Tesla MagicDock upto around 75 locations now.

[SouthernDude]

Hertz costs/problems with EV's was mostly a 1-2 punch of stupidity, and the cost of repair. Not the repair of the drive-train, the repair of everything else. Rental cars get banged up way worse than most POV's. A crunched fender on a Nissan, they have the needed agreements and infrastructure in place to get it quickly and inexpensively repaired. Not so much with a Tesla. Then they tried to rent them without figuring out the charging issues associated with a bunch of people renting electric vehicles that had no clue as to how charging works.

Yes, this is what i've been saying. The drive train isn't the problem its everything else. This will improve with time but it kind of stinks that several car companies seemingly abandoned some things learned about cars because EVs offered a different liberty with design.

The NACS plug adoption is a prime example of how the market is drastically better than legislation. Legislation has been promoting massive infrastructure around a soon to be obsolete standard. This is going to cost a ton of money in the short term for the charging companies. Had it been even worse, we may have had to deal CCS for another 20 years. If the government will step away the market is robust enough to level itself out where needed. A light touch with legislation, maybe modest tax incentives for small businesses to put in better L2, and working with the distribution network.

Totally agree. We have a better standard now because the gov never imposed CCS onto the market. All the people going on and on about how NACS was better should be happy now. There are still chademo plugs getting built because of gov funding too.

Maybe force our way past some of the regulatory stupidity and get a few Nuclear plants built.

thankfully this seems to be changing too. several states have now removed their new nuclear bans/moratoriums. there seems to be a lot more support for nuclear energy now. If this were allowed to happen in the 90s, things would be much farther along now.

 

[Keith Smith]

Yes, this is what i've been saying. The drive train isn't the problem its everything else. This will improve with time but it kind of stinks that several car companies seemingly abandoned some things learned about cars because EVs offered a different liberty with design.

Totally agree. We have a better standard now because the gov never imposed CCS onto the market. All the people going on and on about how NACS was better should be happy now. There are still chademo plugs getting built because of gov funding too.

thankfully this seems to be changing too. several states have now removed their new nuclear bans/moratoriums. there seems to be a lot more support for nuclear energy now. If this were allowed to happen in the 90s, things would be much farther along now.

Circling back to Magic Dock, I think as you stated, this is going to be pointless/deprecated longer term, though short term I think the CCS plug will go the way of CHADEMO. I fully expect existing CCS Tesla's will get a kit from somewhere to convert to NACS. I would love to see similar kits for existing vehicles. It really should not be difficult to do, it's like swapping an outlet on your wall with a new one, but in the mean time everyone will just throw an adapter in their vehicle.

The historical re-writes of safety issues are always the problem. You are much more likely to die in a car than in a plane (per mile traveled). Drastically more people are killed and injured in the production of fossil fuels per energy unit, than have been harmed in the production of electricity with Nuclear power, yet somehow every incident with the latter is billed as an end-of-the-world scenario. Refinery catches on fire, Exxon Valdez dumps oil in the ocean, Drilling platforms off the coast, people losing arms and legs and life operating the machinery, people dying in coal mines, wow that's too bad, make sure they pay. Japan has an earthquake that knocks out a reactor, spits a little radiation, a few people are killed, a very small number of people might be exposed to something that might cause a problem 40 years from now, and the world is going to come to an end if it ever happens again. I do not understand the irrational fear.

If we can get over this fear hump, we can build out plenty of energy infrastructure, from all available sources, and with improvements in battery tech/cost that are not too far down the road, we can have charging stations with big batteries that fill up on nuclear electricity at night, and supplement with solar during the day, and use fossil fuels like Natural Gas to cover for one-off demands. Tesla is a big player on the latter part of that scenario, in addition to the simple power stations, they are putting up large stations with solar panels and batteries as economics permit. They really are trying to get this right it's very cool, not there quite yet but heading in the right direction. Not so much for the other players that I have seen.

 

[SouthernDude]

Circling back to Magic Dock, I think as you stated, this is going to be pointless/deprecated longer term, though short term I think the CCS plug will go the way of CHADEMO. I fully expect existing CCS Tesla's will get a kit from somewhere to convert to NACS. I would love to see similar kits for existing vehicles. It really should not be difficult to do, it's like swapping an outlet on your wall with a new one, but in the mean time everyone will just throw an adapter in their vehicle.

It may be possible to retrofit NACS onto an existing car with CCS. I have no idea. I guess all that would involve is creating an adapter specific for each car model then retrofitting it in the car. Shouldn't be too difficult with 3d printing now.

The historical re-writes of safety issues are always the problem. You are much more likely to die in a car than in a plane (per mile traveled). Drastically more people are killed and injured in the production of fossil fuels per energy unit, than have been harmed in the production of electricity with Nuclear power, yet somehow every incident with the latter is billed as an end-of-the-world scenario. Refinery catches on fire, Exxon Valdez dumps oil in the ocean, Drilling platforms off the coast, people losing arms and legs and life operating the machinery, people dying in coal mines, wow that's too bad, make sure they pay. Japan has an earthquake that knocks out a reactor, spits a little radiation, a few people are killed, a very small number of people might be exposed to something that might cause a problem 40 years from now, and the world is going to come to an end if it ever happens again. I do not understand the irrational fear.

People have always had an irrational fear of more rare events. I think part of it is the perception of control. A plane crash feels scarier than a car crash because the person crashing is not in control of the plane. Same goes with a genetic problem vs things like type 2 diabetes or obesity. The environmental movement has been using anti-nuclear rhetoric since the beginning - "I support nuclear energy 93 million miles away".

If we can get over this fear hump, we can build out plenty of energy infrastructure, from all available sources, and with improvements in battery tech/cost that are not too far down the road, we can have charging stations with big batteries that fill up on nuclear electricity at night, and supplement with solar during the day, and use fossil fuels like Natural Gas to cover for one-off demands. Tesla is a big player on the latter part of that scenario, in addition to the simple power stations, they are putting up large stations with solar panels and batteries as economics permit. They really are trying to get this right it's very cool, not there quite yet but heading in the right direction. Not so much for the other players that I have seen.

Since its still early in the market, the most effective model will take time to develop. The same goes with the amount of necessary infrastructure. If battery energy density continues to improve, it just makes the charging situation even easier.