[HN Gopher] Volkswagen, Porsche, and Audi say they will use Tesl... ___________________________________________________________________ Volkswagen, Porsche, and Audi say they will use Tesla's EV charging plug Author : thunderbong Score : 262 points Date : 2023-12-20 14:56 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.theverge.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com) | grecy wrote: | Stellantis are the only remaining holdout. It seems inevitable | they'll jump on board too. | 1970-01-01 wrote: | If they are the last domino, they also have the worst | negotiation position. Whatever number Tesla says will be their | cost. | JoshTko wrote: | Not really, last thing Tesla wants is antitrust oversight for | monopolistic practice. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | Would be a bit ridiculous to penalise Tesla as a monopolist | given they virtually pioneered the industry in America | within the last generation. | skybrian wrote: | This is just imagining future scenarios, but I don't see | an inherent contradiction. That's one way to end up with | a monopoly. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | Sure? It's just weird to set the precedent that opening | up your standard means you're now a monopolist. | bluGill wrote: | The conversation is about what if Tesla doesn't open the | standard to one company. An unlikely situation likely. | CamperBob2 wrote: | Mr. Rockefeller from Standard Oil on line 2. | evilfred wrote: | why would Tesla be involved? NACS is an open standard | formerly_proven wrote: | * in the US only, since NACS is becoming the US standard. | SEJeff wrote: | * in north america, which also includes Canada. | iso8859-1 wrote: | Will Greenland use NACS? Probably not. | rubyn00bie wrote: | Huh? It feels like you're just being overly pedantic for no | reason. From Wikipedia and numerous other sources: | | > Though a part of the continent of North America, | Greenland has been politically and culturally associated | with Europe. | iso8859-1 wrote: | It's not even clear if it will prevail in Mexico: | https://mobilityportal.lat/carga-nacs-estandarizacion- | nortea... | CaptainOfCoit wrote: | Don't forget the neighbor in the south North America too, | Mexico. | SEJeff wrote: | You're absolutely right. Thankyou. | | I guess in my head I grouped Latin America with South | America which wasn't correct. | cr3ative wrote: | ...in America. Europe here quite nicely standardising on CCS2. | alsodumb wrote: | US is standardizing quite nicely too, on Tesla's charging | standard. I can't think of a company that is not planning to | use Tesla's charger going forward. | jader201 wrote: | Not really. Many Tesla Superchargers are being equipped with | Magic Dock, which is perpetuating CCS. | | More manufacturers may be moving to NACS, but it's not like | chargers are moving away from CCS. If anything, the CCS | infrastructure is growing. | InTheArena wrote: | CCS is dead with this. I expect magic dock installs to | stop. | jsight wrote: | I think they are still a requirement for NEVI, and Tesla | has won a few contracts for NEVI sites. | | I do expect them to stop eventually though. IMO, part of | the reason they exist is that it lets them collect real | world data on supercharger and adapter usage before the | bigger rollouts next year. | eichin wrote: | How widespread is that really? After the first deployment | (where every EV youtuber east of the Mississippi converged | on one tesla lot in New York :-) I haven't seen it in tech | news since, and looking in the app I see 2 private | ("destination") chargers in all of MA, and none in CT... | Hamuko wrote: | Yeah, even Tesla uses CCS. | | https://electrek.co/2018/11/14/tesla-model-3-ccs-2-plug-euro... | stephen_g wrote: | Same in Australia, Tesla and most other EVs are all CCS Type | 2 here, except for some CHAdeMO in Japanese cars, but I can't | see that being a priority for charging networks going forward | so I expect that to dwindle and they will have to switch to | CCS like everyone else. | Moto7451 wrote: | IIRC it's a legal requirement vs just a standard like CCS1. | South Korea has the same legal demand for CCS1 so it'll be | interesting to see what happens with NACS there. | | I personally don't mind using CCS vs NACS. I didn't feel super | inspired by the flex I felt when inserting a supercharger's | plug into a Model 3 but clearly it works fine in practice. | | My guess is that Electrify America with NACS plugs will still | be just as problematic if they're unreliable in your area. Plug | vs Network vs Hardware are being conflated in this discussion. | Adding CCS to Superchargers would have worked just as well but | that's not how America works in this case. | InTheArena wrote: | CCS charging infrastructure is just awful. This is a problem | mostly with infrastructure, but also with design compromises | in the CCS design - both physical and software. | jsight wrote: | I suspect the US would have done the same thing, if | manufacturers had done CCS2 instead of CCS1. Also would have | helped if the US had done "bring your own cable", which seems | to be common in Europe. | | Interestingly, the new NACS standardization process seems to be | encouraging that as well. | pornel wrote: | BYOC is only for slow AC charging. All CCS2 DC chargers have | cables built-in. | stetrain wrote: | CCS1 is worse than CCS2 in a couple of ways. The latching | mechanism is external which is bulkier and more fragile, and it | doesn't support 3-phase AC charging. | | NACS does everything CCS1 does in a more compact package with | an internal vehicle locking mechanism similar to what CCS2 | uses. It also doesn't support 3-phase AC charging but this | isn't very common in light commercial or residential service in | the US. | | NACS / J3400 will likely stay a North American standard though, | or maybe migrate to a few other markets like S. Korea which | have also used CCS1. That lack of 3-phase support makes it a | non-starter in Europe and CCS2 works perfectly fine there. | mschuster91 wrote: | Yeah, because CCS1 only supports 1 phase AC because the usual | standard of residential power is 1 phase AC. | | In contrast, in Europe 3 phase AC is the standard, so it makes | sense to support that advantage (especially the 400V across the | legs) in charging vehicles. | ComputerGuru wrote: | Three phase power is _not_ "the standard" in Europe. It's | more available perhaps, but certainly not the default | residential hookup. | jgilias wrote: | Europe is big. Where I live it's pretty much the default. | You can get a 1-phase connection, but you basically need to | downgrade to it, and all the default wiring would be done | in a way to support 3 phases if needed. | Symbiote wrote: | In some European countries it is (even in my apartment in | Copenhagen), in others it isn't. | | Where it isn't the default, it's generally available for an | extra fee, and may well be the default for buildings | slightly larger than a house -- a shop, mechanic, etc. | apexalpha wrote: | in The Netherlands is absolutely is the default. | | My home, built in 1971, had 1 phase connected to it but the | power company already buried the 2 extra copper wires for | 3-phase hookup, requiring only a new meter for 3 phase to | be installed. | mschuster91 wrote: | It is the default for building hookups (i.e. excluding | individual apartments/condos/flats, but EV chargers don't | make sense there anyway) at least in the Western European | countries - can't speak for much of Eastern Europe but | Croatia where it is also the default. Even during the 60s | when the home of my grandparents was built in back-then | Communist Yugoslavia, it was already 3 phase. | | Our transmission grid (that actually extends even down to | Africa and parts of Asia!) is already three phases, we're | not sparsely settled to require SWER anywhere, so it | doesn't save the utilities any money to not lay three-phase | AC to every building by default. | lnsru wrote: | Logical move. North American Charging Standard does not exist in | Europe making car re-import much more difficult. | m3kw9 wrote: | If it's electrical it wouldn't be too hard to conver from one | standard to another using an adapter, since it's standard on | both sides there will be a money incentive to make one | HPsquared wrote: | How about voltage / current / communication? Seems quite a | complicated problem, it's not just a case of different USB | plug styles.. | jsight wrote: | It actually is very similar to USB plug styles. NACS | communicates the same way that CCS does. Converting between | NACS and CCS1 or CCS2 connectors should be easy. | | The biggest issue is the amount of current involved. | 0xfae wrote: | Actually USB is a great example. | | USB C can charge at 5v, 10v, 20v, etc. When you plug in a | device to the charger a hand shake happens between the | charger and device and they choose the voltage and amperage | that makes sense. A macbook pro can take 100W over USBC but | obviously your headphones or phone aren't going to. | bluGill wrote: | Tesla is using the same communication standard, they just | combine AC and DC on the same pins which means an adapter | can be pretty cheap. | kwhitefoot wrote: | The voltage and current are determined by negotiation | between the car and charger. There were plenty of US Teslas | imported into Norway in the early days. They have no | trouble charging here. If necessary a simple conversion can | be done. | | Making my 2015 S70D that had a Type 2 connector work with | CCS2 was a 300 USD conversion. I can't see any reason why | converting from NACS to CCS2 would be any more difficult or | expensive. | azinman2 wrote: | Remember teslas come with a CCS adapter that can go the | other way. | SEJeff wrote: | So there is actually a technical reason here. NACS isn't a | thing in Europe because 3 Phase power is much more common in | Europe. NACS does not support 3 Phase power, and as a result, | is not that common in Europe. | bluGill wrote: | 3 phase is very common in the US. Most single family houses | don't have it, everything else is likely to have it. | | For chargers 3 phase gains nothing. For induction motors 3 | phase is useful - but in the modern world even where you have | 3 phase you often will run the power through a VFC just so | you get control of RPM. For a few other things 3 phase is | nice because there is always one phase that isn't near zero | to draw power from, but where that matters you can work | around it with a few capacitors. | jankeymeulen wrote: | 3 phase typically has 400V between the phases and neutral | in Europe, the phases don't gain you anything, but the | voltage does. | phs2501 wrote: | Pretty sure residential 3-phase in Europe is 400V phase- | to-phase, it's 220V phase-to-neutral. | qayxc wrote: | make that 230V (min.) or rather 240V (nominal). | ajsnigrutin wrote: | 230V nominal in EU | qayxc wrote: | You're right, though tolerances allow for up 253V since | 2009. I usually measure between 235V and 242V from the | wall. | dotancohen wrote: | It's 220/240 volt RMS to neutral, which is about 312 volt | maximum to neutral at the top of the phase. | bluGill wrote: | Voltage is solely a matter of how the transformer is | wound. In the US you get a choice when you contact the | power company, 208, 240, 440, and 480 are all voltages | I've personally seen in the US, depending on the area | (not all utilities will provide all voltages, so there | are some I haven't seen) | ajsnigrutin wrote: | 3 phases give you three times amount the power as 1-phase | with only 4 wires (instead of 2 in a single phase, or 3x | the thickness). | SEJeff wrote: | The NACS standard still only supports single phase power. | It was the electrician who installed my home charger that | said it is why they weren't in Europe homes. | gabrielhidasy wrote: | NACS supports either one or two phases for AC charging | which would be used in most home chargers. A really high | power charger would use DC with the AC/DC conversion | happening before (and that could be from a three-phase | source) | ianburrell wrote: | What the US has is split phase power, when one phase is | 240V and that is split to make two 120V legs. NACS | supports single phase power, either 120V (Level 1) or | 240V (Level 2). | | There is no such thing as two-phase power, there is | single-phase or three-phase. Since three-phase is better | than two-phase. | masklinn wrote: | > NACS supports either one or two phases for AC charging | which would be used in most home chargers. | | Lots of european homes have 3-phase service. I have | 3-phase 400V in my flat. | stephen_g wrote: | Theoretically perhaps, but practically, most single phase | AC EV chargers on Europe/Australia etc. are only 7 kW but | 3-phase are 11 or 22 kW (both 7 kW and 22 kW are about 30 A | per phase, but three phase you obviously have three of | them, so three times the power!). That's not "gaining | nothing"! | bluGill wrote: | While sometimes you get more power on 3 phase, that is | only about the size of the feed and nothing to do with 3 | phase. | ajsnigrutin wrote: | But you have three feeds giving you three phases to use, | so 3x the power available to you. Out here, even electric | stoves (with ovens) have 3 phase connection options and | tankless water heaters almost exclusively come as 3 phase | models. | bluGill wrote: | Power is volts times amps. 3 phase just means you add the | power of all three phases, but you can get the same power | from one phase with a little algebra. You need different | size wires and breakers, but there is nothing there that | 3 phases gives you. | ajsnigrutin wrote: | Let's say you have a cable with 2.5mm^2 wires, each of | which can carry 20A of current to stay within code. At | 230V that's 4600W. | | Now you want more power, to keep the math simple, let's | say 13800W (3x the power above). | | With a one phase system, for 3x the power, you need 3x | the size of wire, so 7.5mm^2, ie. 3x the amount of copper | (since all wires, neutral and PE have to be that size | too). | | With a three phase system, you can get the same power | with 3x2.5mm^2 live wires (+1 neutral + 1 PE), so instead | of 3x the amount of copper, you only need 5/3's of copper | to get 3x the power. | Gasp0de wrote: | With three phases in Europe you get 400v, which means | less amps for the same power, which means lower losses or | thinner cables? | bluGill wrote: | You can get 400V 3 phase in the US. While houses don't, | almost all commercial locations have it already. So most | public chargers in the US have 3 phase available. charge | at home doesn't, but those tend to be lower power charge | all night vs the charge in half and hour commercial | chargers. | CorrectHorseBat wrote: | 3 phases give you 3x the power for only 2x the amount of | copper | gabrielhidasy wrote: | And two phases give you 2x the power for the same copper. | foobarian wrote: | I'm guessing the calculation would be based the other way, | i.e. whether there is an installed base or not. If you have | a 3-phase source, not using all the phases would limit | total power delivery needlessly. So most European | residences will want 3-phase charging. | ajsnigrutin wrote: | On the other hand, there are A LOT more volkswagens and audis | in europe (and even some porsches) than teslas. Add seat, | opel and skoda to this, and the number is even higher. | chrisjc wrote: | While that is true to some extent, it's a very dynamic | situation/market. | | https://electrek.co/2023/12/19/audi-puts-big-ev-push-on- | the-... | | https://electrek.co/2023/11/16/volkswagens-ev-woes-worsen- | ov... | | VW owns Audi, Seat and Skoda. | | (On a side-note, I own a VW EV and love it) | masklinn wrote: | The main reason is not technical, it's that the EU mandated | CCS2 back in 2013. From then on, Tesla's plug became | irrelevant, chargers must have CCS2. | stetrain wrote: | There were already two connector standards for NA and EU, CCS | Combo 1 vs CCS Combo 2. | | NACS / J3400 is a different connector but still uses CCS | communication protocols. So there isn't a huge market | differentiation border in swapping CCS Combo 1 to NACS. | | There is an additional requirement with NACS that the vehicle | needs to route both AC and DC charging over the same connector | pins. | ggreer wrote: | Adapters cost a few hundred dollars. That's not much compared | to the cost of shipping a car across an ocean. | clouddrover wrote: | > _Volkswagen Group, which also owns Audi, Porsche, and Scout | Motors, is finally doing what nearly every other automaker has | already done: announce its intention to adopt Tesla's electric | vehicle charging standard._ | | The reporting around this has been so poor. NACS is CCS with | Tesla's plug on the end. | | What's happening is