As the article points out, according to Europe the Tesla proprietary charger is already the Betamax/HD-DVD. It's going to stick around for a lot longer in America because America doesn't have the guts to force the same requirement that Tesla follow the CCS standards like everyone else (because 4 out of 5 EV cars in America right now are Teslas and they can Apple their way past standards right now).
The biggest fight right now is that all the networks of chargers are still so focused on being "Owner's Clubs" or "Private Clubs". "You can't charge here, we're Tesla Owners Only"; "You can't charge here, we're Rivian Owners Only"; "You can charge here if you signup for our newsletter, sacrifice at least one goat a month in the name of Xuul, and pay $15/month dues whether you charge here or not"; etc. There was some of all that in early gas stations, but today you just expect them to all have a credit card reader and not need to jump through a bunch of hoops and join a membership club just to gas. It's probably going to take some competitive fights (and seems unlikely the Federal government is willing to step in) to fix that.
There should be a standard port and process for charging vehicles required, and companies can make additional, proprietary ports and charging capabilities in parallel if they want.
It is a great benefit to society that our transport recharging (gas dispensers) are standard in design, so that any company can operate a dispenser of any vendor into a car of any design.
The same should exist for EV - but if the "least common denominator" becomes obsolete, allow vendors to provide a secondary (or tertiary) mechanism to charge. Yes, this increases initial production cost. Yes, it is worth it for the benefits gained to open infrastructure.
From the opposite perspective, there shouldn't be so much "innovation" in plug design. We've known the basics of plug design for more than a century: you need a positive wire, a negative wire, a ground, and you need to agree on AC versus DC and current/frequency. Why do we need all of these additional "proprietary ports" and "charging capabilities"?
We can pretty much stop at CCS for all that it currently matters. CCS supports a software protocol for negotiating AC/DC/current/frequency and a wider variety of options than are currently practical in most states. CCS is like a super-over-designed-by-committee USB-B+. (It's not quite USB-C because it is definitely not symmetrical and insertable in any orientation; it's backwards compatibility with "USB-A" level two ports alone insures that.)
CCS supports "Plug and Charge" as a protocol handshake, and that's really indicative of the actual fight happening in "plug" designs for cars and the proprietary network: Apple Pay (Tesla Supercharger and what CCS could be if networks support it) versus your Old Fashioned Credit Card Swipe machine. Everyone is fighting to get more of those Credit Card fees and letting the ideal (plug in and the car knows how to bill everything) get in the way of the practical (credit card swipes have mostly worked for gas pumps for decades). It's a very dumb fight that is getting in the way of practical adoption.
You want the car to authenticate itself. Instead of installing dozens of different apps on your smartphone you want to just plug the charger into the car and then just confirm whether you agree to the fees or not. The owners of the charger just want to get paid so the payment can be done through a dedicated payment provider like Apple Pay, Visa, whose app you install. It's not any meaningfully different than a gas station. Nobody cares, you pay by cash, credit card or apple pay and get on with your life.
Yes, that's the ideal, the practical issue in the fight is still the "gatekeeping" behind "plug and charge" and who can do that, instead of just being "anyone with a valid credit card".
The headline boils down to things either getting better or getting worse, so good job.
The amount of money invested in chargers so far is small enough to not worry about it, and there aren't really any incentives to make it a pain in the ass, so it's reasonable to expect it to improve over the medium term.
I think Tesla has missed a bet in not trying harder to get other EV manufacturers onto their charging network. The Tesla charge connector is vastly superior to the CCS or ChaDeMo in size, weight and convenience, but at this point it's likely to be displaced by an enforced standard in a few years (as it already has been in Europe).
It's a "who gets a bigger slice of the credit card fees" problem. All of these networks are way over-complicating the negotiation dance of "walk to a machine and slide a credit card". Yes, "plug and charge" is a great idea, a car can be a great physical NFC token for itself/its owner's credit card, but it's a "nice to have". It's amazing the slow progress of getting at least the "slide a card" fallback working despite, say, decades of gas pumps doing exactly that. (Again yes, a less desirable "ideal", but a practical solution for yesterday.)
