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“In 2025, Ford will offer next-generation electric vehicles with the North American Charging Standard (NACS) connector built-in, eliminating the need for an adapter to access Tesla Superchargers”

That’s massive that another automaker is adding the Tesla connector. I’d rather Tesla add the CCS connector, but it will be interesting if Tesla uses their charger network access to push other automakers to add the Tesla connector.

The CCS-1 connector is designed by committee and objectively worse than NACS. NACS is smaller (cheaper to make and less heavy to use), require smaller wires, can support higher wattage. Also, the significant majority of EVs in North America already have NACS and the significant majority of chargers also has NACS. Superchargers are slowly rolling out Magic Dock so that CCS-1 EVs can use Superchargers. I get the hate on Tesla (or more specifically Elon), but NACS is simply better for everyone.

The MCS (Megawatt Charging System) is also designed by a committee and has been adopted by Tesla for the Tesla Semi, so I don't see how this is even a relevant argument. NACS does only support single phase charging, while CCS2 can do 3-phase charging.

The only truthful argument in this discussion is that Tesla already have a huge charging network using their (previously) proprietary connector and automotive makers want to have access to this. NACS use the same signaling protocol as CCS, which is also why you can get away with a pretty dumb adapter.

It has the same physical limitations as any other cable. If you want to deliver high power at low voltage you need thick cables, there's nothing you can do to get around that fact.

CCS Type 2 is rated at 1000V and 400A, or 400kW.

> while CCS2 can do 3-phase charging

Is that at all relevant for the North American market, where no one would be using three phase power to charge their car? And is it even relevant to the CCS part of the standard, when really what CCS adds on top of IEC 62196 is the ability to use DC charging, at which point phases are irrelevant.

The whole point of connectors is, firstly, how much power they can deliver (both NACS and CCS1 appear equally capable), then, how affordable they are to make and how easy they are to use.

Affordability is objective, NACS is simply cheaper to make. Less materials go into it, and that's a win. Furthermore, it doesn't require a massive charging port (see how Tesla had to work around CCS2 for the Model S/Y in Europe because their charging port cover is too small), so there's further benefits here.

Ease of use is less objective, but for anyone who has used both, clearly NACS is much, much better. It's lighter, less chonky, simpler (you don't have to remove a cover over the DC plugs). I think the consensus here is just clear.

So what, then, is an objective argument FOR using CCS1 over NACS? I really don't see one. The only argument I can see is that we lose some mild amount of harmony with CCS2 connectors that the rest of the world is going to use, but with the differences between CCS1 and CCS2 that exist anyway, that might be a moot point.

> Is that at all relevant for the North American market, where no one would be using three phase power to charge their car?

While 240V 3-phase isn't common in the US homes I'd imagine that it would be super handy for places like shopping malls or parking garages where you want to have lots of Level 2 chargers.

> Affordability is objective, NACS is simply cheaper to make. Less materials go into it, and that's a win.

I agree with you there, it looks much better and is slightly easier to handle. I doubt the material difference is much, it's just a little plastic. The amount of adapters likely makes up the difference.

> you don't have to remove a cover over the DC plugs

This isn't really a thing. These hard plastic covers is something people buy thinking it will protect them from being electrocuted. If they had known how the chargers work they'd likely be less worried. Except in France, where they've made CCS Type 3, which is about as French of an idea as you get.

> So what, then, is an objective argument FOR using CCS1 over NACS? I really don't see one.

The main issue here is that US decided to go with CCS Type 1, when it was clear back in 2014 that CCS Type 2 would be a much better and more future proof choice. It's something that should have been solved with regulation a long time ago. And now you're stuck with CCS Type 1 and NACS for the unforeseeable future. It's kinda funny, because in Europe Tesla went from only NACS (V1 superchargers) to NACS and CCS2 (V2 and V3 superchargers) to only CCS2 (V4 superchargers).

240V 3-phase isn't common at shopping malls or garages either. We typically have 208V in such situations. NACS works just fine for that.

> I agree with you there, it looks much better and is slightly easier to handle. I doubt the material difference is much, it's just a little plastic. The amount of adapters likely makes up the difference.

The biggest difference in the US is the latching mechanism. Its a moving part with the US CCS1 connector, and a surprising number also make it an electrically activated latch. Despite the talk about it being rare to be the failure point, it is actually fairly fragile and failure prone. Worse, we've seen a case or two on the forums where the failure mode resulted in a connector stuck to the car!

On top of that, CCS1 still requires an additional active latch on the car.

Both CCS2 and NACS solve this in a much simpler way that puts all of the active latching into the vehicle. It is simpler and more reliable. TBH, I agree with you about the US really messing up with CCS1. CCS2 is marginally more bulky than NACS, but also has some real advantages and the downsides are small.

Regarding the plastic covers, a lot of cars come with them. The concern seems to be that debris could get into the port while AC charging.

"Is that at all relevant for the North American market, where no one would be using three phase power to charge their car?"

Most anyone in an industrial work setting in North America will have 3-phase 240V service installed, minimum. My work has 480V 3-phase for our SMT line. We have permanently-installed charge stations on that 3-phase service. Damn shame they've got nothing for my e-bike, so I just use the benchtop inside and a cable rig.

> My work has 480V 3-phase for our SMT line. We have permanently-installed charge stations on that 3-phase service.

Are all three phases even being sent to the electric cars? The J1772 only supports a single phase.

The benefit with 3-phase is that you now can use a single cable/charger to charge up to three separate cars, which greatly reduces the cost of setting up a lot of chargers in, say, a parking garage. And you can opportunistically deliver up to 11-22kW (240V/400V) to a single car. Greatly reduces the amount of hardware needed.

Plenty of chargers around where I live deliver 208v at 30a, which tells me they're connected to a pair of legs of a 3 phase circuit.

I suppose this means one leg of the circuit is not used, meaning the load between the different legs is always going to be out of balance, but this practice (use 2 legs of a 3 phase feed for "240 er... 208v" for "big" loads such as a drier or EVSE or water heater, so likely any industrial / commercial setting just accepts that you're not going to load up all legs your feeds evenly.

NA built EVs typically don't have the internal circuitry to manage 3 phase charging -- the EV takes care of the AC -> DC conversion on a level 2 circuit, and the extra stuff to do that in NA wouldn't ever be used. The same is true of charging off of 400v AC -- it's super rare and likely not something that's worth engineering to implement.

> where no one would be using three phase power to charge their car

3-phase power is insanely common in commercial buildings for things like HVAC, refrigeration, and massive lighting systems. Sure, it's not at all common in residential areas, but I'd sure love to charge my car when I stop at a grocery store.

MCS is a much better standard than the CCS1 design. The latching mechanism is more similar to NACS or CCS2.

CCS2 is less terrible than CCS1, but the US went with the worst possible choice.

I agree with you with regard to cables. That is a charge provider choice and its basically just coincidence that CCS providers are choosing badly. There's nothing intrinsic to the connector that is allowing Tesla to choose better cables.

> CCS Type 2 is rated at 1000V and 400A, or 400kW.

500 amps for CCS so in principle up to 500 kW. For example, Alpitronic's HY400 charger does 500 amps (with 600A boost):

https://www.hypercharger.it/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/HYC40...

> If you want to deliver high power at low voltage you need thick cables, there's nothing you can do to get around that fact.

You can indeed get around this fact (a little bit) if you cool the cables. Tesla's newer superchargers have liquid cooled cables and are thinner than the old cables for exactly this reason.

You are probably European? The US uses CCS1 which doesn't support 3 phase anyway.

It's still patent encumbered[1], NACS just gave the physical specification, and says "use CCS HLS". The Tesla-SC protocol is still a black box. I wonder if this is going to involve a rollout of logical CCS on existing SCs.

[1] Tesla's patent pledge is not even close to a grant and its "good faith" rules almost certainly exclude all current major automakers.

> its "good faith" rules almost certainly exclude all current major automakers.

Why is that?

It defines good faith as never having done three things, or having an associated or related company do those things.

Those things are (roughly):

1. Having sued anyone over IP used in EVs, helped anyone due so, or had a financial stake in someone who does.

2. Challenged any patent held by Tesla, now or in the future; or had a stake in such a challenge.

3. Marketed or sold a "knock-off" of any tesla product, or providing material assistance to. Knock-off is defined a product that imitates or copies the design of a tesla product.

If I held stock in a big-three automaker when they sued a non-Tesla EV manufacturer over a patent, does that mean I am excluded? Sure looks like it.

Selling a J1772->Tesla-T adapter could also count, and because it's a "never has done" kind of thing, there is no concept of redemption.

Tesla seems fine using the CCS connector everywhere else in the world.

And CCS is capable of of doing 360Kw of charge (with the current 400V units and a chunk more on any 800V unit) which is a tiny bit more than 250 max on the NACS

There is no such thing as "the CCS connector". The CCS2 connector used outside of North America is equally incompatible with both of the two major connectors used in North America, CCS1 and NACS.

