Tesla to actually open a portion of its US fast-charging network to other EVs

SameGuy said:
I don't think the rest of the industry will switch to NACS though. If a Big Auto player -- say, Ford or GM, or even HyunKia North America -- decides to roll out a truly functional CCS charging network, who's to say a hypothetical Tesla decision to maintain proprietary access would have been a good idea?
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I've been trying to find the fine print legalese thing for supercharging and NACS, but to my understanding the OEMs would have to waive their rights pertaining to future legal action against Tesla.
 
AndysComputer said:
If I was Tesla I wouldn’t open up the network.
The money received for doing so, less the magic dock (which is very clever) retrofit is a lot less than the money they’d make from selling more EVs at the expense of their competitors. I would not recommend anyone buy a CCS car at this time if they need to road trip, the network reliability and stall availability is that bad. The general public will figure this out. If Tesla maintains their current market share because of this they would dominate the auto industry. Getting a few million or even billion dollars for opening up the charging is not worth it vs the competitive advantage they have. That’s business. Not to mention annoying your actual customer base with cars whose charging port is not in a convenient location or charged painfully slowly clogging up chargers. If I were to arrive at a site and had to wait to charge because there were a bunch of Bolt EVs slowly charging over 90 minutes (during which you could charge 3 Teslas) I’d be p***ed. Same goes for a Taycan taking up two bays meaning I can’t charge because that’s the only available bay left.
This is a really bad idea which is going to cause even more tension at charging stations, a problem I’m already worried about, unless Tesla can take that money and do massive expansions across all their current sites to get ahead of the problem. Given how long it takes for permitting and provisioning of site power I don’t see it…
And other car makers need to move their charging ports to rear left or front right to make them compatible. They were late to the party and could put their charging port in one of those two spots instead of getting creative especially given that they don’t make and run the chargers themselves. And no, Tesla should not be required to lengthen their cables to accommodate, that would increase cost, slow charging and reduce reliability if the failed long cables on other networks are anything to go by.
The legacy auto makers have fought EVs for so long I have no sympathy for them, and the public networks are clearly just grabbing government money with no wish to maintain an actual service so I have no sympathy for them either. Finally I have no sympathy for anyone buying a bad road trip experience car just because they don’t like Musk or the styling of a Tesla or whatever. I did when Tesla prices were so jacked up and were not eligible for incentives, but now that they’re pretty much at price parity no/one who road trips should be buying a CCS car until the manufacturers and public networks get together and sort this out. I fail to see why Tesla should dig them out of the hole they made for themselves together.
And I say this as an owner of both a Tesla and a Mini and someone who would happily trade their Tesla for an ID Buzz or Rivian R1S if dependable charging was available for them (by whichever means).
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From a strictly business standpoint, your assertion is valid. But if Elon Musk actually genuinely meant what he said on why he co-founded Tesla, then it makes sense that he's opening up the superchargers to non Tesla EVs.

In the early 2000s, Elon Musk co-founded Tesla “to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport by bringing compelling mass-market electric cars to market as soon as possible.”

So it's about the adoption of sustainable transport to the world, not just Tesla. Therefore, offering up the superchargers to non Tesla EVs seems to align with such goal as more people would start driving EV (Tesla or not) with the added convenience.
 
sacharama said:
From a strictly business standpoint, your assertion is valid. But if Elon Musk actually genuinely meant what he said on why he co-founded Tesla, then it makes sense that he's opening up the superchargers to non Tesla EVs.

In the early 2000s, Elon Musk co-founded Tesla “to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport by bringing compelling mass-market electric cars to market as soon as possible.”

So it's about the adoption of sustainable transport to the world, not just Tesla. Therefore, offering up the superchargers to non Tesla EVs seems to align with such goal as more people would start driving EV (Tesla or not) with the added convenience.
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A fair comment but I take everything he says with a pinch of salt. If he wanted to open up charging for the greater good he would have done so before government incentives. He could also concentrate on bringing out cheaper cars given the huge margins, but he’s a business guy.

For the longest time I thought Tesla would be killed off once the legacy automakers got on with it, but I’m not seeing anything from them to suggest Teslas position is at risk. The number of vehicles they’re selling is tiny vs what Tesla sells. The good ones are selling twenty thousand units per year here, many are selling only a couple of thousand, or even just a few hundred. Those numbers are a rounding error in the Tesla world, and they don’t have the supply chains sorted to increase meaningfully, as the serious ones (including Tesla) gobble up battery supply the slow movers (most of the industry) is going to be starved of supply. Apple did this with flash memory chips in the iPod era. They bought up supply on locked in contracts and there were barely enough chips to go around amongst all the other mp3 and even phone makers.
Even if legacy ramps up or enough of them ramp up sufficiently to take share from Tesla with good product (ie comparable real world range, charging speeds, efficiency and most importantly route planning and on route battery preconditioning) the public charging network is going to strangle them. People will not buy a car that they can’t refuel easily.
In some locations Tesla has 100 chargers while EA has 6. Half of which don’t work...
When they put in new locations they often put in 20 or more. EA puts in 4-6 and calls it job done. And then they conk out within months.
The manufacturers need to band together and create their own charging co-operative.
They also need to figure out how to make the chargers cheaper as well as if you look at a Tesla site you see very little equipment in terms of the cabinets vs an EA site of the same size. No wonder their installs cost a fortune and Tesla build outs are cheap.

The NACS standard won’t happen as frankly the connector isn’t the issue, it’s the chargers themselves and everything else about them.

