.
| Having lived in other countries where that simply can't
| happen, its like this country practically gives away
| parking spaces for free.
| Marsymars wrote:
| Yes, utilities are all buried. Electrical doesn't even
| come from the street side of the house, it comes in from
| a utility corridor behind my house.
|
| Also have a garage, but isn't practical to park in it for
| various reasons, some more fixable than others. (It's set
| up as a home gym which I view as essential for my health,
| it's single car and parking in the driveway would block
| in the garage, it doesn't have a floor drain or
| appropriate slope for draining which is fairly important
| for winter snowmelt, and it doesn't have an automatic
| door opener.)
| tormeh wrote:
| Depends. In Japan you're only allowed to buy a car if you
| have a free parking space on your property. A police
| office will come by your home to verify that the number
| of parking spots on your property is enough to house all
| the cars you plan on having. So in this case you would
| just have to deal with only having one car, or pave over
| the lawn to fit another parking spot.
| Wheen wrote:
| > will rely heavily on public chargers
|
| Public chargers =/= DC fast chargers (like Tesla
| superchargers).
|
| I've already seen level 2 chargers that drop down from
| light posts in my city. Roll those out to every light
| post near apartment buildings and throw in some curb-side
| stalls if you need more capacity. Most people won't need
| to charge every night with 200/300mi+ range, so you won't
| need a 1:1 mapping of chargers to cars. This way, people
| charge passively overnight at stations that are cheaper
| to build than DC fast chargers.
| [deleted]
| logifail wrote:
| > Roll those out to every light post near apartment
| buildings and throw in some curb-side stalls if you need
| more capacity
|
| Don't forget your local electrical grid will likely need
| a significant upgrade too. An LED streetlamp probably
| draws a couple of hundred watts, tops.
| axus wrote:
| Apparently LED can use less than 100W, and before LEDs
| streetlights would use 250-400W . The really bright
| sodium ones were 1000W, but those probably weren't over
| your neighborhood sidewalk.
|
| https://pacificlamp.com/street-light.asp
| com2kid wrote:
| Local electrical grids are already being upgraded due to
| the increasing need for AC thanks to climate change.
| hinkley wrote:
| The latest rounds of gas convenience stores have gotten
| more square footage than earlier generations. I suspect
| they are anticipating indoor seating for charging customers
| at some point.
|
| I've also started seeing joint ventures where it's a proper
| coffee stand or in one case I can think of an A&W root
| beer.
|
| Gas stations tend to be physically separated from pastimes
| (what Burger King owner wants diesel fumes in their
| store?), and someone at least is hedging their bets that
| won't always be the case. I don't know if they'll see the
| fruits but their kids absolutely will.
| RajT88 wrote:
| I've been seeing some of these as well in recent years.
|
| The most memorable one was down in Louisville, where
| there was a gas station/bait shop/bar. The bartender sold
| me some whole-hog pork sausage at $2/lb. which he kept in
| a duffel bag in the ice box. Totally on the up-and-up.
|
| Another is a well-known BBQ joint / convenience store out
| by Kansas City (I forget the name).
|
| Most common, I think, is having a Subway inside the
| convenience store. I've seen Burger Kings as well.
| meepmorp wrote:
| > The bartender sold me some whole-hog pork sausage at
| $2/lb. which he kept in a duffel bag in the ice box.
| Totally on the up-and-up.
|
| The secret ingredient is trichinosis!
| RajT88 wrote:
| It was delicious. I fried the hell out of it and used it
| for home-made Dan Dan Mian.
| hinkley wrote:
| Nah, the nitrates take care of that.
| local_crmdgeon wrote:
| Joe's Kansas City BBQ.
| mikestew wrote:
| In poking around with PlugShare in the Seattle area, I'm
| seeing Arco gas/convenience stores with chargers. "EV
| Connect" is what is marked on the map. One is near the
| office that I don't go to anymore, but next time I'm that
| way to pick up hardware, I'll check it out. IIRC, there's
| no real room to build out the lot, but maybe the store
| could expand.
| bombcar wrote:
| Gas station stores are moving in on grocery stores.
|
| There's a huge war brewing that most people don't even
| know about, but once grocery stores started imitating
| Costco and offering gas, the convenience stores have been
| firing back by undercutting grocery stores on staples.
|
| Around here they'll even undercut Walmart on dairy and
| select produce.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| That is a very astute observation! Thank you. I have
| wondered why more and more convenience stores are getting
| into not just quick, pick-up snacks, but full blown fast-
| food style sit down environment.
|
| Recently when I drove around in the USA, I saw Sheetz,
| Wawa, Royal Farms, Rutter's, and High's. These are
| substantially larger with lots of amenities compared to
| the standard gas stations. Nothing compared to Buc-ee's,
| but still getting up there.
| chris222 wrote:
| Sheetz, Wawa and Royal Farms all already have Tesla
| chargers. Wawa has a location in Virginia with no gas
| pumps but Tesla chargers. So yes they are already
| planning for this future.
| earthboundkid wrote:
| > Recently when I drove around in the USA, I saw Sheetz,
| Wawa, Royal Farms, Rutter's, and High's.
|
| So you drove from Philly to Pittsburgh?
| evanelias wrote:
| Not sure about the others, but at least for Wawa and
| Royal Farms: many locations have offered fast-food style
| options for a very long time, like 25+ years, maybe more.
|
| Wawa has always been known for quality. I remember years
| back when there was a romaine lettuce shortage, they put
| up deeply apologetic signs about how they're temporarily
| substituting iceberg lettuce in their sandwiches.
|
| Meanwhile Royal Farms is known for their fried chicken.
| Although, the one near my college in Baltimore was more
| known for being a frequent target of robberies :/
|
| On a road trip, I recently ate at a Sheetz in central PA
| that had Electrify America chargers. Good food selection,
| similar to Wawa. Not the best overall experience though
| -- an unhinged lunatic flipped out at me for leaving a
| single unused napkin on my table (which lacked a napkin
| dispenser, and the place had no recycling can). I avoided
| that charging location for my return trip...
| solarkraft wrote:
| > In that world, Tesla would have had to switch their cars
| over to CCS eventually and retrofit their existing chargers
| to CCS, and people who bought Teslas with the proprietary
| plug have a terrible UX of needing adapters everywhere.
|
| They've switched to CCS in Europe and as far as I can tell
| it's going just fine for them. Not sure what would motivate
| them to pull this risky move besides an insane love for their
| customers' UX (which ... I doubt).