Stated several times in the article are variants of [Tesla doesn't let non Teslas use the Supercharger network].
From memory, Elon has made it clear repeatedly that non Tesla vehicles would be allowed to use Superchargers, as long as appropriate costs were contributed. Clearly any arrangement making this happen can only really occur at the manufacturer level.
In fact, it appears that this has already happened for one smaller manufacturer [0].
So, while it may be likely that regulation is necessary to ensure that a fragmented charging landscape doesn't permanently settle into the US market, "only Tesla's can use Supercharges" is provably false.
Why should the vehicle manufacturer need to be involved?
As someone who owns an EV, why shouldn't I be able to create a Tesla account, link my credit card to it, and use the superchargers to charge my non-Tesla vehicle?
The charging networks that aren't owned by vehicle manufacturers follow this model, it seems weird that Tesla isn't willing to do the same.
Worse, why would you need to create a Tesla account and "link a credit card to it" in the first place?
The article doesn't make the point strong enough: but the charging networks are currently all so focused on "accounts" and "memberships", when they could just as easily add an NFC panel and accept Apple Pay/Visa Pay/Samsung Pay/whatever Google Pay is called this year, or even just old fashioned card swipes or new-ish fashioned EMV chip inserts.
Tesla isn't the only one guilty of this "accounts and memberships on networks" mentality, it seems to be infecting all of the American networks right now. (Why are we over-complicating all of this so very hard?)
2.1) Pass the Owner's Club test. "You can't charge here because you aren't a Tesla owner." "You can't charge here because you aren't a Rivian owner."
2.2) Pass the Private Club Membership test. "You can't charge here because you don't have a Shell Power Club Membership." "You can't charge here because you are behind on your Bowling Team Dues."
Those are two big problems in the article and the threads here that "Plug and Charge" (as ideal as it sounds) doesn't currently solve, and isn't a problem with existing gas pumps because a standard credit card swipe doesn't know what kind of car you own, stopped being strong-armed "private clubs" decades ago. "Plug and Charge" sounds great if it works, the concern is that right now the emphasis is on creating private clubs with "Plug and Charge" and that's over-complicated the standards, that's why we are still talking about a "Tesla charging network" and a "Rivian charging network" and "Electrify America" and "Charge Point" and "Bowling League Electric network" and "Shell Oil Presents Electric Charging for Dumb Americans" instead of just "American electric charging options" as a fungible pool.
Fair points (I didn’t downvote you btw, that’s others).
I don’t like the bundling of hardware and services either.
But in Tesla’s case I do feel they deserve some credit and benefits for paving the way here at great cost and in the face of a lot of naysayers.
I do enjoy that I can charge anywhere, and don’t want to see exclusive networks.
That being said, we need real solutions on the ground, which takes money.
Consumers keep complaining “Teslas are expensive”... well, good charging infrastructure does cost money, and what you are asking for costs money. We paid some of that money when we bought our car. “Expensive” as a term in this case reflects broken thinking that does not reckon with reality. You didn’t use the word but it’s a common thing.
Global climate change is not going to be a cost free event. Might as well get used to it, and be willing to share the costs a bit by not cheaping out on a bad car that isn’t helping build a charging network, closed or open.
A lot of things seem weird when you don't think them through.
That is quite a sense of entitlement, to ask to be able to use the network with a random car that does not have the proper internal equipment.
Tesla made a better connector, early on. It offered to other car manufacturers the opportunity to join together in funding the network. Other car manufacturers declined, and continue to decline, as is their right.
Why does the manufacturer need to be involved? Well there is equipment required inside the car, which is too big to be simply an adapter.
This equipment costs some money, but as I understand it, it makes the car more energy efficient. This may be part of why other brands have poor relative efficiency, dragging around more battery weight for less range. Tesla has to pay for this better equipment, which gets added on to the price of the car, but then you get the money back in better driving, better energy usage, and a better charging network, as well as the ability to charge at all most other networks. Other manufacturers want their cars to appear cheaper, so they cut costs, and users pay the price in daily use instead of in the initial price tag.