Tesla uses NACS in North America because there wasn't any unified industry standard when they started their roll-out. The closest thing there was to a standard for DC fast charging was arguably CHAdeMO; while CCS1 was little more than a press release from the Detroit auto companies.

Yes Tesla could have adopted CCS1 but because of the way history played out, there was never a point where it could have made sense to do so. I think many people forget that Tesla wasn't a profitable company until recently. Many had them on a perennial "death watch". By the time CCS1 was looking like it would win over CHAdeMO, the supercharger network was so large that switching would have been well beyond Tesla's financial means.

CCS1 was published in 2011. Tesla didn’t design NACS until 2012. It’s a myth that Tesla had to invent their own proprietary system because no standard was available.

I think it’s insane that you would think that Tesla would replace a connector that already spent months — likely years — developing, with an objectively terrible alternative, merely because a few companies that weren’t making EVs issued a press release.

I don’t think anyone could’ve said with confidence that CCS1 would’ve become the major standard in North America. It could’ve been a future revision of CHAdeMO. Or it could have been CCS3.

> By the time CCS1 was looking like it would win over CHAdeMO, the supercharger network was so large that switching would have been well beyond Tesla's financial means.

Sure, just like adding CCS2 plugs to their European chargers sent Tesla broke and that's why the company folded and we never heard of it again.

Well, Apple got away with lightining for long enough. And for the same reasons Tesla does it to. Can't blame them so, we will see if there are any antitrust issues down the road, or if e.g. the EU steps in. But then US spec cars have always been different from other markets.

The analogy breaks down when you consider that USB-C is an objectively superior and objectively more widely deployed standard than Lightning. The same cannot be said for CCS1 over NACS.

Globally? It is gonna be CCS, unless Tesla manages to convince enough OEMs to use NACS. In which case there will be two competing standards, aka lightning vs. usb. I am in no position to judge which one is better, I do know so that CCS is more open, being a global standard. And if we want more EVs, global standards are better than closed, proprietary solutions.

There is no such thing as a "CCS" connector.

North America is majority NACS by units sold; CCS1 is in second place.

Europe has standardised on CCS2, which is equally incompatible with CCS1 and NACS.

China is the world's largest EV market and uses neither CCS1 nor CCS2.

Ha, you are right, I missed the number after the CCS. It is oess of a problem so, as long as the cars architecture works with either connector. Chinese spec cars are different from US spec and from EU spec anyway. Even if it is the same model, built in the same fab on the same day.

I get the impression that NACS is CCS over the wire. It's the same protocol, just a cleaner design for the physical connector. Remember, Tesla has been part of the CCS committee since it started.

CCS also isn't a "global standard". China has their own standard.

There's a reason why CCS is called "Frankenplug." It's looking like only the EU will be stuck with it. (And they don't have to be, older Superchargers ran over the Menekis (sp?) connector fine.)

Only the EU, plus Australia and New Zealand, plus South America, plus the Middle East, plus Thailand, South Africa, India, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong,... but yea.

The countries you have listed all use CCS2, which is not compatible with anything in use in North America. So why would that be relevant to the question of North America deciding between CCS1 and NACS?

There are already a handful of Superchargers that have a CCS adapter built in[0]. Thanks to US federal money, some locations are already set up to charge both Tesla/NACS cars as well as CCS vehicles[1]. These will expand, but if either Hyundai and/or GM now switches to NACS, CCS is dead in the USA.

The physical layer is easy - mostly just plastic and metal contacts, as well as minor electrical differences. The reliability and payment layer is where Tesla has way outperformed and it will be interesting to see if Ford can support that with their "Ford Pay" system.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=240R6RhLGj0

[1] https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/ev-chargers/how-well-do...

You are correct though it's slightly more complicated than swapping out the sockets. That's enough to get NACS compatibility, but may not be sufficient for proper compatibility with Tesla's Supercharger network. It assumes the charging port is physically located on the rear left corner (or front right corner) of the vehicle.

If the charging port is on the rear right (or front left) corner, they won't line up correctly with Tesla's stalls.

> If the charging port is on the rear right (or front left) corner, they won't line up correctly with Tesla's stalls.

So what? It's up to Tesla to build better chargers. Here's a start:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/19/23689247/tesla-v4-superch...

Tesla are not holding a gun to any manufacturer's head here. What attracts automakers to NACS is the ability to offer their customers Tesla's existing Supercharger network. Fine. Compatibility with that existing network means ensuring that the socket on the vehicle is within reach of cables on existing stalls.

If they only want compatibility with V4 superchargers, they can stick with CCS1 and let their customers connect through the integrated adaptor.

Not only that, but the NACS port is smaller, the overall experience is better, and it’s probably cheaper to make, too. Aptera embraced it as well, in part because their smaller vehicle really benefits from the compact design.

The practical reality is charging with other EV brands on Tesla chargers is already happening regardless of where the charge port is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y33AArvMUQ

Don't worry about it.

I assure you I'm not worried about it. I'm not expressing a concern. I'm making an observation about what will obviously happen. Any automaker interested in adopting NACS is going to make sure their vehicle works seamlessly with existing superchargers. If that means moving the charge port from left to right (or right to left) then of course they will do it. It's not a big deal.

If what I read about the non-SC network, then I have to strongly disagree. The SC network is in my experience extremely dependable and fast. I have at most had an issue with (rare) congestion in peak traveling season at a popular stop. I have never been left stranded with all-broken chargers.

It's my suspicion that it's the difference because of tesla's "all in" view of electric cars -- they need to overcome all potential problem to EV adoption even if there's some theoretical reason not to (IE "GM" never owned gas stations so tesla shouldn't own charging stations).

The other big players in the DC fast charging space, like "Electrify America" seem like textbook "malicious compliance" ; they're exemplifying why you shouldn't own an EV -- "look they're expensive and profoundly unreliable; if you try to drive your EV long distances you'll spend 80 extra hours charging!"

Letting Ford use the Tesla charging network is fine, but forcing Ford to adopt NACS is a major step in the wrong direction. The entire rest of the world has converged on CCS, including current Tesla vehicles outside the US, and even Japanese manufacturers have adopted CCS and pretty much given up on CHAdeMO. But nope, instead of taking this opportunity to standardize, Tesla has now guaranteed that at least two incompatible standards will continue to duke it out for years to come in US.

This is false. There is no such thing as a "CCS" connector. Europe uses CCS2, which is just as incompatible with CCS1 as NACS is.

[dead]

Tesla did not force Ford to adopt NACS. The announcement is from Ford, not Tesla. Tesla is already opening up Superchargers using Magic Dock for existing CCS-1 EVs. Ford sees the benefit of NACS and simplifying the experience for their customers to the largest charging network. Looks like a win-win to me.

US CCS (1) and European CCS (2) are incompatible anyway so that’s moot. Also China uses neither.

Also US and European cars are always a little different, even if it is the same model. Take brake and turn signals for instance. There are different regulations, and at that point it is a different SKU anyway.

Are you able to describe the difference between US and EU brakes/turn signals? You've piqued my curiosity.

See here: https://youtu.be/O1lZ9n2bxWA

US uses the red brake lights for turn signals. EU has separate amber turn signal lights.

US just can use red brake lights for turn signals, but amber is perhaps still more common.

To my understanding NACS is now in the same standards track as CCS at the IEC standards body and is intended to replace some of the deliberation over a proposed "v3.0" CCS US standard upgrade that got stalled in various committees. There were some thoughts that the US needed a better connector than the under-adopted CCS1 (which is different from the better adopted EU/Asia CCS2 connector) and considered building a better connector from scratch for the US, but Tesla short-circuited that proposed committee effort by opening NACS directly to the standards body. It hasn't officially been standardized yet, but my understanding is that it will be sooner rather than later.

I don’t see the problem in having a different connector in US and EU for cars. If you’re traveling internationally, you’re not bringing your car.

Considering the entire interior of front interior has to be flipped for markets, I don't see the big deal in separate modular charging systems to be honest.

Ford is the 3rd biggest EV company in the US. The start-ups (Lucid, Rivian, Canoo, etc.) will hold meetings to discuss this change. Switching to NACS could be the difference between their success or slow failure. GM will be GM and simply call this a big mistake until EV sales are affected.

I think Ford will pull into second by the end of the year. GM is in second, but as you pointed out, GM is really slow.

GM is downright handing it to them. They just killed the Bolt, their only volume model right now.

Every Bolt and Volt owner I’ve met really liked the cars.

Yeah, roughly the cost of a leaf, better range, and not ugly. They were close to the perfect commuter cars (I very nearly went with the Volt, but went with a model 3 in 2018 instead.).

I test drove a second gen Volt when we were looking for a second car, Wife preferred an SUV but I was in love with the Volt. Wildly cool car that is shockingly fun to drive.

I rented one. My only concern is that it was made by GM, and I've had uniformly negative experiences with them in recent years. It made me think they might be moving in a reasonable direction after all, but they proved that thought wrong in the last month or two. Oh well.