that CCS has won the EV charging protocol | wars, Tesla's plug is being standardized as CCS type 3 (aka SAE | J3400), and Tesla's chargers will use the CCS protocol (like they | already do in Europe and elsewhere). | | To use NACS chargers older Teslas will need a CCS retrofit: | | https://electrek.co/2023/02/28/tesla-ccs-adapter-retrofit-pr... | valine wrote: | When people talk about standardizing the charge port they're | talking about the shape of the port not the protocol. Tesla has | supported the CCS protocol for years now. | | The Tesla port is vastly superior to the CCS type 1 port. They | should get credit for making it an open standard. | clouddrover wrote: | Yes, people aren't aware of what's happening. That's a | consequence of lazy reporting. | | Tesla's charging standard is being dropped and CCS will be | used by everyone. It's a shame North America still has years | of plug incompatibilities and adapter fiddling to look | forward to. | | Europe really got EV charging standardization right. The | European EV infrastructure is much further advanced than the | North American infrastructure thanks in part to sensible | standardization. | SEJeff wrote: | > It's a shame North America still has years of plug | incompatibilities and adapter fiddling | | Not really, Tesla has over 24k charging stalls in the US. | The second biggest is Electrify America, and they have only | 3,800 charging stalls. There really aren't a lot of EV | chargers that are non-tesla in the US, unlike the EU. | clouddrover wrote: | There are 7,869 locations and 15,661 CCS ports in the US | and Canada (versus 2,297 locations and 25,247 Tesla | ports): | | https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/electricity_locations.html | | It's plugs on chargers and inlets on cars. It'll be a | slow and tedious process. | jsight wrote: | TBH, the afdc data badly overstates the number of | available locations. Not only do they include a lot of | broken or otherwise inaccessible locations, but they | include things like this: | https://www.plugshare.com/location/1564 | | I think that currently holds the record for the slowest | DCFC in the country. :) | SEJeff wrote: | > max 13A, 4kW | | Wow! You'd get a better charge from a standard 15A 110V | AC plug. | jaguar1878 wrote: | No, you want to compare Watts, not Volts, as Watts | measures power and Volts is just potential. | | A 15A 110V outlet can supply 1500W continuous (1.5kW). A | 4kW DC charger is almost three times higher power than | this. | SEJeff wrote: | I didn't include the crappy L2 destination chargers, of | which there are a whole lot more of that support teslas. | | I was referring to the L3 superchargers / fast chargers | or equivalent. The majority of the ones you linked are L2 | chargers are are not that useful outside of destination | charging. | clouddrover wrote: | That is DC fast chargers. If you include J1772 AC | chargers in the count the numbers are 66,093 locations | and 146,206 ports. | freeAgent wrote: | It sounds like you're talking about DCFC. AC chargers are | much more common and they are predominantly using the | J1772 connector today. | maxdo wrote: | Stop misleading people. | | The opposite is happening. Tesla is opening their network | to other brands. Ford and a few other car makers have | already agreed. In new cars made from 2025, you can go to | the only properly working charging network, plug in the | car, and leave with no credit card hustle. Basically, like | Tesla had forever. | | It's a shame other brands didn't adopt a much better Tesla | adapter as a standard. It's much more convenient and light. | | I've seen how adapters work; they work badly and are | glitchy. So, if someone buys a car with an old port in | 2024, they will start to see lots of pain in 2025. | clouddrover wrote: | > _Tesla is opening their network to other brands._ | | By implementing CCS. How do you think it works in Europe | right now? They all use CCS, both cars and chargers. | Tesla included. | maxdo wrote: | NACS is protocol agnostic. Cars in Europe have different | plugs. | | Tesla will use their protocol and support CCS on | chargers. | | What Tesla offers to other brands in North America is | much more advanced. | | New cars will be able to see on the map how many stalls | are available etc. | | Payments integration etc. | | It's a far more deeper integration and I guess that's the | real big deal that needs to be standardized. | | Tesla got the best-in-class charging experience, and | finally, in 1 year, other brands can have somewhat | matching capabilities. | clouddrover wrote: | > _NACS is protocol agnostic._ | | Yes, it's just plug on the end of a CCS charger. | | > _What Tesla offers to other brands in North America is | much more advanced._ | | They're offering CCS. It's how it works whether you like | it or not. | jsight wrote: | I'm not sure what you mean w/r/t the adapters. It sounds | like most manufacturers will just use Tesla supplied | adapters. I doubt they will be very bulky. They might | even be easier to use than native CCS1. :) | kwhitefoot wrote: | No one is installing CCS1 any more surely? | jsight wrote: | I think they will keep installing them for another few | years. NEVI requires it and there are still quite a few | CCS1 cars on the road. All of the cars that are switching | will still ship with the CCS1 port next year too. They | don't fully switch until 2025. | valine wrote: | CCS1 is still dominate in North America. CCS2 only got | traction in Europe. | maxdo wrote: | It's the opposite. Every single EV car that is sold right now | in North America except Tesla will need a retrofit. Read the | article you shared. It's for use on _other charging_ stations. | | In the picture, you see a dead charger adapter converted into a | new Tesla standard one. It's a major pain for other brand EV | owners | | In 1 year, almost at every charging station, you will have to | deal with plugging converters in snow, rain, etc, making sure | communication works. | clouddrover wrote: | > _Every single EV car that is sold right now in North | America except Tesla will need a retrofit._ | | No, they won't need a new ECU because they are already CCS | cars. They'll need a dumb adapter if they can't get a new | inlet installed. | amluto wrote: | I expect a degree of intelligence to be important in the | adapter. Specifically, unless the adapter is rated for the | highest possible current and voltage that the physical form | factor can support (1kV, 600A? Is there even a pre-ordained | limit? Tesla reports that they've tested NACS up to quite | impressive voltages and currents.), then the adapter needs | to tell the car and/or charger to limit voltage and | current. Otherwise it risks arcing and/or overheating. | | Also, whatever water cooling magic keeps the charger plug | and its terminals cool won't cool the adapter. | | Even the little charge-a-J1772-car-off-a-Tesla- | level-2-charger hack adapters are generally dumb adapters | designed for 40A or so and are _not safe_ if connected to a | full-spec 80A EVSE. | Rebelgecko wrote: | Isn't that negotiation already part of the CCS protocol? | Otherwise 400v cars would be fried when they end up | getting 800v from an L3 charger, or a Bolt would end up | getting 300kW that it can't actually use | clouddrover wrote: | > _I expect a degree of intelligence to be important in | the adapter._ | | No, that's done by the car. The adapter just changes the | shape of the plug. | | The car controls the charge curve. | blabla1224 wrote: | I won't be surprised if Tesla becomes a platform for other | automakers like android from Google in the future | bluGill wrote: | Auto makers are used to making their own platforms, and they | won't change. Making a platform is not the hard part, and there | are advantages to a custom platform for each vehicle. | newsclues wrote: | Auto makers are used to integrating technology from other | companies like Bosch. | bluGill wrote: | But not their platforms. Automakers generally make their | own platforms (though they will rebadge someone else's | too), engines (again they share with each other, but most | have their own), and transmissions. Everything else is | outsourced to companies like Bosch. | chrisjc wrote: | It definitely seems like Tesla is slowly seeping into the world | of other car manufactures in an ongoing manner. And I don't | think they/we have given much thought to what's yet to come. | Batteries, auto-pilot, training/inference, | manufacturing/robotics, and so on... | | Do any of really think, especially given the track record, that | most of the auto-industry is going to be able to do any of this | alone? I imagine that eventually it will come down to a choice | between partnering with a bunch of disparate tech/manufacturing | companies or Tesla. | | We all know there is disruption to come in general, but it's | going to hit the incumbent auto-manufacturers like a brick if | they don't wake up soon. | InTheArena wrote: | I think people are missing the big story here. This is Tesla | winning the charging network battle (it wasn't close before | this). Any EV car (which will eventually be all cars) will | immediately be available for Tesla's supercharger network. This | gives Tesla a massive revenue stream and scale to grow that | network even bigger. Anyone who wants their superchargers has to | also support all Teslas. | mupuff1234 wrote: | But it also takes away Tesla's biggest advantage, no? The | charging network was a big reason to buy a tesla and now that's | gone. | | So perhaps they will actually end up losing more revenue than | gaining. | adrianN wrote: | I would expect that in the near future EVs become commodities | based on a small handful of licensed platforms. Owning the | charging network is a nice hedge against losing the battle to | become one of the platforms. | mupuff1234 wrote: | Maybe, but a charging network is not quite a trillion | dollar business, not to mention that the charging network | will also become a commodity (especially since the charging | protocol is open) | bluGill wrote: | I disagree. People like their car to look new/different, | and volumes on cars are high enough that the advantages of | a custom platform is worth the cost of designing it. | adrianN wrote: | The design of the car is only loosely related to the | skateboard that contains the battery and the drivetrain. | bluGill wrote: | Skateboard makes even less sense for EVs than for ICEs. | in an ICE you have a large engine and various axels that | have to be in specific places. With an EV you have more | room to move the motors around where they makes sense. | While you need a lot of batteries, each cell is small, so | you want to put things like seats in the car first and | then add cells anywhere there is extra room. | sbininit wrote: | Yeah some cars (like the polestar) have really shallow | rear-seat legroom, which was a total showstopper. They | could have move some of those batteries to the | trunk/frunk | yurishimo wrote: | They could, but there is also a cost to separating the | batteries. More cables, which means more resistance, | which means inefficiency. Not to mention the extra design | and manufacturing costs. | | In practice, I don't think any company is meaningfully | splitting up their battery pack to take advantage of | "better" packaging logistics elsewhere in the frame/body. | I know in this example, they could still likely be | loosely attached in the same plane, but with less density | under the cabin, but I think my point holds. | tomatotomato37 wrote: | Considering 90% of modern consumer automobiles use a | monocoque frame the design means everything to the | chassis | Skunkleton wrote: | > People like their car to look new/different | | That's true in my experience. Though it is interesting | that cars look more and more similar over time rather | than different. | ghaff wrote: | There are probably two main answers to that. | | - People generally like their vehicles to look different | but not too different. Design of everything is a fashion | industry. | | - Fuel efficiency, practicality, and safety requirements | all lead to a certain level of convergence. | 0xffff2 wrote: | Why would this be true for EVs when it's clearly not true | for ICE vehicles? | phkahler wrote: | >> Owning the charging network is a nice hedge against | losing the battle to become one of the platforms. | | Charging networks are IMHO not a viable long term business | model. Building out a "platform" to sell commodity | electrons is utterly stupid. Nobody wants the stupid app, | they want to charge at McDonalds along the highway while | they grab something to eat. | tw04 wrote: | >Charging networks are IMHO not a viable long term | business model. | | Sort of like gas stations weren't a viable long-term | business model? | | > Nobody wants the stupid app, they want to charge at | McDonalds along the highway while they grab something to | eat. | | So you should put your chargers near convenient | amenities... like a convenience store... like a gas | station? | wil421 wrote: | Tesla isn't building C-Stores that sell Gas or Electrons. | The superchargers I've seen are in some random parking | lot without a restroom or convenience store selling | stuff. | bluGill wrote: | Some of them, but I've also seen Tesla at various truck | stops. In rural areas building at a convenience store | make sense: they already have restrooms, some form of | restaurant and various other things to buy on site - | everything a traveler needs for a quick break to fill the | car before getting back on the road. | | In cities I think we will see less chargers as most | people just go home to charge. However in poor areas they | will be at places like grocery stores so you those who | don't have at-home charging can charge and shop. | phkahler wrote: | Not quite. Gas stations don't have enough to keep a | person busy for an entire charge session. You need real | shopping or a place to sit down to eat. They will also | not be needed in town near your home, since people will | just charge at home. | speedgoose wrote: | Norway is perhaps a bit special, but this is very common | for service stations along the roads or in Oslo to have | many fast chargers. You can buy a drink or some food, and | most have some space to sit down. | yurishimo wrote: | I remember the first time I visited a gas station in | Belgium (?) off the highway that actually had 10 or so | "standing tables" to eat at from the two restaurant | options in the building. We sit for 4+ hours between | fill-ups; why do we not see this as the standard in most | places, with more limited seating for the | elderly/disabled or children who cannot reach a full | height standing table? | | As an American, it was really eye opening! | newsclues wrote: | Infrastructure (to provide fuel or energy for | transportation) is a long term business model. | mupuff1234 wrote: | Aren't superchargers just the endpoint? Isn't the actual | infrastructure mostly the power/energy companies? | bluGill wrote: | Yes, but those already have most of the needed | infrastructure. Most gas stations have enough power to | run a couple level chargers - they just don't have the | chargers (note I said 1 or 2 chargers, not 8+ which is | what anyone serious about charging needs to install) | bluGill wrote: | If Tesla hasn't played nice they would have lost too as | everyone else rolled out the CCS standard cars networks would | have responded and most chargers wouldn't support your Tesla. | toddmorey wrote: | I wonder how profitable operating the charging network is. | I've always thought they probably operate the locations at | break even at best, but I honestly don't know. | | I do think any Tesla owner will tell you the charging infra | is always scales behind demand and there are often delays | waiting for an available spot. Hopefully a universal standard | means more operators will participate. I just hope the | payment experience can remain seamless. | yardie wrote: | I feel the bigger goal is the viability of the network effect | (clustering) of electric cars. When Tesla was the only | electric car company most buyers thought it was neat but | didn't really consider it. A lot of buyers want their next | vehicle to be EV but have range anxiety. While the Model 3/Y | was top seller amongst EV buyers it's overall marketshare is | still miniscule. More competition drives more churn which | creates more transactions. | chrisjc wrote: | > While the Model 3/Y was top seller amongst EV buyers it's | overall marketshare is still miniscule. | | Perhaps I'm misinterpreting your statement, but the Model Y | has become the best selling car in the world. That includes | ICE vehicles, not just EVs. If you exclude trucks, I think | it