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Tesla also does GB/T in China, as required by the Chinese
| government.
| shmoe wrote:
| Because they were mandated to and CCS-2 is actually
| superior to CCS-1. NACS is superior to CCS-1 by far.
| outlace wrote:
| Tesla Insurance is a kind of small moat. But I think Tesla is
| really banking on winning the automotive AI race. They
| currently don't seem to be winning, but that does appear to be
| their main gamble. If they can be the first to achieve level 4+
| self-driving then they would definitely dominate regardless of
| charging infrastructure.
| sakopov wrote:
| > They currently don't seem to be winning, but that does
| appear to be their main gamble.
|
| So who do you think is winning it?
| ActorNightly wrote:
| In terms of usefulness, right now, not Tesla.
|
| At some point there will be a research breakthrough in ML
| with models that can extrapolate physics which is the
| current thing that is missing from self driving being
| actually good.
|
| At that point Tesla is going to be the winner without a
| doubt because they have the hardware and data to train en
| masse and deploy to cars.
| 01100011 wrote:
| This assumes their HW is capable enough to run that
| algorithm. This remains to be seen.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > Tesla Insurance is a kind of small moat.
|
| Only idiots buy black-box based car insurance (whether Tesla
| or any other).
|
| I mean, come on, insurance companies are already renowned for
| slippery policy wordings and the desire to get out of paying-
| out.
|
| Do you seriously think an insurance company having access to
| your driving data is really being done for your benefit ?
|
| I would be willing to bet its so that Mr Risk Adjustor at the
| insurance company can say "computer AI algorithm says it
| thinks you were driving 'aggressively' that morning".
|
| And once "computer says no" you'll have a hell of a time
| trying to fight it.
| ajross wrote:
| > Only idiots buy black-box based car insurance
|
| Monitored policies are almost always significantly cheaper.
| That's why people buy them. I won't engage on who the
| "idiot" is in that analysis except to say that Adam Smith
| probably has an opinion.
|
| The reason this works is that it forces the consumers to
| self-partition into those who think they drive safely and
| those who know they don't. That doesn't correlate perfectly
| with _actual_ safety, but it 's clear that it's a good
| proxy signal. Insurance companies may be renowned for
| "slippery policy wordings", but they're even better known
| for doing good statistics.
| gleenn wrote:
| Anecdata but my mother opted for the sensor tracking on
| her phone through her insurance company while driving and
| she saw almost zero cost savings.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| Um, no?
|
| Why would a source of signal that has aligned incentives
| for all three major parties (individual, manufacturer, and
| insurance company) not be selected for by the market?
|
| It's not as if people are buying meteor insurance here.
| Automotive accidents are frequent enough to where if a
| policy provider fails to cover damage that really is in-
| policy they'll be sued, regulated, and shamed.
|
| Even more so, since Tesla has a financial incentive to
| ensure that these benefits really do accrue to the driver.
| zerohp wrote:
| > And once "computer says no" you'll have a hell of a time
| trying to fight it.
|
| Cars have been equipped with event data recorders that
| capture information moments before the crash for at least
| 20 years. It is part of the air bag controller. Insurance
| companies have equipment to read that data and use it
| against customers all the time.
|
| You don't need a Tesla or other black box insurance to get
| cheated.
| gleenn wrote:
| Having a little accelerometer data that is probably a
| mild hassle to extract is far different than an always-
| on, internet-enabled, sensor-filled computer that
| literally has a camera pointing at your face.
| justrealist wrote:
| > Do you seriously think an insurance company having access
| to your driving data is really being done for your benefit
| ?
|
| Well yes, there's marginal value for both you and Tesla in
| excluding aggressive drivers from the program. Some company
| with worse telemetry eats the cost of the accidents from
| those drivers.
|
| It's fine to argue that this is a privacy tradeoff you
| don't think should be legal but there's pretty obviously
| value to be had for both insurance and customer.
| garyfirestorm wrote:
| Level 4? Mercedes already beat them to level 3
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/27/23572942/mercedes-
| drive-p...
| jandrese wrote:
| The Mercedes system is a headline system. In that it was
| designed to generate headlines without actually
| accomplishing much.
| jsight wrote:
| To be fair, Tesla calls theirs "FSD" for essentially the
| same reason.
| kube-system wrote:
| MB's system accomplishes the levels of _quality_ defined
| in the SAE standard. Tesla is taking a different strategy
| by focusing on quantity of features, although many of
| them fail to meet the reliability standards of the higher
| SAE specs.
|
| Tesla is stuck at level 2 because the level of
| reliability required at level 3 would mean they'd have to
| _remove_ features to meet it.
| ballenf wrote:
| And turn it off completely when driving on half the roads
| in the US.
| rasz wrote:
| Tesla generates plenty of headlines every time one
| decapitates a driver or crashes full speed into large
| pretty much visible from space police/fire truck blinking
| all of its lights.
| 93po wrote:
| This is a tired argument. Level 3 driving in extremely
| strict conditions in a very small area using technology and
| software that doesn't scale isn't "beating" Tesla.
| kube-system wrote:
| Level 3 is the lowest level of self-driving. Level 2 and
| below are driver assistance features. Tesla makes very
| nice driver assistance features, but they have not
| released any features which operate the vehicle safely by
| itself under _any_ circumstance.
|
| MB is beating Tesla in the self driving game because
| they've released a car that is >0% self driving. Tesla is
| beating everyone at the driver assistance game.
| 93po wrote:
| This is semantics. Firstly because this difference is
| largely because Tesla _chooses_ to not deploy it as level
| 3 in some tiny highly-mapped market with sensors (LIDAR)
| and software that don 't scale (MB's level 3 breaks at
| the first change in roads like construction). Secondly
| because Tesla is 90%+ of the way to building level 3
| driving in 99% of places. MB is 99% of the way to level 3
| driving in 0.1% of places and it would take them years
| and billions of dollars to get that to 5%. I'll let you
| do the math and see which is further ahead.
| kube-system wrote:
| It's not semantics at all. They're both currently focused
| on solving very different problems under the broad
| category of "driving automation". While MBs approach has
| obvious coverage limitations, the advantage to that
| approach is that the solution is a more clearly scoped
| problem with a more obvious answer: expand the coverage.
| Tesla's approach doesn't have nearly as clear of a path
| to advancement. They need technology that doesn't yet
| exist to get there. Some have posed some serious concerns
| about whether Tesla's feature-first maturity-second
| approach is an engineering dead end and will ever be able
| to mature to the point of being able to operate
| unsupervised. They may be close, but the Pareto principle
| is a bitch.
|
| Time will tell, but I suspect we'll see Tesla adopt some
| of the same strategies that other automakers are taking
| before this race is over.
| panick21_ wrote:
| > currently focused on solving very different problems
|
| MB is focused on highlines and providing little value for
| a very high price.