Too bad they couldn't sell the plant + Bolt designs to some other company, like when The Expanse moved to Amazon.

I think we are seeing the effects of a supply chain strain around battery production.

GM is killing the bolt in favor of trucks. I'm sure they'd still want the bolt but likely trucks are more lucrative and batteries hard to come by.

My guess is 10 years before that battery crunch eases up.

I think there is a hint of strategy here. Bolt was on last-gen tech for GM and killing it made sense to consolidate to the current-gen "Ultium" platform. There's just a lot of timing questions about GM not announcing a proper Bolt successor before killing it.

Also, favoring trucks is quite probably GM worried about Ford's massive US truck fan base and hoping they can outpace Ford's supply chain bootstrapping issues with Ultium, which did have something of a head start (and multiple proven predecessor generations). (It's interesting to compare Ford's stop gap F-150 Lightning/Mach-E on an already announced dead platform and Ford moving to VW's relatively more proven MEB platform as an attempted short-cut around supply chain issues by leveraging VW logistics.)

But yeah, I wish GM would finally announce the remaining "unknown" Ultium models and hope that at least one properly fills the hole left behind by the Bolt.

The thing about trucks is that even if their battery costs are 60% more, they will price the Truck roughly 200% more. Any Ev truck will start in the $60k Range and top $100k. It's a sad misuse of resources that works better for investors.

Too early to tell (as it isn't yet available), but the Chevrolet Equinox EV should basically be a Bolt EUV with a (subjectively) better looking face and more name recognition. Similar range/price.

Bolt was a placeholder until the unified EV platform (Ultium) was ready to go. They're start to launch Ultium cars this year.

As far as I can tell Ford is still losing money on every EV sold (while Tesla is making 20% margin). Not sure how much they can grow if they can’t flip to profitable.

Are they still losing money if you take out fixed costs? Or are they "losing money on every EV" in the sense that the first car off a $5B production line is a $5B loss (modulo depreciation schedule)?

Yes. They're losing money as in negative profit margin per unit. The more units they sell, the more money they lose.

Are you basing that on their recent financial report where they showed a $3B loss? That was not an operational cost (cost of sales). It was a capitol cost (infrastructure to build and equip factories). That is not what would normally be thought of as a loss per unit.

Sources online don't say definitively, so it's hard to really know. Ford says a large portion of the loss per unit is engineering costs. They also say the expect positive margins in 2026. I imagine if it wasn't a loss beyond R&D expense they'd proudly proclaim as much, and they aren't.

Ford's ICE division is still quite profitable, so that supports them in the meantime. Why do you assume they "can't flip to profitable" on their (quite young) EV division?

What are their reasons for not being profitable? Is it volume (they need to double volume), or is it the vast inefficiencies in their network (3rd party supplier glut, dealerships, etc). I am not sure a manufacturer with a dealer network and union assembly could ever match price with a no-dealer no-union manufacturer.

>I am not sure a manufacturer with a dealer network and union assembly could ever match price with a no-dealer no-union manufacturer.

Are you saying that Tesla can only make money by having a relatively underpaid workforce? Do you think that's sustainable?

>vast inefficiencies in their network (3rd party supplier glut, dealerships, etc)

Wait, you think the automotive supply chain is inefficient? JIT auto manufacturing is a modern marvel...

Dealers? That's a tough one. Lots to improve, but you can't eliminate customer service. I'm not sure being beholder to the manufacturer is great for consumers, either.

> Wait, you think the automotive supply chain is inefficient? JIT auto manufacturing is a modern marvel...

It's super efficient for a the current high complexity vehicles we have. It really struggles, though, when you deviate from the formula.

This is pretty evident with the earlier ford evs like the ford focus. Where the only way they could get a battery in is by slapping it into the trunk. The skateboard model of evs is WAY more efficient but requires significant retooling. And, at this point, is pretty much all inhouse standards. There's nobody (AFAIK) manufacturing a standard battery pack module. Every EV manufacture has been left to making their own standards there.

That's what has driven up the cost more than anything. Huge portions of the manufacturing line need to retool and that's a long slow processing. In the meantime, companies like telsa were able disrupt by doing the less efficient ground up approach.

As EVs become more common and standardized, this will of course change and tesla's ev manufacturing will end up a liability rather than an asset. But until that happens, they get some pretty nice profit margins that will be hard to beat.

>while Tesla is making 20% margin

They have 20% gross profit margins, while capitalizing costs that other companies expense. You can't compare the numbers.

I am not sure this matters. The point is Tesla is making money per EV sold, and Ford is losing money per EV sold. I don't care if the Tesla number is 20% or 14% or 31%... what matters is the more Ford makes, the more they lose - and I don't yet see how they are going to flip that.

How you do your accounting absolutely matters. See Enron.

I’m arguing on the internet not filing taxes.

2023Q1 tesla sold 422k vehicles, and I think GM sold 20k, but it's hard to get sales figures

Good. EV charging infra should be a utility. This move by Ford is a step in the right direction that increases the network effect for the charging infra.

With this change, it feels like even though Tesla may be overtaken by the rest of the automotive industry on cars themselves, they seem to have cemented their place as the eventual leader in consumer filling stations.

It was revealed today that the Tesla Model Y took the place of Toyota Corolla as the number one selling vehicle world wide. Tesla is the one doing the over taking.

Wait until the Chinese manufacturers (BYD and friends) catch up - they've been growing immensely over the last few years, and in contrast to Tesla or the legacy auto makers, they all have the limitless coffers of the CCP to back their expansion.

Personally I'd be happier if Chinese products artificially subsidized by CCP government funds be slapped with heavy tariffs to counteract that, but I don't believe that it will happen.

[1] https://insideevs.com/news/629273/byd-plugin-car-sales-decem...

Punishing Chinese companies for being government subsidized feels wrong on a lot of levels, the first of which being we subsidize the shit out of our own domestic industry and two because it presumes that the american way of organizing an economy is the only valid one.

There's rules on how to do subsidies and an international organization supposed to safeguard these, the WTO.

China is violating these rules on a scale that puts the US and Europe combined to shame, the absurd thing is that it's the US who is currently blocking WTO appointments.

It's not wrong if they are abusing human rights/dignity to get there or eating up environmental costs. You might not want to compete with that and tarrifs seem fine in that scenario.

That I 100% agree with and I wish we were more aggressive about not trading with countries that abuse their workers.

Seems reasonable enough to not want to allow companies subsidized and essentially controlled by an adversary to potentially take out domestic industry.

After all, unlike in democratic nations, China doesn't have to worry about how heavily subsidizing certain companies will be perceived, and Western nations have already seen how bad of a mistake building a strong reliance on a single nation ended up being for the reliability of their supply chains.

> adversary

The American government is a bigger adversary to the American people than the Chinese government

All auto manufacturers are heavily government subsidized, all over the world, for whatever that's worth.

Not sure why you've been downvoted. The Chinese automakers are building great vehicles and growing very quickly.

For the US, they will need to sort out US production to get around protectionist trade policy, but that seems likely in the long run.

While there are some US policies that make it hard for a new manufacturer to setup in the US, it is nothing like the level of protectionism in China. In China the only way to setup a company is if you partner with a Chinese company who owns half of the entity and has full access to everything your company does. That is a pretty stiff block to meet.

Model Y was the best-selling car in the world last quarter. Even if they end up with "only" 20% market share (see Apple's iPhone), their ruthless dedication to operating leverage ensures that they are making more money per car than all their other competitors combined.

"Competition" has been "coming" for 10 years now. Tesla also want others to succeed. It's why they open-sourced all of their patents.

Tesla already owns all the "gas stations," people just don't realize it yet.

Is there much investment required to set up a charging station? There is a requirement of be HV capacity sure, but it would seem some transformers and power electronics is not as expensive as burying fuel tanks underground.

> Companies couldn’t apply for more than 70% of the cost of the chargers up to $150,000 per charger, and Forbes reports that Tesla was asking for only ~$30,000 per charger versus the full $150,000 for most applicants:

https://electrek.co/2022/04/15/tesla-cost-deploy-supercharge...

I'm honestly not entirely sure, but I don't imagine it's a cheap investment.

I just did a quick google and this site mentions:

> Hardware costs for a Public DC electric vehicle charging station are very expensive ranging from between $40,000-$100,000 per charging station.

and

> In addition to high hardware costs, installation can also be very expensive given the frequent need to install a 480V transformer, upgrade the electrical supply as well as the permitting and increased labor time needed for the project. Installation costs would likely range from between $15,000-$60,000 depending on the specific nature of the project.

https://evse.com.au/blog/evchargercost/

Note this an Australian site so it'll be in AUD, and I have no idea on the validity of these numbers. I know at one of our client sites (mining) they recently set up a charging station for vehicles that tipped into the $millions. But apples and oranges in that regard.

Apparently building a petrol station is on the order of a million dollars in the US, so it would appear to be on par?

It probably would be I suppose.