has also recently become the best selling car in the US, | overtaking the Rav4. | FireBeyond wrote: | > but the Model Y has become the best selling car in the | world. | | That doesn't directly correlate to marketshare. The MY is | going to need many many quarters of being the best | selling car to have marketshare equal to many other ICE | models. | SCM-Enthusiast wrote: | is it really gone? Tesla will still have a OEM advantage here | in the software and internals. Alot of the "Technology" here | is the software that does thermal management and the like. | Tesla's still charge faster on a supercharger than a ford | f-150 would, and i imagine some future where buying a Tesla | gets you "Credits" to use at the chargers. | | Tesla has much different goals than the other car | manufacturers. Although energy sales are only around 5% of | total revenue, Tesla expects that to change going forward. | agloe_dreams wrote: | Tesla already charges more to charge a non-tesla. | malermeister wrote: | Tesla was always going to lose the EV battle in the long run | - if not to VW and co, then to BYD and co. | | This lets them pivot to something where they have a huge | moat. | bluGill wrote: | They have less a moat here. Anyone can buy a level 3 | charger and install it. while the economics of that are not | clear, they are becoming clearer as EVs catch on. Many gas | stations are looking at if chargers make sense long term, | and if it does they will also install chargers. | hnburnsy wrote: | Seems like the auto market is plenty large enough for | multiple winners. | agloe_dreams wrote: | Yes and no. Tesla already has the #1 selling car (Model Y) | and makes up more than half of EVs sold in the US. Eventually | other networks were going to catch up. Now the other half | will pay them too but they own the network. Long term it was | the right choice. | mupuff1234 wrote: | But like you said, other networks will eventually catch up | so long term tesla won't control the network either. | CapitalistCartr wrote: | People buy Teslas because they like them. Although chargers | are necessary, they aren't sufficient. | | Walmart has had 25 years to outcompete Amazon, and is still | clueless. Phone makers have had 15 years to beat Apple, and | the competition is still not as polished. | | (Personally, I don't prefer Teslas or iPhones.) | bwat49 wrote: | Fragmented infrastructure benefits no one. Imagine if you | could only fill up your ICE vehicle at shell stations because | of your vehicle's brand. | | Fragmentation of the charging infrastructure puts a hard | limit on EV adoption, they will never replace ICE vehicles | unless the infrastructure becomes as ubiquitous as gas | stations. | izacus wrote: | It benefits Tesla right now - because people bought Teslas | due to their charging network. It'll stop being a big | benefit and that's great for competition. | ggreer wrote: | It's hard to make direct analogies because unlike gas | vehicles, EVs "refuel" at home. You wake up every day with | a full tank of gas. Fast DC chargers are mostly for road | trips. | | And while it's a good thing that everyone has adopted the | same charging standard, branding is just as important. Gas | at gas stations is fungible. EV chargers are most certainly | not. Right now Tesla's charging network is the only option | that is fast and reliable. | bluGill wrote: | So long as the charger supports the same connector they | all work - some might be a level2 charger that takes | forever, but you plug it into any car. | | Gas stations can choose from 3-10 grades of gas (octane, | ethanol content, road tax) to sell, and 2-6 grades of | diesel (cetane, gel point, road tax) depending on what | the distributor offers - no station sells them all (at | least not that I'm aware of), and getting the wrong fuel | can be fatal. Stations also can choose their own additive | package which can make a difference. | | Note that in almost all cases there is only one | distributor you can buy from. Electric is generally a | legal monopoly, while gasoline the closest supplier | generally has a pipeline and thus can offer much cheaper | prices so while it is legal to buy elsewhere it isn't | practical. | shkkmo wrote: | > unlike gas vehicles, EVs "refuel" at home. You wake up | every day with a full tank of gas. | | Only for the subset of the population that owns a home | with off street parking. People in denser neighborhoods, | appartments buildings or who rent their property will be | looking to top off while running errands or at work. | highwaylights wrote: | Honestly I doubt it. Musk already said himself that the | company hinges on getting to full self-driving _eventually_ , | so it wouldn't be surprising if every other decision is | ultimately in service of that however unlikely it now seems. | | Either way, I think it's terrific business. Would you rather | have a dependable advantage that helps you stay further ahead | of competitors in one industry, or have slightly less of an | advantage (when you're already in the lead) and get to | dominate a whole second industry too (gas stations, for which | superchargers have no peers in the EV world). | ethanbond wrote: | Every new manufacturer switching to the Tesla standard | further incentivizes e.g. BP, Shell, etc. to offer charging | though. I don't see why they'd dominate this space. | highwaylights wrote: | Im working on the assumption that they'd need Tesla's | consent to use their interface and protocols. | chrisjc wrote: | Nope. Tesla has opened up the standard, but there are a | few caveats. | chrisjc wrote: | Exactly. But with a twist: | | https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bp-boosts-ev- | chargi... | | https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/uk- | pet... | chrisjc wrote: | Not necessarily. Using the plug doesn't imply that you have | to use Tesla's charging network, even while still using | Tesla's charging hardware. | | Tesla is already working on deals to sell their super/ultra- | fast chargers to others like EG Group and BP. Expect the | number of those deals to grow. | | I would argue that this will benefit those with with Teslas. | As Tesla scales up to meet the demand for their charging | hardware, the cost should drop while availability increases. | | Moreover, as the number of independent networks that use | Tesla's charging hardware grows, there will be additional | pressure/leverage/lobbying on the government, electric | companies, etc to provide the behind-the-scenes | infrastructure that theses charging locations require. Tesla | has on numerous occasions asserted that this is one of the | most difficult parts of growing their charging network in | places that have the greatest demand. | | https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/uk- | pet... | | https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bp-boosts-ev- | chargi... | basiccalendar74 wrote: | by opening up supercharging network, Tesla becomes eligible | for billions of federal money. that tips the scales towards | open superchargers. | 1970-01-01 wrote: | The actual gains are never discussed. It could be massive or | much less than you expect. | toomuchtodo wrote: | https://electrek.co/2023/08/25/tesla-supercharger-network- | bi... ("Tesla Supercharger network to become $10 to $20 | billion a year business, says Wedbush") | | > With Tesla now having a fleet of millions of vehicles using | the network and opening it up to EVs from other automakers, | financial analysts are starting to see the Supercharger | network has a massive business that is going to partly | replace gas stations, and they want to value it. | | > Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, who has been covering | Tesla for a long time, came out with a new note to clients | today in which he stated that he believes the Supercharger | network will represent 3% to 6% of Tesla's total revenue or | $10 to $20 billion in revenue by 2030. | 1970-01-01 wrote: | Estimates aren't gains. Something in their financials | report would be a much better and accurate representation | of gains. | toomuchtodo wrote: | Valuations and future revenue expectations are based on | forecasting, based on currently available information. | intrasight wrote: | At least they are not charging a license fee for the | connector. | jmac01 wrote: | Yet | stetrain wrote: | It's a standard published by SAE: | | https://www.sae.org/news/2023/12/sae-j3400-tir-released | | Access to Tesla's charging network is a separate issue, | but the connector itself is a published standard. | squarefoot wrote: | Probably having the brand Tesla exposed to other cars | drivers will be enough PR. | intrasight wrote: | How is the brand exposed? Do the plugs have to have the | Tesla name or logo on them? | natch wrote: | Google "Tesla supercharger" and you'll see plenty of | pictures of the huge installed base with the brand | clearly there. | | That being said, if any of these legacy companies who | were not willing to invest in a charging network decide | they want to finally step up and install some chargers of | their own (I'm not holding my breath for any at scale), | I'm pretty certain there will be no requirement for Tesla | branding. Elon has said he doesn't give a shit about | branding. | | It's more important people will see the Tesla product and | witness the features of Tesla cars first hand. | natch wrote: | Agree, the brand and the product. | Spivak wrote: | > which will eventually be all cars | | God I hope that day is long long in the future given the | current ecosystem surrounding this crap. The last thing I want | to add to my car is the multi-variant USB-C, thunderbolt, | lightning adapter bullshit with accounts and subscriptions. | It's the very worst of tech bro culture applied to critical | infrastructure. What if the car makers owned and/or could | strike deals with specific gas stations is an idea that only | sounds good in a shareholder's mind. | | Every day as car companies try to turn cars into toasters with | subscription bread I'm happier with my ICE car / ebike setup. | Gas used almost every day, 0. Range anxiety, 0. Using | infrastructure that has been stable for longer than my parents | have been alive, priceless. | justrealist wrote: | I have a Tesla with no subscription and a single plug I use | when I go out. Not sure what you are on about. | lostlogin wrote: | You can plug in at home and use chargers very rarely. After a | year or so, I'm yet to try use one. | | I guess this very much depends on your driving patterns. | bluGill wrote: | Anyone who has an ICE car will probably still prefer that | for long trips. Most people are multiple car families and | so will have that choice today. | | Even if the EV was the choice, a lot of people will fly (or | take a train) for longer trips and so never hit the limits. | ryandrake wrote: | If ICE cars were invented today, every manufacturer would try | to lock you in with their own shape of fuel tank opening. | Have a toyota? Use the round fuel pumps. Ford? You need to | find a pump with a notch on the end of the end so it's | compatible with your tank. BMW? Two notches--find a different | fuel station! Jeep? Square shaped pump! Or you need to keep a | set of $100 dongle adapters in your trunk at all times. $400 | for the California-approved dongles. | Spivak wrote: | Oh I know, it's not a condemnation of EVs the technology. | The actual technology is amazing. It's just that companies | can't seem to get out of their own way and our government | is completely inept at forcing everyone to be less shitty. | nicwolff wrote: | If cars were invented today, they'd never let us have them. | | "It's like a horse and buggy, but much faster and heavier." | | "But it'll know somehow how to avoid other vehicles and | pedestrians and trees and houses and such?" | | "No, the driver has to pay continuous attention or it'll | veer wildly and hit whatever's in front of it." | | "Shouldn't it run on rails? Or between protective | barriers?" | | "Painted lines." | bluGill wrote: | You should have looked up what was really said about cars | (both gas and electric!) when they were first invented. | Some of them look much like your list, but others it | looks like you made up something when reality already had | an example. | antisthenes wrote: | That's a good and hilarious point. | | In today's safety obsessed world, cars are a terribly | unsafe anachronism. Somehow tech people are more afraid | to run an non-sandboxed tab in a browser than drive a | 3-ton vehicle 1 painted line away from similar vehicles | going the other way with a speed differential of 100 | miles per hour. | | That fair, I guess, since physics aren't part of a JS- | bootcamp. | mensetmanusman wrote: | Blaming collective action problems on techbro culture. | History would like some of your time :) | Spivak wrote: | Blaming cultural problems on culture -- yes that's correct. | | Use whatever words you'd like if you don't like tech bro as | the colloquium. But the intersection of this behavior of | end-to-end control and things labeled "tech" and headed by | "tech people" is very nearly a sphere. | | For the people whose whole shtick is building autonomous | systems we are remarkably bad at letting go and letting | those systems be autonomous when it benefits the customer. | | It's like we all watched Robocop, a film about how terrible | it would be if an autonomous system created for the | improvement of society at large was programmed to always | obey the will of its creators for their personal gain and | said, "That's a great idea, I could productize that." | danans wrote: | > This gives Tesla a massive revenue stream and scale to grow | that network even bigger. | | Tesla's supercharger network is a loss leader whose purpose is | to sell their cars [1], whose margins are also under pressure. | | There's no significant barrier to entry for EV supercharging | other than perhaps having a profitable business to pair it | with. The NACS connector and the exclusivity of its charging | stations was a moat, one that Tesla traded for tax credits. | | It's mostly a real estate game. Shell is already adding EV | chargers at key stations. Others will follow. | | 1. https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/ev-charging/major- | autom.... | phkahler wrote: | Nah. The real win here is for the public. The "standard" | charging plug and cables weigh a LOT, so much that my elderly | mother probably couldn't use one. The "standard" also mandates | the use of PowerLine Communication chips even though the signal | is not over the high power conductor. | | We are all better off just biting the bullet now and changing | everything over to the Tesla plug. | aik wrote: | Agreed. Thank you Tesla for helping bring about a better | standard here! | alephnerd wrote: | Better maintained than the horror show that is Electrify | America as well | hn_throwaway_99 wrote: | I've posted about this before, but the reason EA is such | a horror show is due to their history. EA was created | basically as _government-mandated punishment_ against | Volkswagen for dieselgate. So it 's not that surprising | that they didn't feel incentivized to deliver a great | product. | | Compare that to the Supercharger network, where providing | a great experience is a huge selling point for Teslas. | | I might despise Musk, and I'm not a fan of Tesla lately, | but you do really have to hand it to them: they were | prescient and put in all the hard work of building out | the best fast charging network, so good for them for | reaping the benefits. | alephnerd wrote: | > EA was created basically as government-mandated | punishment against Volkswagen | | I didn't know that. Do you have some documentation about | that. Would be fun reading material for the holidays | | > I might despise Musk, and I'm not a fan of Tesla | lately, but you do really have to hand it to them: they | were prescient and put in all the hard work of building | out the best fast charging network, so good for them for | reaping the benefits. | | Same boat club. | hn_throwaway_99 wrote: | The Wikipedia pages for EA and the VW emissions scandal | give a good overview with linked sources. As part of the | consent decree, VW had to put $2 billion into EA. | hn_throwaway_99 wrote: | > Thank you Tesla for helping bring about a better standard | here! | | You should probably thank the government, too. When the | feds decided they were going to put billions in subsidies | to a national charging network, the original regulations | basically required CCS, because that was really the only | _cross-platform_ game in town - Tesla was proprietary and | not open to other automakers. In a brilliant bit of | chutzpah, in response Tesla renamed their