|
| MB is simply no a software company I would trust. Company
| like Waymo have spend billions and billions to get to
| where they are and their software engineers are a hell of
| a lot better then those at MB if I know anything about
| German software engineering.
|
| Tesla has deployed end to end neural networks that can
| handle a huge amount of situation and is getting better
| far faster then MB is improving its system. With MB
| approach it would take decades to get there and that if
| you assume really good execution.
| 93po wrote:
| > clearly scoped problem with a more obvious answer:
| expand the coverage
|
| That's the problem, though. The scope is always changing.
| Roads change, barriers get put up, roads are closed,
| potholes form, detours signs go up. As soon as any of
| this happens, the extremely accuracy mapping that systems
| like MB rely on stops working. This has been proven when
| this sort of tech caused literally a dozen self-driving
| cars to just randomly stop and block a single
| intersection a year ago.
|
| > Tesla's approach doesn't have nearly as clear of a path
| to advancement.
|
| The path is very clear and they're doing it.
|
| > They need technology that doesn't yet exist to get
| there.
|
| This isn't really the case. Self driving can be done with
| cameras and sufficiently advanced software alone. The
| software isn't 100% there yet, which is why they're still
| requiring human supervision. But the technology is
| definitely there.
|
| > Some have posed some serious concerns about whether
| Tesla's feature-first maturity-second approach is an
| engineering dead end and will ever be able to mature to
| the point of being able to operate unsupervised
|
| Sure, possibly, but MB's approach is by far the more
| certain dead-end due to my first point.
|
| > Time will tell, but I suspect we'll see Tesla adopt
| some of the same strategies that other automakers are
| taking before this race is over.
|
| I doubt it. The other automakers are using dated methods
| that have been attempted for decades. Tesla is the first
| to go balls-out on camera-only automation.
|
| MB's approach will work when cars literally drive on
| rails.
| fastball wrote:
| The self-driving car level system is stupid because it is
| implies linearity but it is absolutely not.
|
| It also implies that higher level == better, which is
| certainly not a given. Is a system that can drive well on
| 10% of roads 99% of the time better than a system that can
| drive on 90% of roads 80% of the time? Not objectively. The
| former is "level 3" and the latter is "level 2".
|
| A solution that can get you to 3 quickly might _never_ get
| you to 4. And just because you beat someone else to market
| with "level 3" doesn't mean _their_ solution won 't skip
| over yours straight to 4/5.
| leetharris wrote:
| Just like how Samsung beat Apple to face scanning
| technology.
|
| Mercedes version is extremely limited and is only available
| on $100k+ cars with tons of additional hardware.
|
| I have Tesla FSD. It is certainly overpriced, but it has
| genuinely been getting a lot better in the last year. When
| I first got it I was disappointed because it was so
| useless, now I use it probably 70%+ of my drives.
|
| IMO Tesla is the closest to a mass-market version of the
| technology.
| tnel77 wrote:
| There's a huge subset of people who just desperately want
| to "prove" that the popular company is bad. Apple bad,
| Tesla bad, etc.
| pfisch wrote:
| I'm not sure it will really matter that much if they have
| level 4+ 1 year before their competition.
| w0m wrote:
| As a current Tesla model 3 owner, when I bought it - there
| was nothing remotely similar on the market. Today, I see the
| SC network, AutoPilot and general-'fun' factor as the Tesla
| differentiators.
|
| When I need to buy a new car in a few years (I honestly have
| no idea what kind of lifespan to expect), I'm looking forward
| to more options.
| megaman821 wrote:
| As a business it seems smarter to grow the pie and increase
| your revenues even if Tesla's marketshare decreases.
|
| Even through the lens of hating Elon Musk and wanting
| alternatives, most people have no strong feelings at all. Price
| and availability largely dictates what Tesla will sell. I have
| not seen any data Elon's antics change sales volumes.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Smart or not, it's definitely Tesla's strategy. They have an
| explicit goal of 20% of the vehicle market. They don't care
| what their share of the EV market is, they want 20% of the
| combined market.
| Retric wrote:
| Tesla's gross margins are down quite a bit since the Twitter
| deal. It's hard to correlate consumer sentiment with the
| price drop vs other factors, but gross margins dropped from
| 27% to 23% which represent a _lot_ of money.
|
| How much this impacts the company going forward is hard to
| say, but my guess is we're talking 10's of billions. Which
| makes it much harder to keep up with the expanding EV market,
| their super charger network for example needs to dramatically
| increase capacity just to keep up with the current rate of
| new Tesla production. Aka 25 year old EV's will still need a
| place to recharge.
| erikstarck wrote:
| The margins were inflated during the pandemic, though. Musk
| even called their prices "embarrassingly expensive".
|
| https://www.carscoops.com/2022/07/teslas-prices-are-
| embarras...
| Retric wrote:
| Tesla's gross margins were much higher in 2011 than 2022.
| But yea, this is why I said it's hard to separate how
| much of this was Tesla specific vs industry wide.
| However, the need to cut prices despite high inflation
| was unusual in the car industry and suggests a Tesla
| specific issue.
| jsight wrote:
| It is easy to explain when you consider that 2 car models
| are representing ~1.7M cars this year.
|
| Their strategy is a little nutty and has basically
| required them to underprice their vehicles.
|
| Any other mfg would cut back production to maintain
| margins.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Most non-Tesla auto manufacturers are taking a loss on
| their new EVs ATM as they try to optimize supply and
| recoup R&D costs.
| jsight wrote:
| Yeah, but I bet that changes once they get to ~400k per
| year. That isn't much different from Tesla's path.
| megaman821 wrote:
| There is no telling how much money is involved in falling
| margins if you don't also look at revenues. A quick Google
| search shows their gross profits look fine.
|
| Also, you would have to compare them to other
| manufacturers. If profits were down an average of 20% and
| Tesla's were down 10% then they would be over performing
| their competitors during a down market.
| Retric wrote:
| Gross profits need to pay back capital expenses for
| equipment or land, R&D, etc which is why moderate drop in
| gross profits represents a much larger drop on long term
| profits.
| yumraj wrote:
| > It's their biggest moat as far as I'm concerned.
|
| It's their biggest moat IFF it's limited to Tesla's and their
| charging stations.
|
| If every car adopts their charging port/socket and every
| charging station (Tesla and non-Tesla) supports Tesla's
| port/socket then the most diminishes and ultimately disappears.
| outworlder wrote:
| > I'm glad there finally seems to be a push to a better
| standard in North America.
|
| "Better standard"?
|
| It may be more widely available, the plug is a bit smaller, but
| it's not objectively 'better'. It does not support 800V,
| something CCS does even today.