A single charging station is not really competitive. Its the network of stations and the integrated software (so you can see in your car navigation if a charger is busy for example).

Most importantly of all, it's the reliability of the network. Nobody has been able to compete with Tesla with >99% uptime.

Has any company actually tried? I don't feel like other car companies, as demonstrated by their public activities, aren't acting like DC Fast charging is critical to the success of their company.

Tesla behaves as though the success of their company is based on being able to use their cars for 100% of the things people use cars for. If there's some potential excuse (Hey I might need to drive to Newark at a moment's notice when my car's nearly empty; I can do that with my fiesta but I can't with some EV) tesla seems to work to overcome that issue. At this point, if you own a tesla (in north america), you can likely drive between any two cities with 50k or more people and always have a supercharger in between. You can drive from Edmonton to Prince Albert with 2 superchargers in between. [edited from 3 to 2; the 3rd is in Saskatoon which isn't really in between]

That is mostly a function of maintenance. Tesla doesn't have a large team, but they are well organized and respond quickly when needed.

> Nobody has been able to compete with Tesla with >99% uptime.

How would you know? You're quoting a figure straight from Tesla's marketing and you're not comparing it to other charging networks using the same methodology or the same definition of "uptime".

How would I know? I know because if such a competitor existed, you would have mentioned them by name.

Ah, so the honest answer here is you don't know. Good to know.

Parroting marketing material without applying any critical thinking to it is not sensible. It's always better to back your claims.

Tesla's IR claims are broadly consistent with general sentiment. If you have something substantive to share I'm genuinely interested. But just throwing "how do you know" around as a substitute for an actual argument is just sad and tired.

Back your claim. Apply the same methodology and metric to all the charging providers in the world, because remember your claim is that "nobody has been able to compete with Tesla with >99% uptime".

You set the benchmark so prove it. And if you can't do that then admit you don't know what you're talking about.

You must be fun at parties. Though I doubt anyone could prove that to your satisfaction.

No? Can't do it? Nothing to back your vacuous parroting of marketing messages?

Sounds about right. Boring.

The problem is not the station, it's the electric network. It currently would not support too many stations.

This is not true. There is plenty of capacity at night and stations can store capacity at night locally at the charger location, no stress on the grid, for use in the day using batteries which can be scaled up massively if needed. They may not cover the full day, but they can smooth the curve enough to solve the problem you have in mind. And if it’s not enough, again just add more batteries.

Do they actually deploy batteries at charging stations? Now this sounds ridiculously expensive and inefficient.

Sounds like the perfect legacy for Elon Musk to have once he goes for broke and his other ventures are forgotten. The Supercharger guy.

There was a thread a while ago commenting that 15% of cellphone users in the US don't use a smartphone. Another 3% don't have a cellphone at all. Probably save to assume also that a larger then 0% part of the smartphone population also don't have mobile data plans.

Which begs the question; do Tesla superchargers have the ability of using only a credit card or cash? Is there any plan to?

You just plug the cable into the car; the system knows the car's VIN and charges the card on file. There is no smartphone required. It's a nice, seamless system compared to the competition.

How do you manage the card on file? Who is hosting the file?

As with any of the charging networks, you create an account and they host the card data.

Right now, it is your Tesla account. I assume the Ford Pay stuff in there explains how other manufacturers will do it

And how do you manage your Tesla account? Through an app?

My point is, I still need some app. I can't just go up to a Tesla charger and choose to pay with one credit card or the other without involving an app.

Visit a library and set it up on their website if you absolutely have no computer or internet access?

In this case, the Tesla charging network is the only one that allows use without a cell phone app. The other charging networks are a mess, I have several apps installed for them.

> In this case, the Tesla charging network is the only one that allows use without a cell phone app

You literally have to access some app to use it. Like, no matter what, you have to use an app whether that be on your phone or on a website. It is impossible to walk up to a Tesla charger and start charging with just a credit card.

Meanwhile I've had several CCS charging sessions which were just tap a credit card or insert a chipped card and it starts charging, no app or website needed at all.

So saying Tesla doesn't require an app is a lie, and saying it's the only one like it is also a lie. Two complete fabrications in one, nice work!

Even if one argues plug and charge doesn't need an app (even though it did ahead of time to configure it), Tesla isn't the only one with that. I've had plug and charge work at most CCS charging sessions I've done. Tesla isn't the only one.

The population of electric cars drivers without a smartphone must be low enough to ignore them.

No and no. But they are opening them to non-Tesla cars by providing an adapter. For this, you pay with your credit card via a smartphone app.

Seems like they could easily offer some kind of gift card option.

One of the nice things about Teslas is that you get access to the Supercharger network. If more brands have that then I worry that they'll see even higher utilization/crowding.

I hope they build more to accommodate the extra load

In the US they're opening a new station around once a day, each station has 8, 12, or sometimes dozens of charging stalls. They're on track to double the current network in around 5 years assuming no further acceleration in installations.

https://supercharge.info/changes

There is big $$$ in the charger network in huge handouts from federal government in USA. This will just accelerate the number of chargers being brought online for tesla. Also note that Tesla can still skew the utlliization so that other brands are not notified of available slots at super busy locations.

Not just in the US. The amount of chargers is growing by double digit percentages in many countries. Tesla's network is one of the larger and more mature/reliable ones but they are not the only ones by far and there are many billions being invested in this sector. Utilization of this infrastructure remains fairly low. Most of this is being done in anticipation of massive growth in demand in the next few years.

And while people obsess over fast chargers, the real deal is actually slower charging in parking lots, parking garages, shopping malls etc. Those are a lot cheaper and easier to install and they are similar in cost to what people would install at home. Basically, most of the charging happens at home or chargers like that while the driver is doing something else. A lot of venues try to draw in customers by providing them with charging opportunities and they are fairly cheap to install. There are already quite many of those. Hundreds of thousands of them. They're everywhere.

You use fast chargers at a premium when you have to on longer journeys. Plug it in for 20-30 minutes and continue driving for a few hours. Not that big of a deal.

But slower charging is better for your wallet and battery and if you are parking the car anyway, you might as well plug it in to gain a few extra kwh. It won't delay you or cost you much. For most typical EV drivers, that's all they need most of the time. The vast majority of charging is slow charging and it doesn't involve people waiting for that. On average people only drive maybe 10-20 miles on a typical day. That's only about 4-6kwh. You don't need a fast charger for that. Plug it in at home once every few days or at the mall while you are shopping, having some coffee, at work, etc. There are plenty of opportunities for charging even if you don't have a charger at home.

Yes and to be eligible for that they needed to support at least 2 automakers. This gets them there without having to retrofit stations with ccs

There is a lot of competition for those dollars, and a lot of states won't even dole them out until next year.

It wouldn't be surprising if Tesla doesn't get that much of the money. TBH, Tesla's current V3 offering doesn't quite meet NEVI standards regardless of the connector.

The big problem right now is Tesla (and others) can’t get the transformers they need (52+ week lead time) to install chargers.

Iirc Tesla has dropped to installing something like only 50 total chargers (not sites, individual chargers) in May due to it.

Tesla installed ~33 new sites representing over 270 new chargers during May, so far.

They'll likely get at least a few more sites done by the end of the month.

> Tesla installed ~33 new sites representing over 270 new chargers during May, so far.

You're conflating two different counts there.

Tesla has commissioned 33 new sites in May. Construction on most of those started in 2+ months ago.

They have started construction on 8 superchargers in the month of May so far, consisting of 96 stalls. With this being a long weekend, that basically leaves them with 2 working days, so I doubt many more entering construction.

They are trending down due to the shortage.

Construction started:

May: 8 sites, 96 stalls

April: 11 sites, 162 stalls

March: 12 sites, 192 stalls

Additionally, it's not hard to find evidence of the transformer shortage.

https://archive.is/N6gRW

> Today, the average time for obtaining new transformers in the US has grown from about two months prior to 2021 to 12 months in 2022, according to a survey of public power utilities.

> Already, the shortage has forced 20 per cent of utility companies to either delay or cancel electrical grid projects. Home builders have experienced months-long delays in constructing new houses and apartments because of wait times for connecting with local electrical grids.

That's an extraordinary claim, tbh. Just poking around on Supercharger.info shows ~32 sites starting construction since the beginning of May. That might be overcounting slightly if they overlooked some that started a little earlier, but I doubt it is overcounting by 4x.

The transformer shortage is not a new problem. There's a reason that the pace of openings hasn't really changed that much.

Tesla can probably make more profit long term from selling energy than their cars. Otherwise they would DRM the charger network (easy to do since their vehicles are internet-connected)

I mean, people have been saying for years: "Tesla isn't a car company, it's an energy company."

In my country (denmark) Tesla have opened up most of their chargers to other brands, I have not see any negative effects.

In some areas, Tesla has had issues getting sites to partner with them, due to the exclusivity. Having more manufacturers onboard helps them to get more site hosts onboard.

Its probably a net benefit for them, given how quickly they are willing to roll out sites when suitable options are available to them.