charging system | the "North American Charging Standard" and started coaxing | other auto companies to get on board, which most other | companies were OK with because Tesla has by far the best | fast charging network. But it was really the government | subsidies, and the threat that Tesla would be left behind | if everyone else went with CCS, that sparked the opening up | of NACS in the first place. | bluGill wrote: | A large number of standards are what one company did on | their own and then made available to everybody via the | likes of ANSI/ECMA/ISO. There are a number of reasons a | company would want to do this. | antonjs wrote: | Rough consensus, running chargers at work. [1] | | [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rough_consensus | reportingsjr wrote: | This is basically how USB C became a thing. A group of | engineers at Google created the connector design and then | gave it to the USB standards body to use as the next gen. | bsder wrote: | Citation, please. More bluntly: I simply don't believe | you. | | Google has absolutely none of the expertise required to | put such a connector together. It requires a _very_ | specific set of skills in chip design, signal integrity, | and connector design which Google has none of. | turquoisevar wrote: | There was a similar rumor making the rounds about Apple, | spurred by Gruber. | | But 9to5 Mac did some sleuthing and it seems that, in the | case of Apple, it's not entirely truthful: | https://9to5mac.com/2015/03/14/apple-invent-usb-type-c/ | | Google also doesn't seem to have fulfilled a bigger role | than Apple did. | bsder wrote: | Apple is, at least, far more plausible as they _did_ | design a connector in the same timeframe. | parineum wrote: | I have no idea if Google had anything to do with USB C | but "design" doesn't mean "build schematics for". It | could be that they just had a few specs they liked and | thought would make a good connector and did a rough | proposal of form factor and specs. | bsder wrote: | That's _not_ useful. Here 's my diagram for a new | connector -> . | | Connector design like this is a delicate balance between | signal integrity (wants biggger) and mechanical integrity | (wants bigger) and size (always smaller). | | As for signal integrity: A _lot_ of the signal integrity | was papered over by having complex interface chips. This | is why there is so much training and negotiation in | USB-C. | | As for mechanicals: The whole point of USB-C was to take | failure-mode data from the previous generations and | design a connector that avoided those. USB-C, in spite of | how many people bitch about it, was designed so that the | the most probable failure modes (which they learned from | prior things like mini and micro USB) occur in the cable | --ie the replaceable part. | | None of this design expertise is inside Google. | InTheArena wrote: | Go look at the number of engineers that were on USB-C. | Apple, not Google, contributed 18 of 79 named engineers | listed on the connector certification project, or under | 23%. | | Intel had the most, as well as the editor position. | stetrain wrote: | NACS / J3400 still uses CCS communications, just over Tesla's | connector. | arghwhat wrote: | Cable weight corresponds to charging power rating and choice | of materials, not plug choice. | | A combined CCS2 plug is chunkier and might be a bit heavier, | but not compared to, say, using a fuel pump. | phkahler wrote: | Just go try them both. CCS2 Has separate AC and DC | conductors, and the plug is huge owing to having 2 pair of | charging pins and backward compatibility. They are more | awkward and heavier than a fuel pump, and significantly | heavier than the Tesla plugs. It's terrible. | hn_throwaway_99 wrote: | > They are more awkward and heavier than a fuel pump | | Really? I don't doubt that Tesla's plugs are smaller and | lighter, but it always seemed a bit caricature-ist about | people saying how horrible the CCS plugs are and that | they weigh like a million pounds or something. They | certainly never seemed heavier or harder to manipulate to | me compared to a gas pump, so I just never understood | this complaint. | parineum wrote: | I do think they are worse than fuel pumps in those | aspects but the real issue is that, when you pull up to a | gas pump, you usually pull your car right up to the pump | and it's just a foot or two away from where the pump is. | | Parking lot style EV chargers mean that I'm frequently | pulling the charging cable across the front of my car and | trying to plug the cable in straight while the tension on | the cable is pulling it sideways. It frequently means | it's a two hand job, one on the cable to keep in straight | and the other guiding the plug in to the port. | jorvi wrote: | NACS is fundamentally incompatible for 3-phase power. You | need a live, a neutral, a ground, and two extra wires for | each extra phase. | | I'll take my chunky connector with 22kW over your sleek | one with 7kW :) | ttfkam wrote: | > You need... | | I submit a counterexample of the huge network of Tesla | superchargers that can do the job quite well with the | NACS connector. maximum power output of | 600 kW and a maximum current of 615A at 1,000V | | https://www.notateslaapp.com/news/1269/tesla-v4-superchar | ger... | | The practical limits are based on the cars and their | batteries, not the charge port. | jorvi wrote: | Supercharging, yeah. But you (or rather "everyone") won't | constantly be supercharging. You'll mostly do it at home | or at your office. 7kW :) | ttfkam wrote: | Places where you don't need a fast charge? Overnight at | home. From arrival to lunch at work. After lunch to | quitting time. And even those times assume you drive more | than 50 miles/day, which most folks don't. | | What was the problem again? | pitaj wrote: | So what? For high-power charging, DC is better anyways. | For low-power charging, having extra phases is useless. | Acinyx wrote: | In europe the connections are a lot lower amperage, | around here for example 35 ampere per phase. But having 3 | phases is pretty normal and the standard in any new | house, which means 3 phases can let you charge at 22kW | with a few Ampere left, while with 1 phase you can only | charge at 7 KW. | | That does make it useful to charge it in a few hours in | the afternoon, instead of having to wiat the night. | 93po wrote: | Super chargers can charge a Tesla up to 250kw | myself248 wrote: | CCS1 has separate AC and DC pins in the connector, but no | cable has conductors for both. I've looked, since I was | trying to make a passthrough testing device! Is CCS2 | different? | | If you get the DC cable, you have conductors on the pilot | pins and the DC pins, and the AC pin positions are just | empty. | | If you get the AC cable, you have conductors on the pilot | pins and the AC pins, and the DC part of the connector | isn't there at all. | paul7986 wrote: | How long does it take to charge if my EV battery is at about | zero with a supercharger? The same time it takes to pump gas? | voisin wrote: | No. Much longer. And it depends massively on battery size too | since they vary quite a bit more than gas tank sizes. | | https://insideevs.com/reviews/516438/tesla-supercharger- | comp... | enragedcacti wrote: | Battery size only really matters if you are maxing out the | charger since the amount of power the battery can take | scales with kwhs. To be fair being charger limited is | pretty common currently, but in ideal conditions a larger | battery will be able to charge more miles/minute than a | smaller one. | njovin wrote: | Depends on the EV. A few years back I did a ~400 mile road | trip in a Model Y. We had to make one top-up charging stop | which took about 15 minutes. We walked to a spot and got a | snack while we waited. | | A similarly-sized ICE vehicle could have possibly done the | trip without a stop, or required a quick 5-minute top-up | depending on conditions. | | I've done lots of long road trips in ICE vehicles and we | usually stop to walk around and stretch for about the same | amount of time and with the same frequency as charge stops | call for. | | If you're trying to shave every minute off of a trip you'd | come out behind, but IMO you're a glutton for punishment if | you're trying to race through a 1000+ mile road trip without | stopping for more than 5 minutes at a time. | paul7986 wrote: | I travel a lot in my SUV in remote areas like between Reno | and Vegas. | | As a gas driver I like the fact there's a gas station in | remote areas and it takes me three minutes to fill my tank | and go. | | When do we think as interested EV driver will my driving | experience match my gas car diving experience and needs? | Are we there yet? | omnimus wrote: | Maybe in future with different approach like | https://youtube.com/watch?v=VmWL1hZQmD0 | paul7986 wrote: | Oh just maybe (yikes) ..I'm on the fence about buying an | EV as gas car provides me the best experience for my | needs. I drive a Ton and in remote areas too | dzhiurgis wrote: | Do those places have no power sockets? | p1mrx wrote: | Regular outlets are limited to 1.5 kW, so charging a car | takes more than a day. | dzhiurgis wrote: | You assume the slowest outlet + full tank worth of | driving. Possible, but not how most road trips happen. | p1mrx wrote: | Are you imagining a road trip where you ask random | strangers to move their oven and run a cord out the | window for several hours? | bluGill wrote: | I'm guessing 5-10 years. However in 30 years the opposite | question will be the case - if you are driving a gas car | you will have to plan ahead. As EVs take over gas | stations will start to disappear. | paul7986 wrote: | Well maybe you hope ..have skin in this game... as | nothing is for certain. Hybrids seems to becoming even | more popular as well other car manufacturers are looking | into hydrogen and other sources. | | In five to ten years we'll see if indeed there are more | EV chargers everywhere like there are currently gas | stations. An infrastructure that's over a 100 years old. | | I'm all for new tech but as a UX professional new tech | needs to provide an even better experience which | personally something like a key fob (can be RFID hacked, | you lose the fob you have to get your car towed to dealer | and pay additional / hundreds for a new key fob)is a | terrible UX compared to just a metal key (can't be | hacked.. can easily drive to dealer to have a metal key | made). | Rebelgecko wrote: | It depends on the EV and the supercharger. But in general | it'll be slower than pumping gas. My CCS car takes around | 15-18 minutes to get to 80% (because of diminishing charging | curves, with most (all?) cars it's faster to do 5 charging | stops from 0-80% than 4 charging stops from 0-100). | | I haven't done a super long road trip in an EV, but for | drives with 1-2 charging stops it doesn't feel that different | than ICE cars, especially if have passengers and invariably | end up waiting for everyone to go to the bathroom, get a | snack, etc. Only exception is places like quartzite where | there can be a long line of EVs waiting to charge. | dietsche wrote: | we took a road trip last summer about 4000 miles in our model | Y Long range. You end up supercharging approximately every | three hours for about 15 minutes. it actually worked out very | well because our first stop of the day was almost always | lunch. we picked hotels that had chargers on site so we | started each day with enough charge to make the next | supercharger. | paul7986 wrote: | Were you traveling in remote areas something like between | Reno and Vegas or other similar long remote stretches? | bluGill wrote: | So stop in Tonopah NV,which is half way inbetween. Most | EVs have the range to make it that far. I just picked | that town by looking at a map - I'm sure there are a | couple other choices even tough it is a desolate area. | | I don't know if there is a charger there today, but it is | an obvious place where one is likely to be added | sometime. | dietsche wrote: | minneapolis, mn to kitty hawk, nc | cstejerean wrote: | There's 3 Tesla superchargers between Vegas to Reno, in | Beatty, Tonopah and Hawthorne, which is roughly 1/4, 1/2 | and 3/4 of the way through. So definitely doable but | definitely less convenient than an ICE car that can make | that drive in one shot without refueling. | sib wrote: | Not sure how much margin that Tesla will be making on the | charging. I don't think the financial details of these deals | have been disclosed. Adding lots of revenue but with no margin | doesn't really add value to Tesla. | | (Of course, to the extent they get funding from the government | or other manufacturers to offset the capex required for | building out more stations and chargers, that's great for Tesla | & anyone.) | shiftpgdn wrote: | In states where they are registered as an energy provider? A | lot. A 10-80% charge will net Tesla $20. Comparatively a gas | station that refills a midsize car with a 20 gallon tank will | only net $6. | conjecTech wrote: | And where is that? | akouri wrote: | I think you mean it will _gross_ Tesla $20. From my | research, Tesla is (currently) not making much on energy | delivered. That _will_ certainly change in the future | though. | shiftpgdn wrote: | Using Texas as an example: | | 10-80% on a Model S/X is 70kwh. Rate billed to customers | will vary from 30-50c/kwh at time of charge. Spot in | Texas typically ranges from 5c to 15c/kwh. Assuming | charge equipment is fully depreciated all they need to | pay is maintenance and network cost, which is marginal | across a bank of 20 chargers. | | 70kwh x 25c = $17.50. | conjecTech wrote: | People also made the argument that the exclusivity of the Tesla | supercharger network was a positive for Tesla. It's hard for | both to be true. | | I think the reality is that uncertainty about charging away | from home pushed a lot of people towards Tesla who might | otherwise have considered a different make/model. With that | gone, a moat vanished. That being said, competition in the US | EV market is still weak. Maybe the added charging revenue | outweighs that for now, but long-term, it seems like it will | undoubtedly be a negative. | stetrain wrote: | I think the difference is that over time Tesla has | streamlined mass production, installation, and reliable | operation of their chargers. | | They are averaging 1.5 charging stations installed per day | over the last year in North America. Each of those stations | has at least 8 chargers, some of them have 24, 40, or more. | | They have moved to pre-fab construction where a row of 8 | chargers are all installed in a concrete slab that can be | dropped into a site and commissioned in a very short time | period. | | Basically nobody else is keeping up with them at charger | deployment in the US and that creates a market opportunity | for Tesla and a need to make some return on all of that | construction by increasing utilization rates. | conjecTech wrote: | The price of charging is already dominated by the marginal | cost of electricity, in the same way the price of filling | your gas tank is by the price of gas. That will only be | more true as charging gets faster. So an advantage in fixed | costs is unlikely to be much of a strategic benefit. If | they can save 100k/stall, that's great. But that is only a | few hundred million a year at that install rate. | josephcsible wrote: | > The price of charging is already dominated by the | marginal cost of electricity | | No it isn't. Most level 3 chargers are 3x-4x the price of | electricity. | conjecTech wrote: | PG&E commercial energy rates in California are $0.36/kwh | including delivery[1]. Tesla charges about $0.50/kwh[2]. | | [1] https://www.pge.com/tariffs/electric.shtml [2] | https://electrek.co/2022/09/28/tesla-hikes-supercharger- | pric... | stetrain wrote: | Up to around $0.70 now at peak times: | | https://www.reddit.com/r/TeslaModelY/comments/17bls7u/wok | e_u... | reitzensteinm wrote: | How are you estimating demand charges? | mdasen wrote: | Times change and companies need to adapt with the times. | 2015-2022, exclusivity would be a huge positive for Tesla. | Their vehicles would have lots of charging stations while | other vehicles wouldn't. That's great for Tesla. | | When the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure plan, it | became clear that CCS would become the dominant charging | standard in the US - unless Tesla acted fast. Tesla's port | would go from an advantage to a disadvantage. Tesla has | 12,000 US chargers today. Maybe the company would make that | 25,000 by 2030. The NEVI pushes for 500,000 chargers by 2030 | with the CCS port. Toward the end of the 2020s, Tesla would | feel pressure to switch to CCS