| maxdo wrote:
| If you thinking about buying an EV between now and 2025 in
| North America, you need to be a very very big enthusiast of any
| other brand but not Tesla.
|
| You have a non zero risk of your non tesla car turn into a
| pumpkin few years after a purchase.
|
| Basically any non tesla EV sold in North America before 2025
| will depend on a proper work of that adapter with a particular
| network. And I explore lots of them the other direction, they
| are all ugly and make your experience horrible. Compare to just
| plug and go grab a coffee, with find a converter, plug it, make
| sure it work, get to the tesla app, make sure that part
| works...
|
| Your traveling will be a charade of opportunity to charge in a
| particular network.
|
| On the opposite side of it, if you buy a new or a used Tesla
| made in 2015, it will still charge you 5 years away from now
| with no issues in basically any network in North America. Not
| only tesla.
| samstave wrote:
| #1 ; MAKE ALL PLUGINS A STANDARD. FULL FN STOP
|
| #2 ; PROVIDE A RECEIPT OF WHERE THAT POWER CAME FROM. FULL FN
| STOP
|
| Where is that energy produced, what are the inputs? How much FN
| fuel was consumed to deliver that energy to the energy-plant
| which fed the port to which my e-car hooked up to, WHO TH HECK
| IS CALCULATING THIS DATA?
| vel0city wrote:
| > Where is that energy produced, what are the inputs?
|
| You'd pretty much just have to look up the averages for the
| grid in your area. The pixies on the wires get all mixed up
| in the big pipes, its not like the wires from the car just go
| straight to a single power plant.
|
| > WHO TH HECK IS CALCULATING THIS DATA?
|
| In the US, the EIA along with local state agencies and grid
| operators.
|
| https://www.eia.gov/
| Marsymars wrote:
| > #2 ; PROVIDE A RECEIPT OF WHERE THAT POWER CAME FROM. FULL
| FN STOP
|
| This isn't really possible other than in a probabilistic
| sense, you can't keep track of where particular electrons are
| in the grid.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| > Is the brand name of being effectively the gas station of EVs
| worth it to them?
|
| Yes, because it's becoming more and more clear that Tesla's
| future potential is way more in their role as an energy company
| than as a carmaker.
|
| - Global charging network for cars + trucks => Tesla as an
| energy distributor - Residential + utility scale solar +
| utility scale battery storage => Tesla as a maker of energy
| production infrastructure - Tesla smart grid software => Tesla
| as a global electric utility
|
| In other words, they're working towards becoming the clean
| energy combination of ExxonMobil + General Electric + Your
| local power company.
|
| The cars are an important business that happen to also incubate
| and drive forward all the other technologies I mentioned.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Sounds like Tesla is hurting to start lowering that barrier to
| competitors.
| kozziollek wrote:
| 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"...
| thepasswordis wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| It is called Title Case and part of a lot of (American?) news
| organizations style guides.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_case
|
| It confuses me, a non-native English speaker, a lot too. I hate
| it.
| Brometheus wrote:
| Me too. They should just use the German way.
|
| Nomens are big and other Words are small.
| DFHippie wrote:
| I've never understood the point of this. This
| capitalization standard carries no information. How many
| nouns in German can also be other parts of speech? It is
| easy to learn, but how useful is it?
| Timon3 wrote:
| Many nouns have forms shared by corresponding adjectives
| and verbs. Some words are overloaded in other ways (e.g.
| pronouns and nouns). It actually happens quite often and
| I'd say it helps clear up confusion.
| jfengel wrote:
| It's often confusing to native speakers as well, especially
| in a domain like this where words like "join" and "force" can
| easily be used as buzzwords.
|
| Title case makes a certain limited sense in newspapers. But
| on HN, where most articles don't use the title case even when
| the underlying media do use it, there is a lot of potential
| for confusion.
| angry_moose wrote:
| The article is titled correctly per most style guides:
|
| Generally speaking, AP style uses title case for headlines,
| which means all words are capitalized except for certain short
| words, such as articles and short prepositions.
|
| In AP style, headlines capitalize the first word, proper names,
| or proper abbreviations, verbs, pronouns, adjectives, and
| adverbs.
|
| Words that should not be capitalized include:
| Articles (a, an, the) Short (fewer than 5 letters)
| Coordinating Conjunctions (and, but, for) Prepositions
| (at, by, from, etc.)
|
| https://writer.com/blog/a-comprehensive-guide-to-the-ap-styl...
| [deleted]
| mattofak wrote:
| This style of capitalisation is called Title Case [1] and is
| quite common in English print media.
|
| There are quite a few automated tools to convert back and
| forth, maybe a future site improvement for Dang in the user
| preferences.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_case
| rblatz wrote:
| It's called Title Case, major words are capitalized and minor
| words aren't.
|
| https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/capitaliza...
| tekla wrote:
| This is entirely a personal problem. The title is correctly
| written.
| Pyramus wrote:
| Here we go again: HN user educates experts from different
| domain about said domain.
|
| Why not say "I prefer X" instead of "you are too stupid to do
| X"?
|
| Which might be a legit point and could lead to an interesting
| conversation...
| [deleted]
| renewiltord wrote:
| A personal target I have is that I compare my intelligence to
| an LLM by seeing if it correctly interprets things people say
| that I have trouble with. In this way, I can see where the LLMs
| are beating me. I had no trouble with this headline but had I
| had trouble, I would conclude that ChatGPT-3.5 is smarter than
| I am on headline interpretation, because it interprets the
| headline concordant with the story first time.
|
| In this model, I would judge myself as less able to extract
| information from other humans than ChatGPT. I believe that the
| ability to extract signal is a good marker of intelligence.
| Low-spec intelligences often require high-precision: they are
| more like formal language parsers than natural language parsers
| and are therefore less sophisticated.
| AntonFriberg wrote:
| As a non-native English speaker I was confused by the need to
| capitalize so many words (but not all) in headers. I make
| frequent use of https://capitalizemytitle.com/ to make sure
| that I follow some type of standard.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > Took me 3 tries to parse the title.
|
| Sounds like, to take a phrase from the youths, a skill issue.
|
| But you and others here may be interested in Language Log's
| posts on headline
| dialect:https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=277
| alistairSH wrote:
| Title case is distinct from sentence case...
|
| "For Whom the Bell Tolls"
|
| vs
|
| "For whom the bell tolls"
|
| The former is correct for titles. The latter is correct for
| ordinary sentences.
| Tagbert wrote:
| In titles, almost all words are capitalized (except for small
| word like articles of speech).
| sputter_token wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > ... propositions that are four or more letters ...
|
| So "yes" and "no" but "Maybe"? :-)
| rafram wrote:
| Title case is standard in news headlines.