Software automatically routes you to the least busy local supercharger, and they're engaged in massive (further) expansion of superchargers.

Just 6 months ago:

Opening the North American charging standard

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33564558

This is a clear eyed, smart move by Ford. Gives a good impression of their trajectory.

For Tesla: other automaker will convert to NACS, rendering existing CCS chargers a relic of the past, leaving alternative charging networks in the dust and requiring massive retooling to come back. This positions Tesla as an energy provider like Shell/Chevron.

Eventually I bet they'll be forced to split out the auto manufacturer from the energy vendor to avoid antitrust problems, but that will be in a while.

> This positions Tesla as an energy provider like Shell/Chevron.

No, this positions Tesla to be an energy middleman. They're not finding and distributing energy, just reselling it at a markup.

You call it middleman, I call it platform. Owning the platform everyone uses for charging their car is not a bad place to be. Add to this that they're working on including house solar+batteries into a national smart grid system, and they're producing their own large scale energy storage and generation technology... they're positioning themselves to be a major player in the energy industry.

There is a large firey ball in the sky called the sun. Tesla captures its energy using a technology called solar panels.

Why would they be forced to do that? Assuming that they 1. Charge all customers the same price at each super-charger station. (Prices will vary with time of day and different super-charger charger locations.) 2. They open up their network to everyone voluntarily.

I don't see an argument for self favoring or anti-trust. What am I missing? Why do you think that outcome will happen?

In a world where Tesla is one of the biggest auto manufacturer AND holds a quasi monopoly on vehicle charging, I think there will be a point where governments will want Tesla Auto and Tesla Energy to not be the same, as they'll hold too many pieces of the puzzle.

But that's highly speculative of course, and it's just a possible development in a scenario where Tesla ends up being incredibly successful in the way I describe. Which of course is very arguable, as people have done for years.

And what about people that already own CCS cars?

You get an adapter, per the article on Ford’s plan.

Those are only being made for ford vehicles.

I’m not following what your point is. Since this is a discussion of hypotheticals, it’s safe to assume any change in standards would include adapters becoming available for late-model legacy vehicles.

Adapters?

> This positions Tesla as an energy provider like Shell/Chevron.

And I was worried that the "green revolution" was going to be without rent seeking corporate greed getting involved. Yay?

If there is no reward for making superior products, who will bother making them?

There is. It's a patent. Those expire but Tesla gave it away before that anyways. So, I guess, Tesla?

Anyways.. the idea that selecting a plug would make you somehow positioned to be an "energy provider" ala Shell is just awful to me, let alone, but that anyone would seemingly be thrilled about that outcome brought out my sarcasm.

A patent itself is not a reward, its a cost. The value you extract out of it can be valuable, which brings us back to square one: incentives.

A patent is an asset. An asset is anything that has present or future value to a company. So - being granted the patent is a reward for creating the invention and going through the process of filing the patent.

Right.. and Tesla threw those incentives away. So, are incentives the "end all and be all" of analysis? It seems like it isn't.

I'm not sure what your point is here. Tesla positioned themselves as an "energy provider" by building a ton of locations.

The connector being better is a separate issue. Anyone else can adopt that if they choose to.

Tesla did not position themselves as an "energy provider" ala "Exxon." Exxon owns the _supply_ not the _distribution_. It's an entirely backwards analysis of the situation.

Anyone can buy land and sell electricity on it. You should look _forward_ to that market opportunity.. not stand around pretending that Tesla is the new Exxon. As if more "Exxon" like business are at all a good idea.

As a non-EV owner, how much do charging stations cost typically? What's the price of a "fill up"?

Most DC fast charging rates are about 2x to 3x the local electric rate per kWh, though stations vary quite a bit based on other factors. Here in Colorado, my home power is about $0.125/kWh "normal" rate putting supercharger rates at $0.25 to $0.50/kWh. If I charge my Model 3 Midrange battery (62kWh) capacity from 10 to 80% (typical road trip percentages to minimize charge time) that would be somewhere between $10-15.

95% of the time I'm charging at home and on a net-metering Solar plan, so really only paying those $0.12/kWh rates in the dark winter months, basically charging for "free" off solar once we hit the equinox.

As an EV owner with home charging, fast charging cost pretty much doesn't matter. The only time I ever use a supercharger is when I'm on a road trip, which happens just a few times a year. The rest of the time, I schedule charging at home for off peak hours. My charging stats for the year from the Tesla app are 96% home, 4% supercharger.

What does matter more than price to me is the speed of the fast charging experience when I'm on a road trip. Tesla is not perfect -- I've been to chargers located in mall parking lots, which are an absolute nightmare in the holiday shopping season. I've been to chargers in airport parking garages, where you need to pay to enter the garage, etc. Most of Tesla's newer locations are better than this (like the ones at Sheetz gas stations just off the highway). But whats a real nightmare for me (and which has never happened to me with Tesla) is most of the chargers being down, or running at severely degraded speeds. This DOES happen with EA. So after hearing terrible charging experiences from friends with CCS cars, I'm pretty much tied to the Tesla supercharger network.

depends on time of day and local electricity rates. most of your charging will be at home which is much cheaper than supercharges.

>In general, the cost of charging a Tesla is more than 3 times cheaper per mile than the cost of fueling a gas-powered car (4.56 cents per mile compared to approximately 13.73 cents per mile for gas vehicles). from: https://news.energysage.com/tesla-charging-cost-vs-gas/

a different take: >It depends on what you are comparing it to gas wise. In my area, approximate numbers are 11 cents a kWh at home, 28 cent at a SC. I will get roughly 3 miles to the kWh so a mile costs me 9 cents if I SC. Gas is $3.30 a gallon so my car would need to get 36 miles to the gallon or better to compete with SC'ing.

from: https://www.reddit.com/r/TeslaModel3/comments/stbpfb/comment...

Wow - never done the math. My home rate is 30 cents a KWh (in NH). So each mile is 10 cents. So let's compare to Prius at say 50mpg. Breakeven gas cost is then $5 for it to cost 10 cents per mile. Seems like a Prius is actually cheaper per mile?

That is true in a short-term sense, however if you include hidden complexities such as crashing solar rates, long-term fuel prices, maintenance costs, and resale value...

A 10 year Prius ownership will still cost you more.

> Seems like a Prius is actually cheaper per mile?

Not if you factor in all the side costs associated with owning an ICE car in maintenance. With an electric car, basically all you have to do is tire exchanges and brake pads - and less of the latter too, because most braking of an electric vehicle is done by regenerative braking so the pads aren't used at all if you're a decent driver.

Well a Prius costs $27K and the model Y $47K, so that is a lot of maintenance!

This is exactly why getting a Prius has become very hard. Some dealerships are asking for $10k over MSRP

https://preview.redd.it/insane-23-prius-markup-v0-t422zsfhnm...

Yes, in places with very high utility rates, a Prius is often cheaper.

This is why we need laws against IC engines. People obsessed with dollars and cents and missing the fact that we are killing this planet.

But I think this attitude actually creates the MAGA folks. It should (and can) deliver on economics AND outcomes. And this needs to be done upstream of consumer, or we are just putting another tax on the poorest part of our population.

I'm all for electric, but thinking we are missing a huge opportunity during the 30-50 year transition to cut gas use in half TODAY with hybrids. And this eliminates all the range anxiety excuses as well.

Right now, EV users are the very rich. EV users actually have MORE cars on average, and tend to drive their EVs less than their ICE cars. They have a house to charge their car in at night. (I know there are many anecdotes that will give counter examples. But this is what the data say on average.)

We need a way to get to the rest of the population.

It's people's obsessions with dollars and cents that will provide the incentive to actually save the planet.

Or, you could just see what the superior attitude gets you.

raises the question of why your electricity rates are so high.

If you get a used ~2016 Tesla, the Superchargers are free.

You do have to be a little careful if you want to go that route though, Tesla has pulled free supercharging from some vehicles, and some had the free supercharging limited to just one owner. Also, Tesla is trying to entice people with the free supercharging to give it up, I believe the deal is $5k off a new Tesla if you give up free SC.

It's not that they remove it, it's that on certain models 2016-later it was sold as no longer being transferable where it originally was.

Is there a guide you could point me to for identifying which of these 2016 Teslas have free supercharging?

I believe I've heard that you can ask Tesla if it has the free supercharging for life. The impression I get is that if they get resold through Tesla, Tesla is removing it, especially problematic now that they are offering "money" to remove it, so it's difficult to know based on age.

It looks like the Model S 2017 and older came with free supercharging, and the Model 3 Performance in 2018 and 2019. Model X in 2016 and 2017. Some S & X up to 2020 had unlimited supercharging.

Login to the Tesla website, click on "Manage" next to the car, then click on "Details" and it'll say "Free unlimited supercharging" if it has it.

> The impression I get is that if they get resold through Tesla, Tesla is removing it

The premise is that Tesla offers more for trade-ins for cars that have free lifetime SC and things like "Full Self Driving". They optionally disable these add-ons for new users because they're recapturing the expense of their higher trade-in offers for the cars that have them.