because the majority of | chargers in the US would be CCS. Tesla owners would complain | that their Tesla vehicles used a different port from 95% of | the public chargers. | | By pushing the industry to adopt the Tesla charger, they | ensure that chargers built using the NEVI money will most | likely have Tesla ports. They could even argue that the | administration should drop the CCS requirement given that the | industry has moved to the Tesla port. | | Tesla's port would have gone from an advantage to a | hinderance. If Tesla didn't move the industry to the Tesla | port, they'd eventually have to move to CCS. People would | want their cars to be compatible with 95% of the chargers out | there. When Tesla announced a switch to CCS, sales of current | vehicles would likely crater. With Tesla abandoning their | port, people would want to wait for the new model. Tesla | might need to offer steep discounts to get people to take the | "old" port. Instead, by moving the industry to their port, | they put the uncertainty on competing vehicles; they make | potential punchers of competing vehicles more likely to buy a | Tesla or delay their competing purchase. That either adds to | Tesla sales or makes competing companies question their EV | commitment. | | It's not that Tesla wanted to give up their moat. It's not | that Tesla wants a bit of charging revenue. It's that if 95% | of the chargers in the US become CCS, that moat is trapping | Tesla in rather than keeping competitors out. Yes, having | Supercharger exclusivity would still be an advantage for a | few more years - and it will still be given that it'll be a | couple years before competitors have Tesla's port on their | vehicles. However, Tesla doesn't want the situation where | their port becomes the odd one out where Tesla owners need to | fumble with CCS adaptors. Maybe Tesla gives up a year or two | of Supercharger advantage, but they ensure that it doesn't | become a disadvantage. | conjecTech wrote: | Agreed, I think its much fairer to say they snatched a | stalemate out of the jaws of defeat rather than just "this | is good for Tesla". | mahastore wrote: | Where is the FTC? | tempestn wrote: | I think the idea is that so far, and for now, the chargers | have indeed helped them keep a significant lead in EV sales. | Eventually though, many other companies will also be selling | very good EVs, and if Tesla doesn't open their chargers, the | rest of the industry will standardize on something else, and | it will eventually get good (or at least good enough) out of | necessity. So instead of being the only decent option, Teslas | will be the odd one out that have their own weird charging | setup. As long as that setup is good it might not be too much | of a detriment for them, but eventually it would stop being a | major benefit either. So, better to use their current | position to become the dominant charging solution for all | brands. | | They were never going to corner the EV market long term. But | they actually do have a chance of being the dominant charging | supplier for every car on the road. | joshl32532 wrote: | Yeah, I was holding out on buying Ionic5 because of the lack | of good charging network, even though I will only use it for | occasional roadtrip. I will be charging at home for everyday | use. | | Now that everybody is in Tesla supercharger, Teslas are | losing its appeal to me now. | | I just need to wait until 2025 when everybody actually uses | NACS. lol. | robin_reala wrote: | To be clear, this is only in the US. In the EU for example, | Tesla were required to adopt the common standard instead, and | Superchargers will already charge every EV on the market, as | will every other charger. | | (No specific comment on the quality of each of the charging | standards.) | TheAlchemist wrote: | There is no such big story here. | | The estimates are somewhere around 10B $ of revenue (not profit | !) per year by 2030, and that's an optimistic scenario. Base | case scenarios are much worse. And even that hypothetical 10B$ | is hardly a 'massive' revenue stream for a company projecting | to sell 10 million cars by that time (I would put their chances | of achieving that goal at 0.01%). As usual with Tesla - it's | all about projections, hyperboles etc, while usually ignoring | actual numbers (not a shot at you, just an observation). | | There is a fair point to be made though, that this is a big | loss for Tesla, as their charging network was pretty much the | sole remaining advantage over their competition. | NelsonMinar wrote: | Other Audi EV news: "Audi puts big EV push on the back burner" | https://electrek.co/2023/12/19/audi-puts-big-ev-push-on-the-... | chaosprint wrote: | Will it be possible that Benz uses Nio's battery swap? | mensetmanusman wrote: | Great work by Tesla recognizing that infrastructure is half the | equation for an EV future. | | They have moved the EV future forward by at least a decade. | apexalpha wrote: | I understand the ridicule that the EU gets sometimes, and | especially so when trying to regulate stuff like AI where it | seems the EU wants to regulate more than to create start ups | etc... | | But this is one thing the EU just nailed the hammer into the wood | immediatly, and rightly so. | | I can't even remember the time it was. Maybe 2013? 2014? They | just set a standard and everyone, even Tesla, adopted it. | | Every single EV can plug into every charger. Whether it's a | public one, a private at the office, a Tesla supercharger or a | home charger at your home. Plug and go! | | Glad to see NA finally agrees on a standard now. This can only | help EV adoption. Especially given the sorry state of other | chargers than Tesla's over there. | Rebelgecko wrote: | Eh, I think if NA had forced a standard quickly (which the US | has actually _sort of_ done with the infrastructure bill), it | would 've been CCS which has a lot of downsides | justapassenger wrote: | Any downside other than bigger plug? | | And plug is bigger partially because it needs to support 3 | phases, which isn't a thing in USA houses (while common | across the whole world) but is a thing at industrial | locations. Tesla plug doesn't work with 3 phases. | Symbiote wrote: | CCS1 used in North America is only single phase. | | CCS2 used in Europe (and elsewhere) supports three phase. | sebazzz wrote: | The electricity grid has three phases in the US right? | Are devices seldom connected to three phases? | vel0city wrote: | Three phase power is out there but you never see it in | residential and rarely in commercial. It's pretty much | just an industrial kind of thing. | rekoil wrote: | I have two 3-phase 480V 16A sockets in my 50m2 European | apartment. | Rebelgecko wrote: | Bigger plug is a big one, like you mentioned. 3 phase isn't | an issue in the US version IIRC, but it still has more pins | than NACS to maintain backwards compatibility. | | Thicker + heavier cables too (not sure if that's required | by CCS or just an implementation difference w/ NACS). | Together that makes CCS much more unwieldy than a gas pump. | | The NACS latching mechanism is a lot better- latch failures | are a big part of why so many J1772 chargers are broken and | unusable. | ggreer wrote: | CCS is a worse standard than NACS. The connector is huge. Also | CCS locks the cable on both sides (charger and car), so a bad | charger or cable can strand your car. NACS locks only on the | car side. | apexalpha wrote: | Both have up and downsides to them. The NACS is physically | smaller yes, but CCS2 supports 3-phase power, which NACS does | not. | | In the end the most important thing it that you can charge | when you want to. So I'm glad there's now a standard in NA. | And congrats to Tesla, they've earned it. | sschueller wrote: | The CCS2 does not have the issues of the CCS1 but is as big | that is the only downside. But if you want to fit 3 phase AC | charging you need a big plug. | mardifoufs wrote: | Huh? If anything this disproves your point. Industrial players | quickly (all things considered) converged on a superior format. | I usually agree with you on standardizing stuff like this but | this isn't an example of top down standardization leading to | better outcomes. Not necessarily worse, but not better either. | apexalpha wrote: | Well there are now thousands and thousands of chargers in the | US that have to be retrofitted to NACS, if possible. | | On top of that many cars will now need adapters to charge at | public infrastructure. | | And in the meanwhile many people _still_ can 't charge at | every public charger because they have CCS or Chademo or | Tesla and the charger has another one. | keep_reading wrote: | CCS2 is terrible, I'd hate to be forced to use that giant bulky | connector and cable. The EU got it wrong. Design by committee | always sucks. | apexalpha wrote: | It was designed by VW I think, who handed it over to other | car companies so there could be a universal connector. | | The reason it's bigger is because it supports 3-phase power, | which NACS does not. 3-phase power is a big thing in Europe. | keep_reading wrote: | This is very true about 3 phase, but I have heard that | there is interest in it being used in EU for AC charging in | public garages because it can handle anything up to 277 | volts vs J1772 which can only do 208/240. So they can give | it 1 of the 3 phases @ 220V and it will work unlike J1772. | Allegedly. | | But I kind of doubt it will go anywhere when they've been | forcing CCS2 on everyone. | Symbiote wrote: | The CCS2 AC-only connector (the one for normal charging | at home, destination charging and so on) already supports | 3-phase with up to 480V phase-to-phase, up to 22kW. It's | larger than the NACS connector -- there are two | additional large pins -- but not unwieldy. | _zoltan_ wrote: | so much so that I have a 22kW 3 phase charger at home. (AC, | type 2) | ClassyJacket wrote: | It is a horrible, heavy connector. | rekoil wrote: | It's big, but it really doesn't matter in practice. Yes, | J1772 looks nicer and is easier to handle, but it can't | pump as much wattage as CCS2, and in the end that's watt | (:P) matters. | rockinghigh wrote: | I've used both the US Tesla plug and CCS2. CCS2 is bulkier | and heavier but it makes no difference in the daily life. A | standardized connector is also a lot nicer than dealing with | adapters. | encom wrote: | >Every single EV can plug into every charger. | | Nit picking, but there's a bunch of Nissan Chademo still | around. Like my Leaf. I'm a bit perplexed that Nissan is still | selling new Chademo cars here, since it's on the way out. I | very rarely need DC charging though, and there's still lots of | Chademo locations if I do. That aside, the Leaf is a wonderful | car. | lol768 wrote: | As a fellow Leaf owner, I agree it's really perplexing and | frustrating. I was looking at what else Nissan are doing, and | while they've gone for CCS on the Ariya (and also got the | active battery thermal management), frankly I don't want or | need an SUV. | p1mrx wrote: | DalasEVRepair on YouTube is testing a Chinese CCS to CHAdeMO | adapter. If that ever becomes a reliable product, then NACS | to CHAdeMO would be an incremental change. | hnburnsy wrote: | Serious question is every EU charger outlet billed in a common | way, like with cash, an app, debit/credit card, in car screen, | with a payment screen, or preconfigured to bill seamlessly? | | Seems like the billing issues at non Tesla chargers in the US | were a large part of the issues.. | perlgeek wrote: | Here in Germany at least, most chargers accept RFID cards for | billing, and basically all through an app. | | My only problem with it is that the app that comes with my | company's card is total crap (often won't start to charge, | and then sees the charging port as being in use for like 5-10 | minutes, so you have to wait that long for a second attempt. | It's HORRIBLE.) | rockinghigh wrote: | I can only talk for France. The payment is not standardized. | Tesla is plug-and-pay like in the US but others are not. | Every charging stations brand has its own app with the same | issues as the US, where it may or may not work that day. | micwag wrote: | There is no mandated billing method, but the ability to pay | without registering an account is mandated. Additionally | every charger has a unique id with a QR code. | | Usually you either just plug it in (first party charger) or | just scan the QR code with your favorite charging app which | will handles the billing (third party charger). | evilfred wrote: | the Technology Connections video on NACS is very educational on | the topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJOfyMCEzjQ | raphaelj wrote: | I don't own any electric car. What are the advantages and | disadvantages of Tesla's standard vs CCS2 (pretty common in | Europe as far as I know) ? | akouri wrote: | I am the founder of Starlight Charging[1]. We are working on | crazy-low-cost L2 chargers for multifamily apartments. Plug-and- | charge is a sine-qua-non for us. | | One still major unsolved problem is the lack of agreement on a | standard for payment/powerline communication from the EVSE to the | vehicle. OCPP 2.0.1 and ISO 15118 is supposed to bring "Plug and | Charge" capabilities -- this, in theory, would allow drivers to | simply pull up to a station, plug in, and charging start right | away. i.e. No more fiddling with multiple different | manufacturer's apps, no more being SOL if your phone battery is | dead. | | While we're seeing agreement on the physical standard for the | shape and size of the conductors, there's still progress to be | made on the protocol between vehicles and charger. Tesla refuses | to implement OCPP because they have a great walled garden right | now and don't want to release the stranglehold on the payments. | | [1] https://www.starlightcharging.com | why_at wrote: | Can you explain why you feel plug-and-charge is so important? I | have used chargers with and without it and while it is slightly | more convenient to just plug in and go, it doesn't feel like | such a huge improvement that I absolutely need it. | | I agree that having a different app for every brand of charging | station would be annoying, but what about just accepting a | credit card the way we do with gas stations now? | jakewins wrote: | Have you done any road tripping in an EV? my experience of | the app-based charging landscape has been complete horror; | apps don't work, chargers don't start, payments don't | through.. | | Just last month was a new app at McDonalds in Sweden, that | one asks me to, in the freezing cold, scan a dirty QR code | sticker, which takes me to a website I've never heard of that | wants me to manually enter credit card info, like a phishing | attack smorgasbord. | | It's the one thing I miss from a gas car: just let me fill | up. | MostlyStable wrote: | I have done multiple 10+ hour (although no multi day) road | trips in an ev. It was fine. I had problems exactly one | time and i was able to just go to a different charger a | mile away. | | All of the chargers I've used had apps, but they also | allowed using a credit card, which seems like it would have | solved your problem just as well. And that's already a | solved problem, even if not every charging network uses it. | dzhiurgis wrote: | Now go abroad where charging app is not available in your | country or requires local phone number to register, uses | local language, or even wants local address or local | payment method. | | Just give me website god damn it. | gambiting wrote: | My story of charging in Germany one time a year ago: | | The charger requires an app, ok fine. Downloaded the app, | had to setup the whole account with my address(UK address | was allowed as my address), verify my email, verify my | phone number(UK one was accepted), fine, done. | | Went to add my payment card - nope, the billing address | has a pre-filled country field set to Germany, can't | change it. It says ring this number in case of any | problems. I ring the number just to hear: | | "Sorry, our customer service operators are not available | on Sunday. Call back on Monday after 9am". | | Imagine if filling up with petrol was such a lottery. | JAlexoid wrote: | German "Sunday is rest day" at it's best. | | If fuel stations are essential(as in allowed to be open | on Sundays), then with the EVs becoming the norm so | should be the support for these stations. | VBprogrammer wrote: | I know it's not quite the problem you are talking about | (which would be dealt with by making normal contactless / | chip and pin readers a requirement) - but I'd love to see | a legal requirement that when your charge point can't | contact the piece of shit payment / authentication | service the user gets