| javier_e06 wrote:
| 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.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| >I wish the government would prod manufacturers to create a
| common connection
|
| That is exactly why this is happening. Tesla is expanding their
| network and opening it to more manufacturers in pursuit of a
| $7.5bn federal funding program.[0]
|
| >the new rules, issued after nearly eight months of
| debate...seeks to give consumers unfettered access to a growing
| coast-to-coast network of EV charging stations, including
| Tesla's Superchargers.
|
| >Companies that hope to tap $7.5 billion in federal funding for
| this network must also adopt the dominant U.S. standard for
| charging connectors, known as "Combined Charging System" or
| CCS; use standardized payment options; a single method of
| identification that works across all chargers; and work 97% of
| the time.
|
| Interesting enough, Tesla is (currently) obliged to add CCS
| compatibility to their chargers for eligibility, but these
| manufacturers are adopting their connector regardless.
|
| >The new rules would allow Tesla to keep its unique connectors,
| but it will have to add a permanently attached CCS connector or
| adapter that charges a CCS-compliant vehicle, similar to a gas
| pump that has a separate handle for gas versus diesel.
|
| [0]https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/new-
| bi...
| mkozlows wrote:
| But to be clear, that's not what this news is about. This
| news is about Tesla's push to get other companies to sign
| onto their previously-proprietary, still-Tesla-controlled
| "NACS" standard, en route to pushing the government to change
| the rules to allow NACS-only chargers and remove the CCS
| restriction.
| nilsbunger wrote:
| But will the CCS be as fast at charging ? It seems like Tesla
| could control a lot with their proprietary connector if it
| has a faster charge rate.
| recursive wrote:
| The fastest chargers today are CCS.
| kristofferR wrote:
| It's a wash, basically.
|
| The fastest CCS chargers are ~360KW, and Tesla
| Supercharger V4 will apparently support 350KW within a
| year.
| recursive wrote:
| Tesla always gets credit for stuff they're about to do.
| And half the time they don't seem to end up doing it. Or
| hit their dates. Don't get me wrong. Tesla has some great
| chargers. But they're great on their actual merits.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > But will the CCS be as fast at charging ? It seems like
| Tesla could control a lot with their proprietary connector
| if it has a faster charge rate.
|
| Tesla is supporting CCS because that's what the
| bureaucratic funding dictates, not because anyone believes
| CCS will succeed. They will (and should) do the bare
| minimum.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| The connector is open. Obviously the producer of the
| charging station can always determine the charge rate
| regardless of the connector, which is why most EA stations
| sit out there in a half broken state limited to 120kW.
| franckl wrote:
| I would be happy to have that. Most of the time it is 50
| to 90kW at the 2 EA stations I use in Texas
| mattmaroon wrote:
| Seems like it's happening without government intervention. It's
| hard to imagine now that Ford, GM, and Tesla are on the same
| standard that the rest will not follow suit.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Seems like it's happening without government intervention
|
| The federal government has definitely "intervened" by
| incentivizing interoperability through a $7.5B carrot[1] for
| interoperable charging networks.
|
| 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36408329
| meragrin_ wrote:
| So why is everyone fleeing the North American standards
| J1772/CCS1 in favor of Tesla's? What do these car companies
| stand to gain switching the charging port? They don't own
| charging networks.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Their agreements with Tesla are not public, so it's hard
| to tell what the benefits are. You say "everyone" is
| switching, but it's only American companies that have
| pledged to switch to NACS from CCS (so far), I don't
| think 3 for 3 is a coincidence.
|
| Also unlikely to be coincidental is the fact that Tesla
| "opened up" its charging patents/specs to competitors [1]
| in _2014_ - but only signed its first partner in 2023, a
| few months after billions of federal dollars were made
| available for interoperable charging networks.
|
| 1. IIRC, they included a mutual non-aggression clause for
| patents, and if a 100-year-old company with plenty of
| patents like Ford, you may balk at that. I'm speculating
| that Tesla has been offering much more generous terms
| than the 2014 offer
| iknowstuff wrote:
| Those 4 represent like 80-90% of EVs in the US
| mkozlows wrote:
| While there is a lot of activity going on to build CCS
| chargers, the current state of the CCS charging network
| is not great. This is a competitive advantage for Tesla.
|
| So GM and Ford wanted to sign deals to use Tesla's
| charger network to remove a competitive advantage that
| Tesla had. Tesla apparently agreed to that, but one
| condition is that GM and Ford had to agree to switch
| future vehicles over to Tesla's previously-proprietary
| (and still Tesla-controlled) "NACS" standards instead of
| CCS. GM and Ford agreed. Rivian appears to have followed
| suit after GM and Ford agreed.
|
| Other automakers are now evaluating the landscape to see
| where things will fall. The best alternative was always
| going to be that we had a unified CCS standard future,
| but now that GM/Ford have made that impossible, they may
| decide that it's better to get some leverage by unifying
| on NACS rather than having a split-standard future.
| mwint wrote:
| 1. The Tesla charger is _better_ in essentially every
| measurable and subjective way.
|
| 2. They want to sell cars, and cars with the Tesla
| connector have access to Tesla superchargers without a
| dongle.
| perfectstorm wrote:
| Volkswagen owns Electrify America the only competitor at
| scale to Tesla's supercharging network. they uses CCS and VW
| is one of the largest car manufacturers in the world. i think
| they can stand on their own. time will tell though.
| gibolt wrote:
| They were forced to make EA as part of Dieselgate. If most
| vehicles is the U.S. are on NACS, they will be forced to
| switch by market forces alone.
| mohaine wrote:
| World status doesn't mater as this is North America only.
| Volkswagen doesn't have a chance and tbh, I doubt they care
| that much.
|
| They certainly didn't care enough to make electrify America
| good.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Go check out some car forums for folks that depend on EA
| (like Lucid). I've never had an issue with EA, but the
| general consensus seems to be that EA reliability is
| abysmal, with stations frequently being down (though
| reviews seem to be on an uptrend starting in 2023, so
| perhaps it was a pandemic related issue).
|
| As another commenter stated, though, Volkswagen was forced
| to create EA as part of their Dieselgate settlement, and
| their behavior in the past hasn't exactly instilled
| confidence that they see it as something worth investing
| in.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| EA is bad at best. Very unreliable network, especially
| the ones not near urban centers. Yeah you get reliable
| charging if you're near big cities but once you're out in
| the middle of nowhere, it can be terrifying. I've
| personally arrived at an EA charger to only find it not
| working and the next closest one was a 50 mile detour.
| Thankfully I plan liberally, but I'd be in a very bad
| spot if not. Someone I know, also had a locking problem
| where the charger wouldn't detach. And I've seen news
| items relating to literal bricking of cars by using the
| chargers.
