Ford and Tesla

[JST]

The sad truth is that compared to the number of Teslas out there, there aren’t that many Fords and GMs.

But the flip side of your point is that capacity is going to be added to the Supercharger network even faster now, too.

[robg]

Originally Posted by JST

The sad truth is that compared to the number of Teslas out there, there aren’t that many Fords and GMs.



But the flip side of your point is that capacity is going to be added to the Supercharger network even faster now, too.

Cool - didn’t know that there were plans to increase capacity in light of these partnerships . Hopefully this will inspire others to follow suit although it’s hard to imagine VW group brands doing so given the affiliation with EA.

Is there anything to stop 3rd parties from building and operating Tesla compatible supercharger stations? I remember Elon musk making a big deal about “open sourcing” some of the tech a few years ago but hadn’t really paid attention


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[ZBB]

Originally Posted by robg

Cool - didn’t know that there were plans to increase capacity in light of these partnerships . Hopefully this will inspire others to follow suit although it’s hard to imagine VW group brands doing so given the affiliation with EA.

Is there anything to stop 3rd parties from building and operating Tesla compatible supercharger stations? I remember Elon musk making a big deal about “open sourcing” some of the tech a few years ago but hadn’t really paid attention


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Tesla has been increasing Supercharger capacity for over a decade now. Supercharge.info has some great charts that show the growth over time. Look at the second one here, which breaks out the growth by region -- There are now over 2000 Supercharger sites in North America. The count has doubled in less than 3 years. https://supercharge.info/charts

As for other charger providers, ABB announced today that they will be adding a NACS charging cable option to their chargers. EVGo has also had some Tesla connectors for a few years now (and these even show up in the Tesla map)...

[robg]

Originally Posted by ZBB

As for other charger providers, ABB announced today that they will be adding a NACS charging cable option to their chargers. EVGo has also had some Tesla connectors for a few years now (and these even show up in the Tesla map)...

Ah..interesting!! So I guess "NACS" is a quasi-standard now where the specs are public and in theory anyone can implement.

To me, the "secret sauce" of Tesla's supercharging is that, when it comes to Tesla vehicles, there's no need to interact with an app or the charger to initiate a session or deal with payment. You just plug and charge. As I understand it, the vehicle handles the details of logging the charging details and communicating back to Tesla in order to charge their account (assuming they dont have free supercharging). One of the big issues with CCS seems to be when it comes to payment (which often includes dealing with phone apps). As good as the Tesla app supposedly is, the need to use it in order to initiate charging on non-Tesla vehicles will likely make the experience a bit less seamless and reliable, no? Hopefully they can find a way to make "plug and charge" work for these non Tesla vehicles...

[ZBB]

Originally Posted by robg

Ah..interesting!! So I guess "NACS" is a quasi-standard now where the specs are public and in theory anyone can implement.

To me, the "secret sauce" of Tesla's supercharging is that, when it comes to Tesla vehicles, there's no need to interact with an app or the charger to initiate a session or deal with payment. You just plug and charge. As I understand it, the vehicle handles the details of logging the charging details and communicating back to Tesla in order to charge their account (assuming they dont have free supercharging). One of the big issues with CCS seems to be when it comes to payment (which often includes dealing with phone apps). As good as the Tesla app supposedly is, the need to use it in order to initiate charging on non-Tesla vehicles will likely make the experience a bit less seamless and reliable, no? Hopefully they can find a way to make "plug and charge" work for these non Tesla vehicles...

Yes. That is the secret sauce with Tesla's system.

In my usage of chargers, phone apps to activate a unit work fine. Where its a problem is either when the charger only has a point of sale card reader or you have to call to activate (some of the early slow chargers had that and it sucked having to wait). What's bizarre about the ones with card readers is that the the readers are often exposed and are not weather hardened. You'd think they would work with the same providers that put card readers into gas pumps -- but I guess that since most of the chargers do not have roofs over them like most gas pumps, that the elements get to them.

The other issue I've experienced is just a dead charger -- the equipment itself has failed. This does happen to Tesla also -- but since they have multiple stalls, you can usually just go to another stall (occasionally waiting), plus its rare -- I've encountered Superchargers with a dead stall only a couple times (I can think of 3, out of nearly 300 visits -- so ~1%, and we were always able to charge at another stall); I've had another visit where the charging speeds were reduced -- didn't get more than 50kW, so what should have been a 20-ish minute stop turned out to be nearly an hour (full station on a hot day -- also with older equipment, so we think Tesla was throttling to prevent it from going offline and pretty much everyone was complaining)..