Why would you buy a car that costs $10,000 more? Most people don't go the extra step and think through that there might be some actual reasons to do so, and their investment of that extra money might be wise. The thinking just stops at the number.
I am glad that random people who think like this can't just bring their own super cheap DIY / bought on Amazon / Ebay / Aliexpress sketch Frankenstein AC/DC converters and adapters, which may not have proper protection mechanisms, and plug in. The network has been very reliable and I would not want to see that change.
When a car manufacturer is involved, there are at least safety measures, proper design, and recourse and a feedback look for improvements if anything goes wrong. I mean, this is basic stuff.
Plug & Charge works and seems to be available in all new cars, why so much worry? Older cars can use whatever the charging station's app is, and it works fine?
The article starts by pointing out that Rivian has chosen to focus on their own network locked to just their own vehicles rather than backing a wider play like Electrify America. The concern is that because it is working for Tesla to have their own proprietary network, we'll see more incompatible networks proliferate rather than fewer more general efforts like Electrify America.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 71.0 ms ] threadNo other way.
Edit: Who will be the Betamax/HD DVD?
The biggest fight right now is that all the networks of chargers are still so focused on being "Owner's Clubs" or "Private Clubs". "You can't charge here, we're Tesla Owners Only"; "You can't charge here, we're Rivian Owners Only"; "You can charge here if you signup for our newsletter, sacrifice at least one goat a month in the name of Xuul, and pay $15/month dues whether you charge here or not"; etc. There was some of all that in early gas stations, but today you just expect them to all have a credit card reader and not need to jump through a bunch of hoops and join a membership club just to gas. It's probably going to take some competitive fights (and seems unlikely the Federal government is willing to step in) to fix that.
It is a great benefit to society that our transport recharging (gas dispensers) are standard in design, so that any company can operate a dispenser of any vendor into a car of any design.
The same should exist for EV - but if the "least common denominator" becomes obsolete, allow vendors to provide a secondary (or tertiary) mechanism to charge. Yes, this increases initial production cost. Yes, it is worth it for the benefits gained to open infrastructure.
We can pretty much stop at CCS for all that it currently matters. CCS supports a software protocol for negotiating AC/DC/current/frequency and a wider variety of options than are currently practical in most states. CCS is like a super-over-designed-by-committee USB-B+. (It's not quite USB-C because it is definitely not symmetrical and insertable in any orientation; it's backwards compatibility with "USB-A" level two ports alone insures that.)
CCS supports "Plug and Charge" as a protocol handshake, and that's really indicative of the actual fight happening in "plug" designs for cars and the proprietary network: Apple Pay (Tesla Supercharger and what CCS could be if networks support it) versus your Old Fashioned Credit Card Swipe machine. Everyone is fighting to get more of those Credit Card fees and letting the ideal (plug in and the car knows how to bill everything) get in the way of the practical (credit card swipes have mostly worked for gas pumps for decades). It's a very dumb fight that is getting in the way of practical adoption.
The amount of money invested in chargers so far is small enough to not worry about it, and there aren't really any incentives to make it a pain in the ass, so it's reasonable to expect it to improve over the medium term.
https://electricrevs.com/2018/11/14/tesla-flips-to-ccs-in-eu...
From memory, Elon has made it clear repeatedly that non Tesla vehicles would be allowed to use Superchargers, as long as appropriate costs were contributed. Clearly any arrangement making this happen can only really occur at the manufacturer level.
In fact, it appears that this has already happened for one smaller manufacturer [0].
So, while it may be likely that regulation is necessary to ensure that a fragmented charging landscape doesn't permanently settle into the US market, "only Tesla's can use Supercharges" is provably false.
[0] https://www.electrive.com/2020/12/22/tesla-superchargers-alr...
As someone who owns an EV, why shouldn't I be able to create a Tesla account, link my credit card to it, and use the superchargers to charge my non-Tesla vehicle?