| jeromegv wrote:
| There has been government intervention.
| https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-open-us-charging-
| ne...
| gibolt wrote:
| The government is actually requiring CCS1 (currently) to
| get that funding. This may change as more dominoes fall as
| others adopt NACS.
|
| Considering that nearly all U.S. manufacturers are now
| switching off of CCS1, this requirement makes no sense
| since infrastructure is meant to last.
| bisby wrote:
| Are the chargers/ports on cars easy enough to swap out,
| or are we manufacturing ewaste?
|
| If I were to buy a car with CCS today, and then in 2024,
| NACS wins, and all cars going forward have NACS, and all
| charging stations change to NACS as a result... In the
| year 2030, can I get the port upgraded, are the changing
| stations obligated to support CCS indefinitely, is there
| an adapter I can just keep in my car for NACS->CCS that
| actually works (NACS->CCS is currently not an option...
| will it become an option?), or is my CCS car just
| unchargeable?
| iknowstuff wrote:
| They all speak the CCS protocol so it's a matter of a
| simple passive adapter.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > Are the chargers/ports on cars easy enough to swap out,
| or are we manufacturing ewaste?
|
| I'm not sure those statements are mutually exclusive. All
| new manufacturing produces ewaste. CCS cars will still be
| chargeable in one form or another until the car itself
| dies.
| pseudosavant wrote:
| I've had EVs for 7+ years now and have plenty of experience
| with J1772, Chaedmo, and CCS. All I can say is thank heavens
| Tesla's connector is getting adopted! It is the only connector
| that seems like it was designed with the ease-of-use regular
| people expect - not what us early adopter EV people will put up
| with. This kind of friction does impede adoption too.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| As someone who has only ever used J1772/CCS, can you explain
| a bit more? I mean, it's just a plug that I stick into my car
| - I find the newer US home AC electric plugs with the
| automatic "safety shutters" harder to plug into than a CCS
| connector, so I don't really understand what friction you're
| referring to.
| ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
| That should have been done years ago. And "prod" should have
| been "required."
|
| ball = dropped
|
| So now, once again, the USA adopts a "standard" shunned by the
| rest of the world.
| SllX wrote:
| I guess Japan and China don't exist in your world.
| mkozlows wrote:
| They did. It was CCS. Everyone except Tesla was on board to
| using it, and it was widely viewed as the standard going
| forward, and even Tesla was retro-fitting its chargers with CCS
| ("Magic Dock"), and presumably would one day switch its cars
| over.
|
| Then Tesla pulled a fast one on the morons at GM and Ford, who
| signed stupid deals that handed the future back to Tesla, and
| now the only question is whether Tesla consolidates the entire
| industry behind it (possible) or we end up in a world with a
| split between NACS and CCS (also possible, but probably less
| likely).
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| As far as I know, Tesla will still add CCS compatible
| adapters to the Supercharger network in the future, since it
| is a requirement for the EV network funding they're going
| after by opening up to additional manufacturers.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/new-
| bi...
| mkozlows wrote:
| That's the plan as of right now, but the clear intent here
| is to push the government to change the rules to allow
| NACS-only chargers. If a few more automakers (Hyundai and
| VW being probably the most relevant) sign deals with Tesla
| to use NACS, it'd be impossible to argue that there's any
| reason to do a CCS buildout.
| chrisstanchak wrote:
| Musk is set up to win both ways. That's the genius.
| AlgorithmicTime wrote:
| [dead]
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Tesla pulled a fast one on the morons at GM and Ford_
|
| Consumers prefer NACS to CCS. And Electrify America failed,
| spectacularly, to deliver a working product. (As someone put
| it bluntly, NACS exists. CCS does not. You bet on the horse,
| not the unicorn.)
|
| The auto industry is standardising around NACS because it
| will eventually force the standard into the open. That, in
| turn, enables antitrust questions about the
| Tesla/Supercharger tie-up. (In the meantime, everyone avoids
| the wastefulness of a meaningless standards battle.)
| bombcar wrote:
| We should have some brand of car install both plugs (as I
| understand the smarts are in the car, the plug is basically
| a dumb electrical connection) and then after a year or two
| see which people are using.
| Server6 wrote:
| The problem is that CCS is objectively bad and way worse than
| NACS. I suggest watching Sandy Munro's analysis on it.
| mkozlows wrote:
| This is what Tesla fans say, but the actual reasons they
| give are weak.
|
| The advantages of CCS: It supports 800V today, it supports
| V2L/V2H/V2G today.
|
| The advantages of NACS: It's smaller, which nobody cares
| about except Tesla fans.
| chrisstanchak wrote:
| Did you watch Sandy Munro's analysis on it? He's one of
| the leading minds in the auto industry.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Sandy Munro has a conflict of interest he doesn't always
| highlight when reporting on Tesla-related issues.
| [deleted]
| specialist wrote:
| Please tell.
| pseudosavant wrote:
| I don't think people can hear this loud enough. I own an EV
| with CCS, I'm glad the rest of the industry looks to be
| going NACS. CCS is in fact objectively terrible. CCS could
| only seem decent when it was following on something as
| truly atrocious as Chademo.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > I own an EV with CCS, I'm glad the rest of the industry
| looks to be going NACS. CCS is in fact objectively
| terrible.
|
| Can you explain your reasoning? I have an EV with CCS and
| have never had a problem with it, so I don't know what is
| "objectively terrible" about it.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| [citation needed]
|
| Its a plug, its bigger than NACS but apart from that its
| hard to notice the difference as a consumer
| wilg wrote:
| It's better engineered and designed. It's that simple.
| Yes, the differences aren't mind-blowing, but who cares.
| As long as they properly open it up and standardize it as
| they are saying they will, then this is a perfectly good
| outcome. Most EVs and fast chargers in the US have
| Tesla/NACS ports anyway, so this is the easier lift to
| standardize.
| sangnoir wrote:
| It's not black and white: CCS supports 800V charging,
| NACS does not (yet). Higher voltage = lower current and
| lighter cables and less strain on the connectors.
|
| Superchargers wete also lagging on liquid-cooled cables,
| which will be included in v4.
| wilg wrote:
| If it's possible for NACS to support 800V charging then
| that is not really a very meaningful advantage of CCS, is
| it? I think Tesla themselves will eventually switch to
| 800v at some point.
|
| V3 Superchargers have liquid cooled cables, that's why
| they are thinner than V2 cables. V4 has even crazier
| liquid cooling, where the conductors are directly
| immersed in the coolant.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Sure it _can_ support higher voltage in a new revision,
| but that means currently deployed chargers have an
| inferior design in that aspect, doesn 't it?