to charge for free. That would soon | see an uptick in the reliability of charge points... | dzhiurgis wrote: | I'm in the process of deactivating my family Apple One | account (they overseas) so I can change app store for few | minutes and download all the local apps I need. | | I have to wait until end of month so my subscription | actually expires, then make sure family sharing is | disabled (which already screwed up location sharing). Oh | and about 2.5TB of entire generation photos are up to be | deleted by Apple if I screw up. | alibarber wrote: | I have literally gotten visas for and worked in another | country with greater ease than trying to get my Apple | account to work well with local apps in my new country of | residence while still allowing me to download and update | apps from the first country. | alibarber wrote: | Just trying to move to or be in another country and have | the App store actually work properly for local apps (and | the ones you want to keep from your original country) is | a complete nightmare anyway. | | It amazes me that for such a progressive and forward | thinking company as Apple, that the very thought that | their customers might actually move countries with their | device and account seems to have been relegated to 'edge | case'. | MostlyStable wrote: | Like i said, credit card terminals seem the best way to | fix this problem, Rather than done complicated plug-and- | charge mechanism | masklinn wrote: | Yeah, CC terminals (and NFC / tap if you want to be | fancy) are working things which work. | | The only opposition I've heard is "uwu but charge costs | are lower so CC fees add up". | HenryBemis wrote: | CC fees add up, but/and electricity is cheaper than gas, | so net-net, you gain. Also considering the convenience | that you have zero worries and you will be able to charge | hassle-free in any charging stations, I'd pay an extra | EUR1 to not have any headaches, apps, phone charged, and | any/all hoops by any apps. | VBprogrammer wrote: | Things like little kiddy rides and vending machines are | able to take contactless payments (in the UK). I don't | really see how this can be a valid arguement. | dzhiurgis wrote: | It varies by country. In NZ we pay about $0.5 each time | using contactless/apple pay, but 0 when using chip+pin. | | IMO websites and/or open API's are way to go - allows | third parties to build integrations, automations and | superapps that enable all sort of benefits for users. | jdsully wrote: | Some chargers have tap&pay on the machine like a gas pump. | No app needed. | yurishimo wrote: | This should be mandated by law. | akouri wrote: | disagree. see my comment above | afavour wrote: | IMO that would be better solved by mandating tap and pay | payment at EV charging spots. Integrating payments into the | charging standard feels like a wild overcomplication by | comparison. | AnthonyMouse wrote: | Not only that, how do you even propose to do it? | | If you just send the payment info via the charging plug, | now you have to worry about the payment info being stored | in the car and potentially stolen if the car has any | security vulnerabilities, including in the charging port. | | If you use some kind of tokenization or similar then | you're inserting third party payment processors into the | system and they'll be wanting a cut. | | Just put a card reader on the charger and be done with | it. | sonicanatidae wrote: | Wouldn't presence of the key address most of this? | | Sure, they can steal the car AND the key, but more often, | it's the car alone. | tzs wrote: | Another reason for a card reader is that it easily | handles the case of a borrowed EV. | | It is customary when borrowing someone's ICE car to pay | for the gas used by returning the car with as much gas as | it had when you borrowed it, or even with a full tank. | I'd expect people will want to continue that custom when | the car is an EV. | mikepurvis wrote: | Particularly in a world where every new phone and | smartwatch integrates tap-to-pay, seems like a no-brainer | to just integrate at that point. | highwaylights wrote: | It also brings that part of the charging experience to | parity with gas, which is really simple for non-tech | savvy switchers to understand. | | The process for EV and gas refuelling is then identical: | | Lift thingamabob -> tap card -> plug into car -> leave | | Easy. | Animats wrote: | The tap-and-pay RF people need to get their act together. | The average number of tries needed to get a good read is | > 1. For Veriphone units, > 2. | | Please make it clear where, exactly, the near-field | antenna is. Behind the screen? Behind the logo that looks | like WiFi? Somewhere inside a separate hockey-puck | device? And indicate when the reader is active, too. | Light up something. | | One place I visit regularly had a POS system which worked | perfectly. They recently switched it out for a Clover | unit with much lower read reliability and a worse | customer-facing UI. | VBprogrammer wrote: | For what it's worth, contactless is ubiquitous in the UK | - the experience is almost always seamless. The only | exception being the odd reader with the antenna in a | stupid place (these have gotten less common over time) or | when your bank decides to force a pin check. | Affric wrote: | I want to echo this. When contactless is ubiquitous there | are pretty much no problems. | Daneel_ wrote: | It's ubiquitous in Australia as well. I haven't carried a | wallet in almost 5 years. My credit card, driver's | license, and other important cards are all digital. | Sophira wrote: | Okay, hear me out here. What's stopping us from just | having payments be out of band, like with petrol? | | Is being able to ask your car to make a long drive across | long distances on its own actually something people want | to do? Or is it a solution in search of a problem? | | (Disclaimer, I live in the UK and not the US. It's | possible there are cultural reasons I've missed.) | ketralnis wrote: | I've done a fair amount of road tripping (~15k mi over | 1.5yr) along the WA/OR/CA/NV corridors where Electrify | America is dense enough to use solely, which is convenient | since my car came with 2 years of free charging from them. | | Ignoring their pervasive station reliability problems, | their app is pretty bad and only barely functions. | | * I've had to skip a perfectly functioning station because | the app thought I was still charging from the previous time | and wouldn't change its mind about it. | | * Their Carplay app has literally never worked for me, not | once (usually it shows me still charging from a session | >1wk ago even when the regular app doesn't, sometimes it | doesn't boot, sometimes it shows me as not logged in. The | main screen has never once rendered.). | | * One of their level 2 stations (which tend even less | reliable) existed in the app on about 50% of refreshes. | | * The app requires a pretty solid signal to work at all | since it seems to consult their API to query for stations | near where you are and then you guess at which one it is | ("is this the target one or the mall one? it's the target | that's in the mall?") which is pretty silly when you're | parked at the station so it's in range of your hands and | eyes. | | * I eventually figured out that I can add the EA plan to my | Apple Wallet and tap the phone instead of ever opening the | app, but that seems to randomly select between the "free" | plan (rather, included in the purchase price of my car) and | the $10 balance that they make me maintain for god-knows- | why when at California electricity prices no charge has | ever been below $10. | | * The stations have credit card readers which I've never | tried to use but almost always when I see somebody having | trouble at a station it's because they're fighting with | that thing. I assume EA's response would be "just use the | app, it's so much better" | | That's all just _one_ app, not a slew of them for every | charging network in my area (which also includes at least | evgo & chargepoint just to cover the big ones). The sooner | this app bullshit can die the better. | progman32 wrote: | Every time I use the app I have to force quit it at least | once to get it to stop doing whatever backend query it's | doing. Doesn't help that their chargers are barely | compatible with my car (2014 i3) so the charging fails to | start about half the time. The machine itself rejects the | charge in about ten seconds so no big deal, but the app | isn't built to handle this case and takes multiple | minutes to realize something is wrong. So my charging | cycle is to initiate via app, plug in, see a failed | charge, force quit the app, find the station again, and | repeat probably twice. Probably isn't this bad with newer | cars, but I love my car otherwise. Made sure to get the | one with the extra scooter engine in the back, so I can | just drive around on gas if it comes down to it. | why_at wrote: | Yeah I agree having a different app for each station sucks, | but I don't really understand how plug-and-charge would | solve this. For anything that does support plug-and-charge, | don't you still need to register the payment method | somewhere in advance? | | Unless we have some universal payment processor which all | the charging networks agree to use I will still need | register through an app or something when I encounter a new | brand of charger on a road trip. | | It seems like the real solution is a law which requires the | stations to accept a more universal payment system like | credit cards. I think there is already a law like this in | California IIRC. | ldarby wrote: | > It seems like the real solution is a law which requires | the stations to accept a more universal payment system | like credit cards. | | No shit, Sherlock? In the UK a lot of fuel pumps have | credit/debit card readers built in, and if not cards are | accepted everywhere for payment already. But yes electric | charging companies here are still wierd about accepting | such standardised payments, and we did just introduce a | new law about it [0] promising "most" but not all | chargers will accept cards. | | [0] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-laws-to-make- | charging... | akouri wrote: | Tap & Pay still requires you to fiddle with a station and | slows you down. If you are plugging in at home (which is | our target market), the fewer interactions needed the | better. Imagine every time you get home you need to take | your wallet out, tap the machine, wait for some 3rd party | api to talk to the charger in the dimly lit basement, and | then and only then you can leave. This is like 30 seconds | of your day wasted. | | Plus, ultimately we want to make charging as cheap as | possible and having to pay the $.30 interchange fee each | time a user plugs in would add a ton of overhead to our | cost model. | namdnay wrote: | Surely the interchange fee can be negotiated for volume? | Or even mandated by law. When I tap my credit card to buy | a 1$ bus ticket I doubt the interchange is keeping 30 | cents? | ska wrote: | There are transit systems that have made this work | smoothly, you just walk up to a gate, tap your card as | you walk through, so I can't imagine the barrier is | technological unachievable. Seems like similar frequency | and $. | alibarber wrote: | It takes something like half of a second for my Apple Pay | Amex/Visa to let me through the barrier in the London | Underground, and the complexity they have to deal with | for fare calculations is quite something too. | greenthrow wrote: | GP is talking about L2 charging for multi family homes. Not | DCFC. | | But I agree, DCFC need to all accept credit cards like gas | pumps. Fortunately NEVI funding requires it. | spaceywilly wrote: | If I may ask what seems like an obvious question... why | can't they just use credit card terminals like gas stations | have been using for many decades? | yurishimo wrote: | They could, and many do, but the difference is that those | types of interfaces are mandated/regulated while EV | charging is not. Guess what's slightly cheaper when | amortized across tens of thousands of customers in the | products lifetime? Not to mention the amount of data that | could be mined from those customers by having yet another | app on their phone with bullshit location permissions | "for the best user experience." | | Every gas pump has looked/functioned largely the same | since the widespread adoption of cashless payments around | the world. Until governments mandate a standard payment | interface, I think it's more likely that companies will | continue to find ways to mine data from consumers through | shitty apps. | | Oh, and that's not even to mention the companies that | include some amount of "free charging" credits with the | purchase of the vehicle. Not only is that cost baked into | the cost of the car, you're also disincentivized from | using the network at all because of how crappy it is. | /tinfoilhat | spaceywilly wrote: | Yeah that just seems like a poor decision on the part of | these charger owners. I feel like there's an opportunity | for a company called "EZCharge - we take credit cards". | People will seek it out when looking for a charging | station because they know they won't need to download a | BS app. | | Or maybe another solution would be like WeChat Pay in | China, something that's so ubiquitous that all stores | just have a QR code you scan to pay for anything | nowadays. I'm surprised nothing like that has taken off | in the US, it's crazy convenient. | seanmcdirmid wrote: | There is no way to communicate when you are charged up | that way, maybe via an SMS that you add with your phone | number. Also, you have to communicate your charging | preference somehow. It's not like pumping gas, you rarely | want it to stop at 100%, although the charging standard | might at least be able to control that from the car. | spaceywilly wrote: | True I see what you mean, but that would seem to be an | easy function to build into the car's charging | controller. I'm not sure how it works today but I would | imagine most cars have a "stop charging at x%" function | already without depending on the charger for that. | seanmcdirmid wrote: | Ya, I think they even get status otherwise I'm not sure | how electrify America's app works in the first place. | | I once charged at an L2 in Canada that involved a QR | code, and then payment via a web form. In that case, a | POS would make the setup too expensive compared to just | putting power out there with a networked microcontroller. | ska wrote: | > There is no way to communicate when you are charged up | that way | | Cant' the car do it? | staplers wrote: | Or ya know.. the pump, like has existed for decades.. | ska wrote: | I thought the problem was that it takes long enough that | you aren't by the "pump" during process. Also that the | chargepoints are likely less infrastructure than a pump. | So something has to contact you (SMS/email/whatever) | Smoosh wrote: | > Not to mention the amount of data that could be mined | from those customers | | That was my cynical take on it. | flutas wrote: | IIRC the federal infrastructure bill required chargers to | accept via CC reader or plug and charge. So I'm sure we | will be seeing more chargers with it shortly. | al_borland wrote: | So solving this problem would be as simple as | mandating/regulating it? Sounds like a no-brainer to end | this debate, standardize things, and allow the build out | to happen in a quick and standard way across companies. | | With all the EV goals that various countries are making, | this seems like a foundational part of it. Consumers | aren't going to buy into EVs in mass until charging in a | solved problem. | mensetmanusman wrote: | The epic solution is free charging financed by gasoline | taxes. | dkjaudyeqooe wrote: | RV charging has much smaller installations than gas. | Instead of gas stations, the most common SV charging will | eventually be thick poles on the footpath so you can | charge wherever you park, or small one or two bay | charging facilities at various businesses. That's the | sort of charging infrastructure you want and seamless | payment solutions is an enabling tech. | ClassyJacket wrote: | But why not just have contactless bank card payment? | | Yeah it is a pain, I have an electric car, but only because | they force you to use their broken apps. All they have to | do is let you pay with a bank card and it'll be just as | easy as buying petrol. | brnt wrote: | So, I haven't got the money for an electric car... One just | can't use the payment card at a bog standard self service | payment terminal? I had assumed that, but apparently no? | You seriously visit random websites and enter CC