The charging networks that aren't owned by vehicle manufacturers follow this model, it seems weird that Tesla isn't willing to do the same.
The article doesn't make the point strong enough: but the charging networks are currently all so focused on "accounts" and "memberships", when they could just as easily add an NFC panel and accept Apple Pay/Visa Pay/Samsung Pay/whatever Google Pay is called this year, or even just old fashioned card swipes or new-ish fashioned EMV chip inserts.
Tesla isn't the only one guilty of this "accounts and memberships on networks" mentality, it seems to be infecting all of the American networks right now. (Why are we over-complicating all of this so very hard?)
What is complicated about this?
1) open charge port
2) plug in cable
3) walk away
Your system with NFC and swiping and scanning cards and chips sounds more complicated to me.
I even had to add "open charge port" and "walk away" in order to come up with 3 steps here… how much less complicated could it be?
2.1) Pass the Owner's Club test. "You can't charge here because you aren't a Tesla owner." "You can't charge here because you aren't a Rivian owner."
2.2) Pass the Private Club Membership test. "You can't charge here because you don't have a Shell Power Club Membership." "You can't charge here because you are behind on your Bowling Team Dues."
Those are two big problems in the article and the threads here that "Plug and Charge" (as ideal as it sounds) doesn't currently solve, and isn't a problem with existing gas pumps because a standard credit card swipe doesn't know what kind of car you own, stopped being strong-armed "private clubs" decades ago. "Plug and Charge" sounds great if it works, the concern is that right now the emphasis is on creating private clubs with "Plug and Charge" and that's over-complicated the standards, that's why we are still talking about a "Tesla charging network" and a "Rivian charging network" and "Electrify America" and "Charge Point" and "Bowling League Electric network" and "Shell Oil Presents Electric Charging for Dumb Americans" instead of just "American electric charging options" as a fungible pool.
I don’t like the bundling of hardware and services either.
But in Tesla’s case I do feel they deserve some credit and benefits for paving the way here at great cost and in the face of a lot of naysayers.
I do enjoy that I can charge anywhere, and don’t want to see exclusive networks.
That being said, we need real solutions on the ground, which takes money.
Consumers keep complaining “Teslas are expensive”... well, good charging infrastructure does cost money, and what you are asking for costs money. We paid some of that money when we bought our car. “Expensive” as a term in this case reflects broken thinking that does not reckon with reality. You didn’t use the word but it’s a common thing.
Global climate change is not going to be a cost free event. Might as well get used to it, and be willing to share the costs a bit by not cheaping out on a bad car that isn’t helping build a charging network, closed or open.
That is quite a sense of entitlement, to ask to be able to use the network with a random car that does not have the proper internal equipment.
Tesla made a better connector, early on. It offered to other car manufacturers the opportunity to join together in funding the network. Other car manufacturers declined, and continue to decline, as is their right.
Why does the manufacturer need to be involved? Well there is equipment required inside the car, which is too big to be simply an adapter.
This equipment costs some money, but as I understand it, it makes the car more energy efficient. This may be part of why other brands have poor relative efficiency, dragging around more battery weight for less range. Tesla has to pay for this better equipment, which gets added on to the price of the car, but then you get the money back in better driving, better energy usage, and a better charging network, as well as the ability to charge at all most other networks. Other manufacturers want their cars to appear cheaper, so they cut costs, and users pay the price in daily use instead of in the initial price tag.
Why would you buy a car that costs $10,000 more? Most people don't go the extra step and think through that there might be some actual reasons to do so, and their investment of that extra money might be wise. The thinking just stops at the number.
I am glad that random people who think like this can't just bring their own super cheap DIY / bought on Amazon / Ebay / Aliexpress sketch Frankenstein AC/DC converters and adapters, which may not have proper protection mechanisms, and plug in. The network has been very reliable and I would not want to see that change.
When a car manufacturer is involved, there are at least safety measures, proper design, and recourse and a feedback look for improvements if anything goes wrong. I mean, this is basic stuff.
ElectrifyAmerica basically just works today.
That's a bit more tricky for Tesla.