| wilg wrote:
| Sure, but I don't know whether that would be a hardware
| revision or just a protocol thing how complicated it
| would be. Could be a software update for all I know. Is
| it the case that all currently deployed CCS chargers
| support 800v charging? If not, is it possible for an 800v
| architecture vehicle to charge at a 400v CCS charger?
|
| Plus, if the concern is the port then I don't necessarily
| mind that fast charging companies will have to deploy new
| hardware, as long as the cars don't need to get
| retrofitted all the time or use adapters.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| From what I can see, telsa use CCS2 but with a different
| plug.
|
| In the EU/UK they have the CCS2 plugs on them, and are
| compatible with any CCS2 capable car.
|
| (source: me, I used one last week for a non tesla car)
| [deleted]
| freerobby wrote:
| What charge port do you have that isn't Tesla compatible with
| an adapter?
| martythemaniak wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Is there any reason to buy a non-Tesla EV before 2025?
| tdiggity wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| If any of those conditions are true, why not wait until 2025
| when the charging connection is settled?
| Jolter wrote:
| What would I drive until then?
| tw04 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| speed_spread wrote:
| It's not just charging data obviously, it's all the car
| usage data. Where you go, how fast, with who... And yes,
| after a few years, the value of that data is worth more
| than the original profit they made selling the car itself.
| Its also recurring revenue, they don't even need to sell
| you a new car to keep making money.
|
| There's a reason the Ford CEO declared a few years back
| that Ford was to become "a data company". Tesla is only
| showing the way. https://threatpost.com/ford-eyes-use-of-
| customers-personal-d...
|
| Margins on hardware are so slim, it doesn't take much
| surveillance to double or triple the profit a manufacturer
| makes over the lifespan of an object. You thought IoT was
| about customer convenience? It's not science fiction. Smart
| Televisions already report on what you're watching, in
| real-time.
| https://www.samsung.com/us/business/samsungads/insights/
| cyberax wrote:
| > Where you go, how fast, with who..
|
| Where you go can not be inferred from the charging
| sessions. You can kinda infer the speed, by looking at
| the state of charger between two sessions. You can't
| infer with whom you're travelling.
|
| Honestly, people always overinflate the usefulness of
| "data".
| grepfru_it wrote:
| Ford will track your entire drive, how you used your car,
| even the radio station that was playing. All of this data
| is uploaded when you take your car in for servicing if
| you do not have a connected car.
|
| OnStar recently (2-3 years ago now?) started feeding
| 100gbps of telematics data on every single GM car back to
| GM in an effort to determine better pricing on used cars.
| Data includes every sensor change on the car and even
| details from the onboard wireless entertainment system
| (your wifi device)
|
| These are projects I have worked on. They have an
| overabundance of data on you and 99% of you fit the model
| of usefulness
| cyberax wrote:
| Eh, and so what? My phone carrier has most of this info.
| Google has most of this info (in addition to my emails).
|
| Ford is in for rude awakening if they think that this
| data is going to seriously help them.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Also, Ford and GM do not do service. A lot of the
| detailed car information can really help with service and
| maintenance. But dealers actually don't want that to
| improve systematically and Ford doesn't gain enough from
| it.
|
| Tesla makes all that dealer profit themselves and can
| systematically improve service and make a huge profit
| from off warranty vehicles. This is a huge revenue stream
| Tesla is only just starting to get. Something people
| often miss when they look at future profitability.
|
| Ford and GM make huge amounts of money from part supply
| fro off warranty cars. Tesla will do even better because
| they will do the service, not just the parts.
| rasz wrote:
| >You can't infer with whom you're travelling.
|
| https://www.torquenews.com/11826/tesla-installs-video-
| camera...
| cyberax wrote:
| I'm talking about data from the charging network.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| >There's a reason the Ford CEO declared a few years back
| that Ford was to become "a data company".
|
| The reason is that 'data companies' are valued vastly
| higher than car companies with the same revenue.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| rednerrus wrote:
| So now Tesla is going to own all of the "Gas Stations" in
| America?
| V__ wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Europe's CCS and America's CCS are already incompatible (CCS1
| vs 2).
| panick21_ wrote:
| 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.
| piinbinary wrote:
| I wonder if Tesla is repositioning from being a Ford to being an
| Exxon
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Both of which are customer nightmares?
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| I said "has wanted to be" - because intent is not always
| the same as outcome.
| bushbaba wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| bequanna wrote:
| Idk if that is a perfect comparison. Maybe if Tesla starts
| mining uranium and opens some nuclear plants.
| jkestner wrote:
| Tesla is building a lithium refinery now.
| https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-
| transportation/tesla-...
| bequanna wrote:
| Lithium stores energy. If Tesla is Exxon they also need to
| vertically integrate and source actual energy, which I
| suppose they do to some extent with SolarCity.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Has been for a long time. There's a reason why the solar panels
| and solar batteries are branded as Tesla and not Solar City.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| I don't think the business case for that closes.
|
| EVs are still overwhelmingly charged overnight at home. As they
| percolate to lower price points, that will change somewhat, but
| ultimately the total spend on charging stations is just too low
| to be much more than a distraction for a company the size of
| Tesla. The reason they built the supercharger network was that
| it was needed to sell cars, and now that they have it they
| might as well make money with it. I doubt it's much more than
| that.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > EVs are still overwhelmingly charged overnight at home
|
| And Tesla would like to be in that business too, with
| PowerWall batteries and "solar roof" panels.
|
| If they're succeeding well here is another matter though.
| alistairSH wrote:
| You hinted at this, but a significant % of the population
| lives in either rented or multi-family housing, so home
| charging may not be feasible (at least in the short-to-medium
| term).
|
| While I own my home, I don't own my parking space (community
| property, assigned to me via HOA rules). While we're allowed
| to install a chargers, it's only possible for homes with
| assigned spaces directly in front of the home (albeit pricey,
| as it involves concrete work to run cables under community
| sidewalks). Some homes have spaces offset by a fair distance,
| or across community street, so installing a home charger is
| either extremely expensive or impossible.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| The people who can charge at home still make up more than
| 50% of the market, though, and there's a few more years
| before that really becomes a limiting factor in sales.
| That's plenty of time for most places to get L2 chargers
| available.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Absolutely.
|
| But, it is a problem that needs solved. We're firmly
| within the "buy a new EV" demographic otherwise, but the
| cost+hassle of installing a charger at home definitely
| contributes to our "meh, we'll keep the ICE another year
| or two" mentality.
|
| And in a few years, charger availability might start to
| impact resales. Maybe. Mostly just thinking aloud.