Prior to Electrify America though, most of the CCS chargers were only 1-2 stalls (and the 2-stall ones were almost always 2 cables on a single unit -- so both would be down). That makes it a big issue if the charger is offline...

[robg]

Originally Posted by ZBB

Yes. That is the secret sauce with Tesla's system.

Where its a problem is either when the charger only has a point of sale card reader or you have to call to activate (some of the early slow chargers had that and it sucked having to wait). What's bizarre about the ones with card readers is that the the readers are often exposed and are not weather hardened. You'd think they would work with the same providers that put card readers into gas pumps -- but I guess that since most of the chargers do not have roofs over them like most gas pumps, that the elements get to them.

Ha yeah...I've wondered the same thing. Seems like these CCS provides struggle with basics (like card readers) that have been solved for decades... truly bizarre. Assuming I have to pay for a charging session anyway, I'd prefer to just swipe or tap a credit card rather than dealing with a phone app....but it sounds like credit card readers are often a bigger problem than apps! (To me, it would be like having to open a Shell app to pay for Shell gas, Mobil for mobil gas, etc...just silly. Let me just use my CC!)

[JST]

The Tesla advantage comes down to a few separate things:

1) integrated experience means no need for chargers to have POS payment terminals, which makes the chargers simpler and more robust;

2) Tesla has devoted real time and money to monitoring and maintaining the chargers; their chargers are more robust, but they do break. The difference is that when they break, they get fixed fast.

3) Careful site acquisition and planning mean Tesla chargers are in the right places for travel, not in Target parking lots.

4) When Tesla builds a site, they don’t just put in two or three chargers; these days they put in a dozen or so. To this day, wait times at super chargers remain impressively low.

Adopting NACS will solve some of these problems for GM/Ford, though perhaps they’ll have to use their respective apps for charge initiation/payment.

What’s more interesting to me is whether it drives any real competition or consolidation in the other charging networks. Do they redesign their chargers? Do they spend more money on better site acq? Fascinating!

[robg]

Originally Posted by JST

What’s more interesting to me is whether it drives any real competition or consolidation in the other charging networks. Do they redesign their chargers? Do they spend more money on better site acq? Fascinating!

I am wondering about that as well. I've gotten the sense that maybe these charging networks don't actually care about providing good service to their end users. For example the only reason EA exists is as punishment for dieselgate. So the incentive for their management may just be to do the bare minimum ncessary to say that they installed chargers across some percentage of the US...but they dont actually really care whether they work or not (other than paying lip service to that) Or, in the case of other charging networks it could be to collect government subsidies for installing charging locations..but again the actual service is secondary. I do remember reading one article that pointed out that due to the cost of power at certain peak times its just not worth making a charger available (you could never charge enough to recuperate the costs). Often I've noticed that what may appear as incompetence to us as customers is actually the result of deliberate business decisions that the company has ultimately determined will save them or make them more money. Remember how we had to pass laws to prevent airlines from holding people hostage on planes with no water, food or batherooms for hours? Or long and broken customer service phone trees at any bank or airline? Similarlly, I suspect public charging is ultimately going to require more regulation to operate in a customer friendly way...

Tesla is unique in that the quality of their charging network directly impacts their vehicle customers...so they have an incentive to actually make them run properly. But pinning our hopes in this country of one company solving charging for everyone seems like a bad idea...

[SARAFIL]

Originally Posted by JST

3) Careful site acquisition and planning mean Tesla chargers are in the right places for travel, not in Target parking lots.

4) When Tesla builds a site, they don’t just put in two or three chargers; these days they put in a dozen or so. To this day, wait times at super chargers remain impressively low.

Laughed when I read #3 only because they just installed about a dozen chargers in the parking lot of the local Target. However it is located right off the highway and on key route for folks heading out of Boston or towards the Cape so definitely still aligns with your point.

[ZBB]

Originally Posted by SARAFIL

Laughed when I read #3 only because they just installed about a dozen chargers in the parking lot of the local Target. However it is located right off the highway and on key route for folks heading out of Boston or towards the Cape so definitely still aligns with your point.

I laughed too…. EA has a deal with Walmart ;-)

Lots of Tesla chargers at retail though. Targets are rare, but many of the early Superchargers were at outlet malls and hotels. Now they are going in at regular malls, strip malls, grocery stores and gas stations.