Yes, they're making a profit in the process, but what used car dealer doesn't?

No Model 3 has free supercharging that is transferable to the next ownwer though.

This one sums it up pretty good, though I'm not very fond of the sites sensationalism sometimes.

https://electrek.co/2021/07/21/how-to-tell-if-your-tesla-qua...

For one example, Electrify America is $4/month + $0.36/kWh. (You can pay the $4 and immediately cancel, before a road trip.)

Assuming 4 miles/kWh, that's $36 to drive 400 miles. Charging at home cuts the cost roughly in half. These numbers vary depending on location.

I'm a clear outlier but my apartment is near charging stations where I can charge for free. I just hit 700 miles on my new Bolt EUV and have so far managed to pay nothing for electricity.

But if I did have to pay, I believe my apartment charges $0.30 per kWh. And I get 4.5 miles of range per kWh. So it's $6 to drive 100 miles. Gas is over $4/gallon here so a car that gets 33 mpg would spend over $12 to go 100 miles.

If I was paying $0.125 per kWh like I've seen other people report in this thread then I'd spend $2.50 to go 100 miles.

that was not my experience. I rented a model 3. drove it around Boston for 1 day. Paid $16 in charging cost from tesla supercharging station.

$16 in my ICE camry will take me a lot further.

A Tesla Model 3 uses roughly 160Wh/km and has a 75-82kWh battery pack. You can easily do the math. I think you'll be surprised.

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Well I used my real-world driving numbers in my post. Here's a photo I took this morning showing how many miles I get per kWh since getting my Bolt EUV. I don't know what was going on with your Tesla.

https://i.imgur.com/fbwOYD4.jpg

Depends on timing, but my calculations put it at about $11 at a station, or $56/month overnight at home.

I rarely have to use Superchargers because I have charging at home. But when I do, it's about $25 for an 80% top up (e.g. going from 10% -> 90%) in my Model Y.

Just looked it up: $0.45/kWh the last 4 times at Tesla Superchargers in California.

About 50 cents per kWh at something like a supercharger. Most EVs get around 3 miles per kWh. So 300 miles of charging is about 100 kWh or $50.

Charging at home is typically cheaper. Around 1/2 to 1/3 of the cost of a public charger. There are also some free public chargers but they are typically slower charge around 6kW and are limited to an hour or 2.

Depends strongly on the area. I’ve never seen any above 41c/kWh, and one of my local chargers does 13c/kWh after 8pm.

For a fast charge I see from $0.20 to $0.35 usually. I don't usually do a full charge, maybe 60% or so, so like $15 to $20.

In the Bay Area, during most daylight hours its around $0.50/kWh, but I've seen it at 0.60 sometimes.

Current Tesla owners will be happy to know that they have to share their waiting lines now with even more people.

0 lines in the Midwest. Have 50k miles on my Tesla and literally had to wait 1 time to charge while visiting FL.

They can for sure build up Cali and catch up to demand. It’s a solvable problem. The fact they just work is so huge.

0 lines in California as well. They are adding a ridiculous amount of capacity. Of course people are buying more cars too so they have to keep adding capacity even beyond what they have now.

>0 lines in California as well

That is not true at all, at least around me (Los Angeles). The mall by me has a supercharger and a set of CCS chargers. The supercharger often has a line, but I've never seen one at the CCS chargers

More users of the chargers → more revenue for Tesla → more superchargers in more locations → less waiting time

moreover, in the EU non-Tesla's pay a higher price per kWh, I assume this is the same in the US? This would give Tesla even more resources to expand faster.

Tesla superchargers are a lot more reliable and easier to use than the alternative fast-chargers. So I'm happy that they opened up and will expand faster.

Not a big issue, tbh. Tesla is expanding their footprint faster than the rest of the industry combined. When they have capacity issues, they fix them, sometimes with really incredible speed.

Meanwhile, we've got states saying that they will deploy their first NEVI installations late next year. But the lines at CCS stations already exist!

Bah, we need CCS solidarity to improve that network for everyone, not EV makers defecting to the Tesla connector.

Also the "North American Charging Standard" is revisionist doublespeak.

We need a standard, but why CCS and not the Tesla one? One of those plugs has a network of great chargers, the other does not.

The entire rest of the world, including Teslas outside the US, use CCS. (Yes, CHAdeMO still exists, but even the Japanese are giving up on it.)

The only reason Tesla uses NACS in the US is that CCS did not exist at the time they started rolling out the Supercharger network.

I'm glad we cleared up history and it makes perfect sense why Tesla isn't using CCS in America. You don't seem to care that it would benefit all of the bad networks in America while costing the well run one.

I'm not sure why it matters what the rest of the world does. A charging plug seems a lot less of a change than say putting the driver on a different side of the car. Bonus points, you can even use a converter between the two plugs if you take your American Tesla to Europe!

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CCS type-1 (North America) and CCS type-2 (Europe) are NOT compatible. And China has their own standard.

> The entire rest of the world, including Teslas outside the US, use CCS

As stated elsewhere in the comments, the European CCS charger and the US CCS charger are not the same.

No — the entire rest of the world uses various incompatible systems.

I’m not an EV owner yet, but CCS looks like a monstrosity compared to NACS.

CCS is a total turd no doubt.

NACS is the Tesla physical connector, plus a new 1000V capable revision, using the CCS communication and billing protocols.

I mean either one would be fine when the transition is done, since they’re both now open standards.

CCS is inferior it’s a huge clunky connector with no performance benefit over NACS.

And don't forget the little prayer you have to say beforehand to increase the chances that the thing actually starts charging, rather than getting some dreaded "communication error" or something.

The user experience for CCS sucks. You should be able to enter payment information into the car, which it would exchange with the charger so you could just pull up, plug in and walk away, without having to fuck around with NFC taps or custom apps for five minutes before you can actually start charging.

Is that due to the CCS connector, or the charging provider? Others have said on this thread that the communication protocol is similar/identical, so it seems much more likely that that's an issue on the backend that is caused by poor operations rather than the connector itself.

It's absolute the charging provider. Chargepoint, Electrify America, etc terminals are totally hit or miss.

I have a Mach-e friend owner and his home charger needs prayers to work too

NCS and CCS use the same communication protocols. The differences are in the actual charging station.

They renamed it that when they pushed into the IEC standards process (the same standards body in charge of CCS standards), so it isn't entirely doublespeak, but a clear sign of intent for the standard.

I like that the Tesla connector is smaller than J1772 or CCS. Since DC fast charging is still a pretty new technology, if companies were required to defer to a standard we would still have giant CHAdeMO connectors.

I don't think we should be surprised that the company that brought us "Autopilot" chose to market its proprietary connector as the "North American Charging Standard". Marketing-wise, I think the name is pretty good, though it is cringe-worthy revisionist doublespeak.

I don’t see how it’s doublespeak, they only started calling it that after opening it up for everyone to use. And it IS the most common charging standard in North America by far, both in terms of number of cars and number of chargers.

Certainly experiencing the demand for chargers going over capacity in the UK. What is more problematic is that there is no space to effectively queue making it a free for all.

Complete mistake by Tesla. The superchargers in some areas are already clogged up, if there's a long line to charge it is getting rid of the one market differentiator that Tesla has that most companies wouldn't invest in. The supercharger network is one of the reasons why I stayed with Tesla instead of getting the BMW i4.

Tesla is opening new Supercharger stations in the US, each with 8, 12, or even dozens of connectors, at a rate of around 1 stations per day:

https://supercharge.info

At this rate they'll double the existing number of stations in ~5 years.

I have driven thousands of miles around the east coast and have waited in a line once around 3 years ago.

The Superchargers in the Bay Area are often full. And now that all Ford EVs can use Superchargers my point is that experience may change for the worse.

> Complete mistake by Tesla.

Another way to spell "fuck the people, why should their life get better ?"

Half joking aside, supercharger usage might save Tesla if their vehicles stop selling well enough a few years down the road. People's taste come and go, infra will always be needed.

> fuck the people, why should their life get better

But the lives of many people are getting better and I bet the net effect is positive, even if you as a Tesla driver (like me), now has to wait a little longer.

Totally agree. I'd posit if chargers become a bigger profit center, Tesla will also have even more business justifications and capital to extend the network and improve it over time.

Totally agree, having your own in house Chevron as a backup plan just in case, seems like a smart choice in the long run despite the trade off. Plus gives you a reason to build new stations in markets where your own car sales don't justify it.

Yeah. You're right. They probably crunched the numbers and determined all the pluses for them outweighed the exclusivity plus.

I don't think this is a mistake for Tesla. They probably know that the next few years competition is going to get tough for their cars. Everyone is moving to EV.

So how can you make money on this? Be the one providing all them the energy and charging infrastructure. It's a better business than the car themselves and are likely to have less competition due to the fact that car companies aren't going to want to build out the infrastructure themselves.