| piinbinary wrote:
| First reaction: I think you are right. Not only will a large
| portion of all chargeups happen at home, but I also wouldn't
| be surprised if the margin is lower.
|
| Second reaction: Maybe there's a business model where most of
| the profit from a charging station comes from things other
| than charging (e.g. onsite coffee shop, store, gym, etc) that
| gives people things to do while charging.
| simondotau wrote:
| Despite being one of its most visible operations, the
| supercharger network is an utterly minuscule part of Tesla's
| overall business. It's unlikely to ever represent much more
| than 1% of Tesla's profit.
|
| There's never going to be big money in vehicle charging because
| the vast majority of charging occurs at the owner's premises,
| and there's no technical impediment stopping the remainder from
| being a highly competitive industry.
| panick21_ wrote:
| The impediment is that it takes a huge amount of technical
| knowledge and execution, plus a huge amount of capital, plus
| the ability to operate a huge service and maintenance team.
|
| If there is already a very large first rate infrastructure,
| then replicating that is very difficult.
|
| Your statement sounds to me like 'trains are technically
| easy' there is not reason we can't have highly competitive
| industry in cargo transport from Chicago to New York. But yet
| there is only one company really operating that
| infrastructure.
|
| Charging is not as extreme of a case as trains, but putting
| in huge capital investment for minimal profit just doesn't
| make a lot of sense.
|
| We can see this today, EA is losing money. Non Tesla charge
| companies all lose money.
| toast0 wrote:
| If charging is all pay per use and not a subscription
| (especially not a subscription you get included with a
| vehicle), there's no need to operate on a large scale; it's
| like gas stations: most are franchised chain stations, but
| there's tons of independents.
|
| Electrify America is the product of a court settlement; it
| doesn't really need to earn money, it just needs to keep VW
| out of court.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Electrify America has already spent the money from the
| court settlement, they need raise money like any other
| company and make a profit.
|
| > If charging is all pay per use and not a subscription
| (especially not a subscription you get included with a
| vehicle)
|
| Those things are already happening on large scale.
|
| The logic you suggest is only true if an independent can
| easily make a competitive station. The problem is Tesla
| is mass producing super charges at prices that simply
| can't be matched by other producers.
|
| There are also economics of scale in terms of routing
| cars and achieving higher utilization.
|
| Private franchises need to actually make a good profit to
| be worth setting up. In EV charging the money goes to the
| equipment provider or the electricity producer. You might
| make some money with additional services like a shop or a
| cafe. But in that case you might as well make a deal with
| a large player like Tesla to put up a station.
|
| Also if your station breaks, you need an repair person to
| show up quickly. And company that sell charging equipment
| they mass produced are usually not good at providing
| those services.
|
| You will also have the disadvantage that the biggest
| fleet will simply route people to their own stations.
| Driving down your utilization.
|
| I think most charging networks will be large not
| individual. We see very few individual DC fast chargers.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| That seems foolish from a business perspective. The one thing
| they're most successful at is cars. They built an incredible
| first-mover advantage in EVs, but that isn't at all true in the
| power market. They're just a blip in the battery market. And
| while superchargers are great, there's no moat there at all.
|
| If they're smart, they'll double down on cars like the Model 3
| & Y, and instead of making them sillier (no stalks?!) they'll
| make them ever more appealing and cost competitive. They're the
| Toyota of the EV world right now, and if they play this right
| they'll be the Toyota of the whole market in 10 years. They
| would need a proper truck, though, to make that happen.
| dzader wrote:
| [dead]
| josefresco wrote:
| 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!
| Kirby64 wrote:
| 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.
| e36 wrote:
| You don't have to like "Tesla fans," but you're just being
| dishonest with comments like this.
| revscat wrote:
| 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.
| 93po wrote:
| Tesla haters before 2023: Tesla is bad because X
|
| Tesla haters after 2023: Sure X is fixed, but Tesla is bad
| because of Y
| mardifoufs wrote:
| 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?
| alistairSH wrote:
| 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
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Yes.
| https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/19/23689247/tesla-v4-superch...
| londons_explore wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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)
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Having the connector in a corner is definitely a lot nicer
| than central. However, it should be on a passenger side
| corner rather than driver side as Tesla uses to make
| curbside charging more convenient.
| jsight wrote:
| Front center is more prone to debris and ultimately a
| little less helpful for vehicles that will tow frequently.
| londons_explore wrote:
| 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.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Less sub-optimal than Tesla's driver-side port.
| spike021 wrote:
| >The only people who stand to lose are those weirdos who
| reverse into parking places. ;)
|
| As a weirdo who reverses into parking spaces, I find that
| it's almost always safer doing that in a crowded parking
| lot than it is to park nose in.
|
| When you're driving up to the spot you're already
| (hopefully) fully attentive to any risks (children,
| animals, people crossing, whatever), and can wait or
| carefully drive around those obstacles. Then when you're
| ready to leave you're already facing the optimal angle to
| slowly inch out and look in all directions for hazards.
|
| If you're backing out of a car space you have to trust your
| ability to look at all three mirrors simultaneously +
| ideally also straining your neck to cover blind spots.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Or back out the easier and safer way and place your arm
| behind the passenger seat and physically look out the
| back windows. It's the way we're taught to reverse where
| I learned to drive, granted this was before backup
| cameras existed.
| 93po wrote:
| Many modern cars have very good backup cameras that also
| show incoming traffic from both sides and don't required
| 5 eyeballs
| spike021 wrote:
| Maybe on HN the majority of people have those modern
| cars, but I assure you in the real world the odds are not
| that good.
| post-it wrote:
| Are there any electric cars without backup cameras?
| 93po wrote:
| In the context of cars that would be using these
| chargers, I would assume the vast majority would be
| "modern" and have good backup cameras
| SomewhatLikely wrote:
| As of 2018, all new cars in the U.S. have been required
| to have a backup camera.
| bearjaws wrote:
| Probably a few reasons:
|
| 1. Number of rear end and front end collisions and how
| expensive it would be to repair charge ports.
|
| 2. It would be ugly, people complain about the radar
| placement on some cars, imagine every car having both a
| radar and charge port right in the middle.
| mdasen wrote:
| 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-join.... Stellantis (Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, Fiat) is
| evaluating it: 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/2023-0...
| MrMetlHed wrote:
| I would hope that the government still wouldn't give Tesla any
| funding until they agreed to the rest of the rules within the
| bill. They need a way to charge without an app and an open
| communication standard to initiate a charge. Anyone that has
| the proper adapter / port should be able to charge at any
| charging station that receives any amount of government
| funding. No one should have to rely on their vehicle
| manufacturer making a deal with the charger owner to charge at
| a station.
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