details? | hcal wrote: | Right, many or most don't have credit card terminals. You | plug in, load an app, find you station, select a port | number, tell it to start and hope it works. It doesn't | sound that bad, but the chargers janky, the apps are | janky and it takes a long time often with multiple | attempts. | brnt wrote: | Installing random apps sounds janky as hell. I only | install vetted apps from F droid. I wouldn't give a | charging station access to my phone. | akouri wrote: | This is exactly it. My dad almost missed some of my | sister's wedding fiddling with the same type of crappy UX | on a no-name charger. | solatic wrote: | Recharging electric vehicles is not like refilling gas- | powered cars. You will intentionally drive a gas vehicle down | to 20%, even 10% tank left before going out of your way to a | gas station, maybe once a week on average. But with electric | cars, you should intentionally be plugging in to recharge as | frequently as possible, at least once a day, as you are | penalized (with longer recharge times) the longer you go | between recharges. | | Imagine needing to negotiate a credit card with your wall | outlet before recharging your phone every night, and you'll | get an idea why people would _hate_ needing to pull out their | credit card for every EV charge. | dylan604 wrote: | You must not have had a dad that harped on you about | letting your tank get below 50%. If I let mine get down to | 10%, my dad would have taken my keys away. There are many | reasons people give for this that do not involve zombies | and go bags | fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: | Your car is rear-wheel-drive and the extra weight you are | carrying around in the fuel tank helps your acceleration | in the snow? | dylan604 wrote: | no, i had a small truck, so we'd just throw extra ballast | in the back to help with that | NewJazz wrote: | Driving with a near empty tank is more likely to cause | corrosion. | dylan604 wrote: | this isn't technically correct. the low levels are not | causing the corrosion. it's the contaminants that float | in the fuel is the issue. when the tank has plenty of | fuel, those floaters are not near the fuel pump. as the | levels lower, the contaminants become more concentrated | and are more likely to interact with the pump. at least, | that's how it was described to me. by described, of | course i mean harped on at every opportunity the parental | unit could berate about lack of proper care for the car | blah blah blah | hgomersall wrote: | I remember the garage owner telling my parents they | should only half fill the tank to reduce the weight being | driven around. | olyjohn wrote: | It's pretty much completely pointless to worry about when | you fill up your tank. Just fill it up when you need or | want to. | enragedcacti wrote: | For apartments I think it makes a lot of sense. Having to do | a couple transactions every road trip is one thing, but | having to complete a transaction just to top off every night | the way a homeowner would sounds really annoying. | jsight wrote: | The flip side to that is that you'd only have to setup the | app once at your home. If the charging activation is as | smooth as chargepoint, it wouldn't be bad at all. | spaceywilly wrote: | It would be easy to support both options. Many gas stations | have their own app payment system. | HenryBemis wrote: | I am thinking of buildings where they got 100+ parking | spots, and one can install a charging station for | his/her/their car. THAT station needs some 'lock' (software | or hardware). Otherwise what stops someone else to abuse my | parking spot's 'e-pump', when I drive to work and the spot | will be unoccupied for the next 10h? | | So some hoop-jumping should also be required. | namdnay wrote: | For apartments it would make more sense to have it read the | same key fob you use to open the gates or whatever. Then | just add it on your monthly building bill | akouri wrote: | Not a bad idea. We are looking into this. One issue is | that the vendors for these keyfobs are super fragmented | -- even more so than Plug & Charge adoption. | g_p wrote: | Worth being aware that, as well as keyfobs being super | fragmented, many are woefully insecure. Think "they just | say their ID number when you put them in a reader field". | | That means you can trivially clone them. Not hugely | exciting for access to a (common) hallway in a large | building. If cloning someone else's fob gets you free car | charging, the incentive is there to clone them. Also, not | all buildings will use unique fobs per "unit" (and you'd | likely need to support per-resident/tenant fob | uniqueness... And something for guests!) -- sometimes | it's a single hardcoded value for the whole block or door | zone that the fob opens... | | You can, of course, build something proper using NFC (and | a smartcard running a smartcard applet), which is | effectively like your own custom mini "chip and PIN" EMV | system -- you would have to design and implement the wire | protocol to authenticate the card etc etc, and all the | security design around that, but it could be done. That | would at least let you have something more than simply | shouting your tag ID number into the air like a super | basic NFC tag (or RFID keyfob). | jsight wrote: | With an L2 at an apartment, you might be plugging in daily. | It'd be nice to keep the steps as minimal as possible. | | Having said that, something like an NFC card + QR code | support would be good enough, IMO. The main thing would be to | keep the app as simple and fast as possible. | dylan604 wrote: | QR sticker manipulation is too easy of a vector for me to | take anything seriously when it comes to "just scan the | code, enter card data, and carry on" is just too easy to | fake. it's even easier than credit card skimmers. I like QR | codes and their convenience for non-critical things like | marketing. For things that are direct payment links it is | just too unsecure for my comfort | jsight wrote: | That's a fair point. TBH, a combination of GPS (or just | smart defaulting) and entering a short code would work | pretty easily as well. | | They could also put the QR on a small screen to make it | harder to fake. A little epaper display wouldn't add much | to the cost. | dylan604 wrote: | also, who plugs in daily? do you fuel your ICE car daily? | other than professional drivers, i'm doubting this is the | normal routine for normal drivers. the irrational idea | that EVs need to be plugged in at any and every | opportunity is something that should be rationalized | away. <referring to your point earlier> | | i don't own an EV, so maybe my preconceived ideas of only | charging when necessary may be what needs updating??? | however, regular battery maintenance routines suggests | daily charging might not be the best for the battery. | jsight wrote: | I'd guess that most EV owners with home charging do plug | in daily, but also limit charge based on the type of | pack. For most of us, that means ~80% as a daily limit, | if not less. | | In practice, I don't think EV owners are seeing a | meaningful difference between repeatedly doing charges | from 70 to 80% vs periodically doing bigger charges (eg, | 20-80%). | | So why not have a full-enough pack every morning? It is | one of the big conveniences of an EV. Obviously this will | be different if they don't have home charging or have a | less than convenient setup. | g_p wrote: | The problem with fancy variants on trying to "better | protect" a QR code is that users don't know what to | expect, and the lowest common denomenator of social | compliance means they'll (have to, if they want to not be | stranded) eventually scan whatever QR code is there, in | an attempt to charge. | | It feels like this whole "scan the QR code" is a reverse | of the ideal paradigm that is (obviously) very easily | exploited by scammers and opportunists, especially if | payment information is requested! We spent long enough | trying to train users to not enter usernames, passwords, | and payment details into random web pages when asked... | Now they're being asked to do it! | | I don't think a QR on a small screen is the answer - | people will just cover it with their sticker. If that's | not good enough, they'll make a sticker that looks like a | small screen with some frame around it. | | We need to treat the charger itself as an untrusted piece | of infrastructure, and do discovery the other way around. | If a user knows they are going to an "ABC Corp" charger, | there is presumably a route for them to use a relatively | trustworthy discovery platform (i.e. an app store, their | EV charging map already knowing where they are headed) to | navigate the user to the genuine interface. | | For the issue of "which charger to activate", I'm not an | EV user, but this feels like if the car communicates any | form of usable information to the charger, this could be | used to help the user. Easy (and private) paradigms like | unlocking a given charger by a map view wouldn't be | intuitive for people with reduced spatial awareness (or | at night when nobody has a clue where they are in | relation to things on a map), but at a small enough | charging station you could just ask the user to confirm | if they are using "charger 3" (like gas station pump | numbers), since that's the only port with a car not yet | enabled to charge. For larger places, surely it's easier | to use "pump numbers". | | (Which is effectively what you are suggesting with a | short code, but I think the QR part is a potentially bad | paradigm we should try to kill off before it sticks | around!) | SoftTalker wrote: | Yep. Regular petrol stations figured out pay at the pump | decades ago. Why is this such a problem for EV charging? | quickthrowman wrote: | That's a easyn one. The charger manufacturers (ChargePoint, | etc) want to rake a percentage of the charging revenue for | themselves, so they force you to route payment processing | through them. | KennyBlanken wrote: | Companies don't want want the hassle and expense of PCI | compliance across their charger network. If it's just | session auth shit going across the wire, they only need to | worry about PCI compliance on the back end. | | By collecting lots of info about you, they get a lower | processing rate because the transaction is lower risk vs a | swipe/tap. | | They can save on transaction fees if they consolidate | charging sessions; say you do 2-3 charging sessions in one | day. | | They want all the personal data they can collect on you | constantly if you have the app installed, and to spam you | with marketing notifications. | | They want resistance to using a different charging network. | Charger Company A's charger is $1/minute and Charger | Company B's charger is $1.10, and they're on the same | block? Obviously you're going to go to the cheaper one if | you can just swipe your credit card. | | If you have to download an app (using your mobile data, and | it might be quite slow), register an account, etc - then | you not going to bother with the cheaper station. | JAlexoid wrote: | This is before EV charging becomes a commodity or a | public utility... | | Though public utilities are typically even worse, than | the current landscape of charging apps :( | ska wrote: | Honestly, it may not matter if companies don't want it. | | Consumers are going to demand it, and it may be necessary | before EV's become ubiquitous, assuming they do. One | thing that has helped their case in the US is that | payments have historically been a pain in the ass anyway, | compared to many other countries. That is changing | though. | hedora wrote: | > Charger Company A's charger is $1/minute and Charger | Company B's charger is $1.10, and they're on the same | block? | | I'd go to the one that accepted my credit card and didn't | have an app. | quickthrowman wrote: | You forgot the part where the EV charger manufacturer | forces you to route payment processing through them so | they can take a cut of the charger revenue, that and the | data collection are the two main reasons you have to | install the ChargePoint app or whatever. | isk517 wrote: | EV are brand new and give us a chance to think of new and | interesting solutions for problems that were solved decades | ago. The average baby is about 75% water so do you really | want to go through the trouble of separating it from the | bath water? /s | hehhehaha wrote: | I think the credit card thing would require the chargers to | be monitored in a way. | autoexecbat wrote: | It's a _really_ big improvement, I don 't want to mess around | with some random app or some credit card reader. Having | experienced it I'd never go back | akouri wrote: | Tap & Pay with a ccard still requires you to fiddle with a | station and slows you down. If you are plugging in at home | (which is our target market), the fewer interactions needed | the better. Imagine every time you get home you need to take | your wallet out, tap the machine, wait for some 3rd party api | to talk to the charger in the dimly lit basement, and then | and only then you can leave. This is like 30 seconds of your | day wasted. | | Plus, ultimately we want to make charging as cheap as | possible and having to pay the $.30 interchange fee each time | a user plugs in would add a ton of overhead to our cost | model. | hedora wrote: | This would be infinitely better than the current model, | where you have to install a bullshit app, which doesn't | work over 20% of the time. | | I'd happily pay $0.30 per charge session to just use | standard NFC or chip payments. | | Also, why in god's name would I have authentication on my | home charger? | akouri wrote: | > Also, why in god's name would I have authentication on | my home charger? | | Not everyone in the US lives in a single family home | VBprogrammer wrote: | Surely this could be dealt with by accepting a | "membership card" over NFC. I'm sure my dad has a token | for the parking barriers at his place of work which can | also take direct card payments. | | As an added bonus, when you have family or friends | visiting they can pay to charge as normal (at presumably | a slightly less attractive rate). | namdnay wrote: | If it's a multi-family home system, why not just use | contactless badges/fobs to identify each family? When you | move in you sign the contract, give your bank details and | get a fob. Then just badge with the fob to charge | akouri wrote: | Not a bad idea. Will look into it! | Symbiote wrote: | The only EVs I've used are the hire-from-the-street ones | available in some cities in Europe. There's generally a | small credit (free minutes) if you leave them charging at | the end of a trip. There are RFID tags in the car to | activate the charger -- I assume it's essentially | equivalent to a company credit card used to buy petrol, | or when you hire an ICE car with fuel included and | there's a special credit card in the glovebox to use to | pay for the petrol. | | E.g. https://www.greenmobility.com/dk/en/faq/ | ska wrote: | That makes sense that the use case in a shared home lot is | different than out and about, but still doesn't obviously | suggest payment routing over the charger - wouldn't monthly | billing be better from the consumers point of view? You'd | only need a car identifier for that. | akouri wrote: | Yes, to your point the Plug & Charge mechanism is just | for authentication. Through our integrations with Yardi, | Buildium, etc. payment can just be taken out of rent or | tacked onto the sub-metered utility bill. | ska wrote: | Gotcha, that makes sense. | | How do you handle for example visitor spots (e.g. one off | charge) in a multi-family unit? | CarVac wrote: | For routine home charging, you don't want to require a credit | card transaction. | AmericanChopper wrote: | Because according to the parent commenter, any company that | doesn't let them take control of their payments is a walled | garden. I mean, how is their startup going to make any money | if these charging companies don't give it to them? | andrejk wrote: | This road trip video does a good job showing the papercuts | and more significant issues that make a non-Tesla road trip | painful. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92w5doU68D8 | dybber wrote: | That's where governmental regulation should kick in and require | compatibility, so you aren't forced to change charger because | you either change car or power company. I expect EU to get | there at some point. | akira2501 wrote: | It's interesting that governments are more interested in | telling you what kind of stove you can buy and seem to have | zero interests in telling EV makers what kind of plug they | have to use. | | It took them the better part of a decade just to bring Apple | to the table on USB. I don't have the same faith you do | they're going to be able to even partially repeat this | success in a much more diverse ecosystem like vehicles. | FirmwareBurner wrote: | _> I expect EU to get there at some point._ | | IMHO, the EU should have done this yester-five-years-ago. | It's absolutely baffling they haven't already, considering | they're going to outlaw ICE cars in just 6 years time, yet we | don't yet have friggin EV charging regulations in place to | ensure it always just works for evryone. | | I assume politicians are too busy with the inflation/CoL, | wars, migration and how to win the upcoming elections in | 2024, to worry that we'll be caught wither our pants down on | the EV infrastructure side in a few years, because they've | been asleep at the wheel. | | Mark my words, come 2029, and everyone's gonna freak out, | there will be outcry from the voters, and the ICE ban will be | postponed for 5 more years so we can get charging | infrastructure sorted. | Caddickbrown wrote: | Did Tesla not release all of their patents a few years back? | Can people not just... use the stuff? | GuB-42 wrote: | It came with a lot of strings attached. For instance, in | order to use Tesla patents a company cannot attack Tesla for | _any_ intellectual property matter. Also, Tesla still makes | use of trade secrets and its design patents are not released. | | Which is the reason why about no one took on the offer, it is | a legal minefield for not that much value. NACS became a | thing only after they truly released the standard. | akouri wrote: | The patents for the NACS connector were open sourced. We are | utilizing that for our charger hub/connector. | | The communication and payment protocol is still proprietary. | 7952 wrote: | Any thoughts on having a credit card reader instead? | castratikron wrote: | You could either 1. itemize the charging bill on their monthly | rent, if that parking spot is reserved for one tenant. Really | should be no difference from the rest of their electricity use. | 2. Charge a flat fee on their rent, and then give them charging | for free between off-peak hours. Some utilities offer very | cheap off peak rates for EV charging, 3. integrate a credit | card reader or bill acceptor for cash payment. Option 3 seems | hard if you are trying to cost optimize the charger hardware. | | I am bearish on universal PnC being practical to implement. | Every EV manufacturer has to make agreements with every EVSE | operator to use the same root CAs and same billing system. If | you think of an EVSE like a vending machine, there really is no | interoperability precedent for this kind of payment. Tesla is | special case because they operate both the cars and charging | network. But if Pepsi owned and operated all of their vending | machines, we probably would have seen the same walled garden. | Animats wrote: | Can Tesla refuse to charge a car at their whim? Because, say, | you were banned from Twitter/X? Too many fast charges this | week? Covered the driver-facing camera? | Shank wrote: | Tesla currently revokes supercharging status on salvage title | vehicles on their network. Depending on the title and | circumstances, it can be annoying to get working again. | iwontberude wrote: | Using sine-qua-non was a classy way to obfuscate your meaning. | I liked it and I don't know why exactly. I had to read a | definition to understand something that was so simple. | akouri wrote: | Glad my high school Latin classes came in useful for | something. | alistairSH wrote: | Why does it need to be app based? Can't you use CC terminals | like a normal gas station? Swipe or tap card like any other | payment? | heyoni wrote: | Isn't that what OP is saying? That it shouldn't be app based | and that the new ISO would resolve that by having the car | communicate with the charging station? /edit I may have | misread that | | /edit2 the proposal uses certificate exchange between the car | and the charging station. No app. | port914 wrote: | I think you'll need to pivot soon. Tesla has it all figured | out, including destination charging. | zackmorris wrote: | This makes me sad in a way that's a little hard to articulate. | But I'll try! | | I plug my $9000 2013 Nissan Leaf into an ordinary 120V extension | cord each night so I can commute to a neighboring city for work, | and the electricity costs me $20/mo. I also have a 1986 Toyota | pickup like on Back to the Future that I had to gas up every | other week, using 30 gallons of gas per month and costing over | $100. So the operating cost of an EV is about 3-5 times lower | than a gas vehicle. | | My friend has an EV charging dongle that we jokingly call the | octopus, which has a dozen adapters for plugging into every kind | of 120/240V outlet like on ovens and dryers. So he charges his | car in 4 hours out of whatever outlet is available, for the same | $20/mo that I pay. | | So convincing the public that everyone needs to buy a $500-1000 | charging station for their EV was a social engineering campaign | to slow the adoption of EVs. | | The real engineering work to let us plug EVs into any outlet has | not been done yet. But it would look like this: | | * Level 2 J1772 chargers have a resistor that tells the EV how | much wattage to draw. But that just passes the buck to the user, | who now must ensure that the outlet can provide that wattage. A | better system would have a smart power manager that senses | current saturation or voltage drop near the point where the | circuit breaker trips. We also need smart breakers that add | noise/harmonics/phase as they approach their limit, which EVs | would detect to self-regulate. And we need breakers that trip for | a nominal time like 1 second or shorter, or however long power | supplies can continue to operate uninterrupted, so that a tripped | breaker isn't a showstopper. | | * Nearly all US portable battery power stations come in only 120V | with a 30A TT-30 plug normally used for RVs, with no 240V option | unless you connect two stations for twice the price. If we want a | 5000Wh/240V station so we can charge our EVs on solar power, | we'll have to go to Europe or Alibaba to get it. | | * Battery chargers, BMSs and inverters are notoriously finicky. | They often won't charge below a certain voltage threshold, | causing some solar installations to spend part of the day off. We | need 95% efficient 10kW rectifiers/inverters that can take any | AC/DC voltage from 0-500V and output standard | 12/24/48/96/120/240/480V in all phases without requiring | configuration from the user, for under $1000. | | If we had these ubiquitous power tools, then choice of | NACS/CCS/CHAdeMO would be moot. | | Edit: I forgot to add that before Google fell, they held their | Little Box Challenge in 2014 to develop a high-efficiency low- | cost 95% efficient 2 kW inverter similar to the one I mentioned, | so the tech has been available for almost a decade now: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Box_Challenge | martythemaniak wrote: | I don't understand your comment. Tesla sells a charger for $230 | that comes with 120V/15A and 240V/50A connectors | (https://shop.tesla.com/product/mobile-connector). You can also | buy a connectors for every type of socket there is | (https://shop.tesla.com/product/gen-2-nema-adapters). | | I had a 240V outlet installed in my garage and plug that in | there to charge. I also bring it with me if I go to cottages, | etc. I've used that with questionable sockets and extension | cables and the charging speed automatically switches to lower | amps if it can't draw the full 12A. You install a dedicated | charger if you want 80A or to mount it outside (it's | weatherproof) | | What am I missing? | megaman821 wrote: | NEMA 50 with the mobile charger is the way to go. It is | future proof and only charges a tiny bit slower than the | dedicated Tesla wall connector. Not to mention with a NEMA 30 | adapter it can charge up RVs. | stefan_ wrote: | The reality is that particularly in winter and outside, most | recent EV cars will barely gain any charge from a 120V standard | power outlet - keeping the battery conditioned eats up all of | that power. | ben0x539 wrote: | When you say winter and outside, what temperature ranges do | you mean? | gruez wrote: | >* Level 2 J1772 chargers have a resistor that tells the EV how | much wattage to draw. But that just passes the buck to the | user, who now must ensure that the outlet can provide that | wattage. A better system would have a smart power manager that | senses current saturation or voltage drop near the point where | the circuit breaker trips. We also need smart breakers that add | noise/harmonics/phase as they approach their limit, which EVs | would detect to self-regulate. And we need breakers that trip | for a nominal time like 1 second or shorter, or however long | power supplies can continue to operate uninterrupted, so that a | tripped breaker isn't a showstopper. | | wouldn't it be way less work for the homeowner to figure out | how much current their wiring is rated for, and use an adapter | that reports a static current? Why introduce complexity by | making current negotiation dynamic? | l72 wrote: | While this sounds good, why are we so focused on charging | stations? It seems to me, it would make much more sense to have a | series of batteries that can quickly be removed, and have battery | exchanges. | | Then, if you need a charge, you pull over to a battery exchange, | swap out batteries in a few seconds, and go on your way. | | I have seen this in China with electric scooters, and it seems | like it could scale well for cars too. | whalesalad wrote: | For most EV's (specifically Tesla) the battery is a structural | component of the vehicle (for better or for worse). | | Would require a complete architectural shift. Also, they would | be incredibly heavy and difficult to swap. Would require | multiple smaller batteries. People would abuse them. Would | require huge inventory of batteries all over the place. Imagine | going on a long road trip, you wouldn't bring batteries with | you. You'd swap them along the way. What if a particular | vendor/station is out of batteries for the day? Or doesn't have | your particular flavor of battery because (like we have seen | with charging ports in this exact story) manufacturers couldn't | agree on the interface/size? Or the batteries they have are | abused and low quality / at end of life? This is very common | with scooters. It would be a shit show. | | On the other hand, electricity is essentially fluid. It does | not require a container. As battery tech improves and as high | voltage charging becomes more commonplace, plugging in to | charge won't be so bad. | sudobash1 wrote: | I can think of many reasons: | | * Batteries are really expensive and have a limited life. If my | batteries were wearing out, could I go to one of these swaps | and hope for a fresher set? | | * Different sized cars require different battery capacities (EV | Ford F150 vs Nissan Leaf). Not a problem with charging cables, | but a big issue with battery swapping. | | * Battery swapping stations would be orders of magnitude more | expensive than charging stations. | | * This is not really useful for many (or maybe most) users. If | you are driving around town or commuting, charging overnight at | home should be good enough for most people. (The main hurdle | here would be convincing landlords of the importance of | charging). | | * It is a lot easier to standardize on a charging port, than to | standardize one a battery pack. A standardized battery pack | would dictate how the car is structured. | | * It would make innovation harder on battery packs. It could | make it impractical to try a new battery chemistry or capacity, | whereas these are fairly easy changes to make without changing | the charging port. | asylteltine wrote: | I agree. Battery replacements need to be the goal not charging. | It's WAY more efficient and cost effective since you can charge | at off peak times. Smaller EVs like motorcycles have no chance | until replacement is an option | superjan wrote: | why is this downvoted? It is a legitimate question. You can | comment if you have a counterargument. | dkbrk wrote: | Tesla already tried that, years and years ago. They built a | fully automated battery swapping station for the Model S, as a | test of concept, and nobody used it. So the program was | abandoned as a complete failure, and now Tesla's newer models | no longer have the capability. | | In fact, Tesla's Head of Design and VP of vehicle engineering | discussed this very topic just a few days ago in Jay Leno's | video on the Cybertruck [0]: | | [0]: https://youtu.be/BGDOKD7ZZqI?si=TR7Txex7qg5VGYar&t=3158 | spaceywilly wrote: | There's also a company in China that does EV swaps for cars. | It's a very cumbersome process, the battery can be thousands of | pounds, and there are also cooling connectors to worry about. | On top of that, it would require every car to have a | standardized battery, or else we'd be back to we are today. | | It would require a large increase in battery energy density | combined with a large improvement in thermal efficiency to be | successful on a large scale. Plug in chargers make way more | sense. Solid state batteries are on the horizon that will | charge as quickly as filling a gas tank. | fexatious wrote: | I think scooters are about where it stops working well at a | consumer level. | | Battery swapping exists in the forklift industry but it is | complicated and dangerous. Forklift batteries are about a | thousand pounds (less than car batteries) and often open cell | lead acid (which has additional challenges that lithium doesn't | like spills, watering, and gas discharge). In the type of | forklifts I occasionally see, the batteries sit on rollers with | a side access door and lockout. the tunnel the battery lives in | is a little wider than the battery, has a gate that must be | reinstalled, and the battery slides around a little during | operation. Battery is connected to the system with a flexible | connector. | | Despite the electric forklift battery swapping industry being a | lot smaller than the car charging industry it seems to be a | reasonably dangerous affair. there are significant OSHA | regulations, and a nonzero number of yearly injuries. | | If you were going to operate a car battery swapping lot, you | would probably need: powered battery swapping trucks manned by | professional operators, a very flat well maintained driving | surface, an indoor charging room, a standardized car battery | placement, access system, tie down system, and battery size. | you would need to worry about things getting caught in the | battery doors, the battery - car cable getting severed, making | sure you were perfectly lined up with the access door, and | about doing some sort of tie down routine. | | It's doable but it would be a LOT of work to get right. | Batteries aren't as fungible as tanks of gas so you'd probably | only use such a system for corporate vehicle fleets or special | lease pools. | | Second link isn't great and is selling batteries but it seems | to cite useful figures | | https://www.osha.gov/etools/powered-industrial-trucks/types-... | | https://www.onecharge.biz/blog/lithium-batteries-get-the- | top...! | ttyyzz wrote: | I work in the Volkswagen Group and will only add that Audi and | Porsche have to go along just because of synergy effects, apart | from the fact that they also belong to the Volkswagen Group and | do what their mother wants. | TacticalCoder wrote: | > ... apart from the fact that they also belong to the | Volkswagen Group | | Volkswagen group with itself belongs to the Porsche SE holding. | The Porsche SE holding is the biggest owner of Volkswagen | shares (with 1/3rd of all the shares) and holds the majority of | the shares with voting rights. | | And the Porsche SE holding shares are mostly held by the two | Porsche and Piech families. | | So, in the end, Porsche the car manufacturer belongs to the VW | group which itself belongs to the Porsche SE holding which | itself belongs to the Porsche (and Piech) families. | maximus-decimus wrote: | I wonder how much this will have an Osborne effect i.e. will | people just stop buying their EVs until they release cars with | the Tesla connector? | | Buying a car without that plug now is a bit like buying a Betamax | player right after everybody announces they'll soon only support | VHS. | londons_explore wrote: | And that just leaves stellantis brands... Abarth, Alfa Romeo, | Chrysler, Citroen, Dodge, DS, Fiat, Jeep, Lancia, Maserati, Opel, | Peugeot, Ram, and Vauxhall. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-12-20 23:00 UTC)