They still keep a competitive advantage by having their cars have faster charge times due to having the latest charging tech.

> They still keep a competitive advantage by having their cars have faster charge times due to having the latest charging tech.

Teslas are middle of the pack for charging. Hyundai's E-GMP platform cars for example (Ioniq 5, Ioniq 6, Kia EV6, Genesis GV60) are capable of 10 to 80% in 18 minutes at their fastest:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0J46mG7I78Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-Cil3seCHM

Own a Hyundai Ioniq. The whole fast charging thing is cool but you also need to find a charger that can do it, reliably. Things are getting better on that front but it’s not quite as good as the Supercharger network yet.

That's only useful if the fast chargers for them are actually available though.

In Europe you can go ahead and charge your BMW i4 on a Tesla charger. Europe wisely set a common charging standard:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y33AArvMUQ

Incompatible charging infrastructure is a profoundly stupid outcome. All brands of charger must charge all brands of EVs.

It's a mistake to support closed infrastructure. Demand more and better.

It's great Europe chose a common standard, but the CCS plug is just a horrendous bit of design by committee IMO. The difference in size alone vs NACS (the new name for the open standard for the Tesla connector being adopted by Ford):

> https://digitalassets.tesla.com/tesla-contents/image/upload/...

> In Europe you can go ahead and charge your BMW i4 on a Tesla charger.

You also can in the USA at some Tesla super chargers and new ones going forward, thanks to Tesla's new Magic Dock at the US superchargers (they now support both CCS and NACS). While a common standard would have been nicer, this is a relatively neat solution that lets a single cable work for both standards and provide DC fast charge.

> https://insideevs.com/news/657335/tesla-magic-dock-rollout-m...

Yeah, but in Europe Tesla now needs to actually compete against a big choice of EV car manufacturers and models. That isn't great for Teslas profits when they actually have competition across the whole market from different brands. Musk stock investors aren't profiting.

Not actually true, the standard didn’t work. You cannot charge a non Tesla on European superchargers despite them using CCS2. (Though they are now opening up superchargers to non teslas everywhere)

What's not actually true? The video I linked to demonstrates a BMW i4 charging on a Tesla V2 charger.

Europe uses CCS Type 2 Combo. Teslas sold in Europe use CCS Type 2 Combo. Old Tesla chargers were retrofitted with CCS plugs years ago. New V3 and V4 Tesla chargers in Europe only have CCS plugs.

Until recently the plug compatibility was irrelevant, as there was no way to start supercharging on a non-Tesla car.

So.. your complaint is that Tesla has been a multi-brand charging laggard? That Tesla could have and should have opened their chargers a lot sooner than they did through software updates since they were already using compatible hardware?

Yes, that's true.

No, my complaint is your statement is misleading, because you were praising Europe's standardization and yet it did not include standard payment infrastructure and or require interoperability and therefore failed to create interoperable fast charging.

The video you linked to is not a result of that standardization, but of Tesla deciding to open its Supercharger network. They are doing this in US also despite not yet having a standard plug, so you could make the same video today in the US. The rollout of non-Tesla charging at Superchargers is more or less in the same state in both regions, so therefore the standard plug did not help.

> The rollout of non-Tesla charging at Superchargers is more or less in the same state in both regions, so therefore the standard plug did not help.

It is not.

There are 11 Tesla charging sites open to all EVs in the US. There are many more than that in Europe and there's no need for goofy adapters. That's the usefulness of standardization.

Use Tesla's own map. Turn off all options except for "Superchargers Open to Non-Tesla". Compare the US and Europe:

https://www.tesla.com/findus?v=2&bounds=55.56650460365597%2C...

Try using A Better Routeplanner to plan some drives in Europe. Use any EV model with CCS. Configure the planner to prefer Tesla charging sites over other charging networks:

https://abetterrouteplanner.com/

I agree standardization is better. And yes, they started this program in Europe about a year before the US. My point still stands that your original comment was misleading.

> My point still stands

It does not. You are comprehensively wrong. It's difficult to see how you could be more wrong.

He was correct, it was not the result of the plug standardization. It was the decision to open the SC network.

I remember being worried when Tesla released the Model 3 with a pay-per-kWh scheme. Was that one supercharger by the mall on the way to Tahoe going to be full all the time? Are all of these mass-market sedans going to make me wait?

That did happen a little bit at a few legacy superchargers, but that minor inconvenience was outweighed by the sheer preponderance of additional superchargers built, everywhere. Instead of worrying about the sole charger being full, I can look on the map, and choose among several nearby chargers, each with reasonable meal options.

I hope this happens with Ford. More cars should increase demand for stations, and additional stations increase convenience for everyone.

The situation is even worse as the cable length on the supercharger and the port placement on non Tesla evs means every non Tesla blocks 2 chargers.

Hopefully something ford sorts out when they embed the port in 2025.

Yeah, I hope Ford improves port placement on their next generation models. TBH, the whole industry should have standardized port locations when they did CCS.

The superchargers have short cables, so they are worse, but CCS stations have issues with charger placement too. People often end up parking on the "wrong" side of the charger that they actually use due to weird placement issues.

I've seen a guy with a Taycan reposition his car at least twice to get an EVGo cable to reach. Its a bad situation all around.

The V4 superchargers have a longer cable, though they’re not rolling out yet. The length is challenging because the cable is liquid cooled.

The first V4 Tesla charger was deployed in Europe recently. It has a CCS plug on it so you can charge all brands of EV:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/19/23689247/tesla-v4-superch...

Oh, I missed that they started deploying them. All European superchargers have CCS.

Why? You already bought the car lol. This is Ford paying Tesla to enable their car use as well. Those stations probably just became some percentage more profitable

> The supercharger network is one of the reasons why I stayed with Tesla instead of getting the BMW i4.

I still got the i4, CCS coverage is good enough, but ya, superchargers are pretty common on longer trips. I'm going to do my first roadtrip tomorrow (up to BC for a short holiday), hopefully Electrify America in Bellingham is open without much of a wait.

This won't take effect until 2024, Tesla are massively expanding their already massive supercharger network, and the software routes you to the least-busy charger.

This is a huge win for Tesla. They own the "gas stations."

Seems like you are assuming this deal doesn't include investment from Ford to build more stalls.

People are always spreading FUD about Supercharger congestion but the number of superchargers is always increasing at the same time.

Agreed. It virtually guarantees I won’t buy another Tesla. My other car is a Ford (ICE) and I like it. This makes a Ford EV an easy decision.

They didn’t WANT to do this, your government has overreached and forced a private company to do this.

No, they enticed Tesla with some sort of tax benefits or something. They weren't forced.

They literally threatened Musk if he didn’t eventually settle a deal.

> literally threatened Musk if he didn’t eventually settle a deal

This is nonsense. Congress gave him tax breaks.

Threatened how

Seems like a great result to me.

More government overreach if this is what we get!

Then I'm glad the EU forced them to open it up. Imagine if you could only fill your ICE with gas from the car manufacturer's filling stations? Vertical integration can help with costs but it also is pure lock-in.

It's not overreach lmao

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Could we reach a point in a decade where it's so cheap in new construction to build parking lots where every spot has a charger?

Stores could encourage visitors vs online shopping by making the charge free after checkout.

If every residential and office parking lot had level 2 AC chargers (much cheaper than level 3 DC fast chargers) at every spot, that would cover most charging needs.

Adding slow chargers at places people aren't going to spend hours seems mostly pointless.

Building DC fast chargers along travel routes or in places people might spend 30-45min in their weekly routine (grocery stores etc.) makes sense too, but these are also more expensive to install and operate.

TBH even L1 120v/12amp at a work parking spot is often good enough to get a charge to recoop the km spent getting to&from the office. A full 3kw or 6kw L2 charge will be wasted for many people for most of the day, unless you enforce people rotating out of spots. Which from my experience is a real PITA.

If you have enough 3-6kw chargers for everyone who wants to use one that stops being an issue. If a percentage of the cars are plugged in but done charging, that just means you can get away with a smaller grid connection and load share across the chargers.

I'm Not An Electrician, But ... The wiring to hook up 50 or 100 L2 3kw chargers is so much more $$ than just running for 12amp 120V service. The cost in thicker copper & insulation alone is way higher.

If I'm parked for 8 hours at work (thank god I now WFH though...) depending on the car & weather, etc. I could get 30-40km of charge for my Volt just from an L1 hookup. Most people's commutes are less than that.

(Where I grew up in Edmonton, Alberta it used to be fairly common to wire staff parking lots up with 120v lines for people to plug in their block heaters for extremely cold days. Granted, in that case there was not continuous service -- just rotating or intermittent or whatever -- because you didn't need a full charge all day to give heat. Newer cars don't really require this, they start more reliably.)

It would certainly be better than nothing. One thing is that requires everyone to carry their own mobile EVSE with them. Not every car comes with a 120V EVSE included these days.

Also especially in cold weather the charging efficiency can be very low. Energy is needed to run the car and BMS systems, and to condition the battery temperature. With a 240v charge a higher percentage of that input energy is actually making it into the battery.

The wiring isn't necessarily more expensive either.

120V * 12A = ~1.4kW. Wiring here is 12awg or 14awg, 1 hot, 1 neutral, 1 ground.

240V * 12A = ~2.8kW. Same amps so same wire size. 2 hots, 1 ground.

If you go with 12awg I think that's actually rated for 16A continuous which would give you ~3.8kW

Yeah, charging at 120V 12A when it's minus 20 barely budges the needle. OTOH the battery is warm when you leave, so your drive home uses a lot less energy. Doesn't quite balance, but it helps a lot.

Level 2 AC charging probably. Level 3 DC 100KW+ fast charging probably not. Fast charging requires quite a bit of high power electronics to convert that grid power into DC. That's why for Tesla Superchargers, the real guts are in big cabinets off to the side.

Absolutely. Eventually we'll have magnetic chargers under every parking space.

That and flying cars too. Magnetic chargers are far less efficient and highly placement sensitive. They just don't make any sense. A mere gimmick.

Magnetic EV chargers are just as efficient as Level 2 plug in chargers.

induction is never as efficient as direct contact

Induction chargers can bypass the inefficient onboard AC/DC convertors.

Tesla superchargers bypass the onboard AC/DC convertor already.

Any DC charger will bypass the AC/DC converter

wireless charging is too inefficient. It might work for your garage, but it would be a huge suck at a grocery store unless power was really cheap.

Oh, great. I can't wait to go to charge my tesla and be forced to wait for 30 Ford Focus and Mustang to finish up their charge.

It I'm reading this correctly they aren't really gaining access but just future models will default to NACS?

They already have access today, via an adapter?

Tesla has only made those adapters available at a few of their superchargers. In this deal, they're providing adapters to Ford, to be included with any EVs they sell.

> Tesla will develop an adapter that will be provided to customers who buy any of Ford’s EVs, including the F-150 Lightning truck, Mustang Mach-E, and E-Transit delivery van.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/25/23737896/ford-tesla-ev-fa...

I’m personally pissed at this news, Tesla long ago offered to share their charging port spec with other car manufacturers, and they all told them to pound sand. Nearly a decade later, Congress literally forces Tesla to open up their network because it’s so superior to the competition.

If a Ford F150e takes up two hours charging in a stall that’s designed to charge a Tesla in 15 minutes, there’s gonna be huge delays in certain areas.

Tesla also actually bothered to put out an actual standard in NACS with spec sheets, 1000V compatibility, and using CCS communication and billing protocols.

The previous "offer" was a patent sharing agreement that I really doubt any major automaker would accept and find themselves beholden to Tesla for their charging connector in perpetuity.

Nobody has forced Tesla to do anything. They don't have to open up anything if they don't want to bid for the public funds for building EV chargers along interstates.

I always felt like other makes could negotiate a better deal than that if they found it valuable to do so. It turns out that apparently they can.

It probably helps that Tesla is a mature company now, and such an agreement would likely involve patent sharing on both sides.

My understanding is the NACS spec Tesla released last year replaces the old patent sharing agreement for using Tesla’s connector.

So they didn’t get any bites until they actually bothered to make it an interoperable standard that didn’t require patent sharing.

That could be true, tbh. The fact that this agreement only mentioned Ford made me wonder if there's a period of exclusivity for the supercharger aspect of it.

Its also possible that Tesla is just opening NACS->CCS via adapter to everyone. Given the mentioned stall counts, it'd at least be limited to V3 stations, though.

It sounds like part of the deal with Ford is also plug-and-charge compatibility where the charging is billed to your Ford account automatically.

The current superchargers with the "magic dock" captive CCS adapter require using the Tesla app to initiate charging and handle billing.

I didn't hear that, but that would be useful. Plug and charge makes a big difference.

Other car manufacturers told tesla to pound sand because the conditions of using any of the “open” tesla patents meant you had to forfeit any patent claims against tesla. Which isn’t really sharing your patents, it’s just a negotiation/PR stunt.

It's suicide to have a one-direction patent sharing agreement. The whole idea of patents these days is defensive patents to avoid mutual destruction. That's why patent trolls (companies that buy and hold patents, but don't actual make anything) are so bad for the industry.

Honestly the agreement that Tesla offered looked a lot like the patent pledges we see in software. Don't sue us, we won't sue you.

But it wasn't palatable, because Tesla didn't look like a meaningful threat to sue anyone back then. :)

It is also written such that if you, your affiliates, or related companies:

* sue anyone over anything EV patent related, or have a stake in someone who does,

* if you ever challenged, or had stake in a challenge to any patent Tesla currently holds, or buys in the future,

* or if you marketed or sold anything that imitates the design or appearance of a Tesla product, or provided any material assistance to someone else who did.

then you are forever excluded from the pledge.

Tesla summaries this as:

What this pledge means is that as long as someone uses our patents for electric vehicles and doesn’t do bad things, such as knocking off our products or using our patents and then suing us for intellectual property infringement, they should have no fear of Tesla asserting its patents against them.

but the actual legal definition goes way above "such as knocking off our products or using our patents and then suing us for intellectual property infringement".

It also has no time bounding, so that patent spat from the 1900s that Ford had probably counts.

Yes, I remember the wording being overly vague. But at the time Tesla was pushing it, they were pretty desperate for $$. I bet if someone had really helped build the supercharger network, they'd have been amenable to changes.

Looking at the way things played out, its obvious that they wouldn't faced competitive pressure due to this.

For the same reasons, the existing industry didn't bother. It was a long time before Ford took EVs seriously.

A middle ground where "charging related patents" and included, but suspension or whatever still isn't covered by the agreement.

Congress didn’t compel this. They passed tax incentives to make it desirable.

That's literally what compel means (as opposed to require or mandate).

To the one person who decided to down vote what I just said, consider the meaning of “compelling”.

I have a non-Tesla EV and the Ford and Rivian trucks that have now hit the market have ruined public charging. As you say, they hog the space for literally hours when everyone else needs 20mins. I finally gave in and purchased a home charger despite still having a special deal on free public charging.

In an efficient world, charging costs would have significant time factor to account for opportunity costs. The supercharger network already charges an idle fee if the charger is busy and you don't leave your space when fully charged. The same idea could apply for charging slowly.

You might also end up waiting for a Cybertruck to charge.

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Why petrol has one interface similar for all cars and electricity has same interface for all buildings but somehow car charging became many different interfaces? They should standardise it the same way they did for charging cables in Europe.

L5, L6, NEMA 14-50, NEMA 5-15, NEMA 5-20, NEMA 14-30, NEMA 11-30, just to name the ones I deal with at home and at the office... And that's not dealing with anything terribly esoteric, like 3 phase, generators, or industrial equipment.

Petrol has several interfaces as well: diesel and unleaded are slightly different, and leaded is different again.

Don't forget unleaded octane ratings!

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mostly because CCS1 is fucking ridiculous. But also have you ever actually been to a gas station? Have you not seen the three or four nozzles for diesel, pb free 95, 98 and whatever other upsell?

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Any electricity standard is doomed to be endataned (digitalized, certificatenizated, turned to requiring to run some non-free applications in order to use it).

Liquids are too hard to conjunct with data but printer cartridges industry is doing a great research in this direction and who knows, maybe in 100 years from now we are gonna to buy some plastic thing with computers running some proprietary code in order just to refuel your petrol car or tractor.

Tesla must be getting desperate to give away a huge competitive advantage. Between this and using BYD batteries they are clearly being forced into some really uncomfortable business relationships.

China limits LFP batteries from not being put into cars that aren't made in China (they literally can't export them unless they are in a vehicle), and they have a distinct cost advantage even if they are heavier. Tesla is using those batteries to get the Model 3 there to $30k (which is the limit to qualify for the current subsidies in China).

It is a brilliant move by China: they have the tech, no one else seems to have it, and by not exporting it outside of completed cars, they can get an advantage.

If that is true, where do the LFP batteries for US made Model 3 come from?

The US model 3 didn’t use LFP. See https://evcentral.com.au/teslas-made-in-china-versus-the-usa....

> While the cars look identical to those still made in America, there is one key difference: the batteries.

> Chinese Model 3s use lithium-iron phosphate (or lithium ferro phosphate/LFP) batteries instead of the previous lithium nickel cobalt aluminium oxide (NCA) batteries.

But maybe this changed recently? Here it says the model 3 standard doesn’t qualify for the credit because it uses a Chinese made LFP: https://pandaily.com/batteries-from-chinese-made-tesla-model...

Yes, the base Model 3 was switched to an LFP pack a while back. It is now ~60kwh LFP, and also quite a bit slower than it was before.

This new base Model 3 dropped the "SR+" designation at the same time.

Selling access to your infrastructure, where you have a monopoly on reliable charging stations, where your entire mission is to 'accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy' is... desperate?

I don't think you're seeing this clearly.

Copium.