As for VHS vs beta, the comparison falls down as actually beta wasn’t really superior in picture quality, but it did have shorted tapes that could not record a movie or sports events. So it was arguably inferior. Throw in the fact that VHS tapes were everywhere and VHS wins. Plus the machines were cheaper to make. Tesla’s are cheaper to make than their competitors vehicles, and their charging is available everywhere and *works*. From that metric Tesla is VHS, proprietary aspect not withstanding…
 
AndysComputer said:
A fair comment but I take everything he says with a pinch of salt. If he wanted to open up charging for the greater good he would have done so before government incentives. He could also concentrate on bringing out cheaper cars given the huge margins, but he’s a business guy.

For the longest time I thought Tesla would be killed off once the legacy automakers got on with it, but I’m not seeing anything from them to suggest Teslas position is at risk. The number of vehicles they’re selling is tiny vs what Tesla sells. The good ones are selling twenty thousand units per year here, many are selling only a couple of thousand, or even just a few hundred. Those numbers are a rounding error in the Tesla world, and they don’t have the supply chains sorted to increase meaningfully, as the serious ones (including Tesla) gobble up battery supply the slow movers (most of the industry) is going to be starved of supply. Apple did this with flash memory chips in the iPod era. They bought up supply on locked in contracts and there were barely enough chips to go around amongst all the other mp3 and even phone makers.
Even if legacy ramps up or enough of them ramp up sufficiently to take share from Tesla with good product (ie comparable real world range, charging speeds, efficiency and most importantly route planning and on route battery preconditioning) the public charging network is going to strangle them. People will not buy a car that they can’t refuel easily.
In some locations Tesla has 100 chargers while EA has 6. Half of which don’t work...
When they put in new locations they often put in 20 or more. EA puts in 4-6 and calls it job done. And then they conk out within months.
The manufacturers need to band together and create their own charging co-operative.
They also need to figure out how to make the chargers cheaper as well as if you look at a Tesla site you see very little equipment in terms of the cabinets vs an EA site of the same size. No wonder their installs cost a fortune and Tesla build outs are cheap.

The NACS standard won’t happen as frankly the connector isn’t the issue, it’s the chargers themselves and everything else about them.

As for VHS vs beta, the comparison falls down as actually beta wasn’t really superior in picture quality, but it did have shorted tapes that could not record a movie or sports events. So it was arguably inferior. Throw in the fact that VHS tapes were everywhere and VHS wins. Plus the machines were cheaper to make. Tesla’s are cheaper to make than their competitors vehicles, and their charging is available everywhere and *works*. From that metric Tesla is VHS, proprietary aspect not withstanding…
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Most of the time, things don't work in absolute mutually exclusive manner. As you stated, Tesla is a business not a government agency or charity and profit making is a big part of its purpose. But you can do both (generating profit while pushing and advocating a movement or direction that such company believes in and/or advocates). So it's reasonable for a company to engage in such advocacy in a manner that does not compromise the big component of its objective (generating profit) which might play a part in why Tesla didn't simply open up the network without the "deal" with the government.

I was not suggesting that musk developed Tesla as a purely charitable environmental idealistic endeavor. But I think it's entirely possible that a company can aspire and strive for achieving both (generating profit and carrying out a mission that better the quality of life of people)
 
Qisl said:
Umm. Elon is a co-founder of Tesla only as a result of a lawsuit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.:

"A lawsuit settlement agreed to by Eberhard and Tesla in September 2009 allows all five – Eberhard, Tarpenning, Wright, Musk, and Straubel – to call themselves co-founders."
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Ok. What's your point exactly?

I quoted that statement not because I wanted to assert his role as a cofounder, but what he stated about bringing the advent of sustainable transport to the market to illustrate the possibility of partly why Tesla is opening up the supercharger network to non Tesla vehicles.

Musk (whatever his title was ) made that statement back then in regards to bringing the advent of sustainable transport to the market

Tesla is now opening up the supercharger network to the non Tesla vehicles which supports/facilitates/expedites the goal of bringing the advent of sustainable transport to the market

Musk is in charge of Tesla now

Hence I suggested that possiblity
 
@chrunck beat me to it. I came here to post that Marques video. Tom Moloughney was there at the same time. Non-Teslas outnumbered the Teslas (at least from what they showed), and Tom barely got that cord to plug into the F-150 after a few tries. Tesla will need to lengthen their cables if they want to accommodate all makes and models.
 
GvilleGuy said:
@chrunck beat me to it. I came here to post that Marques video. Tom Moloughney was there at the same time. Non-Teslas outnumbered the Teslas (at least from what they showed), and Tom barely got that cord to plug into the F-150 after a few tries. Tesla will need to lengthen their cables if they want to accommodate all makes and models.
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I am concerned about the cables getting damaged by CCs users and the dependable superchargers becoming rather less so…
 
AndysComputer said:
I am concerned about the cables getting damaged by CCs users and the dependable superchargers becoming rather less so…
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A 100% valid concern. I’m all for keeping things proprietary if it maintains a certain quality standard. I gave up on Android for that reason. I thought the phones were better, the operating system was better, and the availability of apps that did what I needed to do was better; but the amount of crap that I had to deal with and hoops to jump through every year (or every sucrose update) to keep my almost-new phones working without major issues? Terrible experience.
 
The National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program is for highways/corridors and rural areas. Tesla would still need to remove the $12.99/mo member subscription or add non-member pricing.
 
GvilleGuy said:
@chrunck beat me to it. I came here to post that Marques video. Tom Moloughney was there at the same time. Non-Teslas outnumbered the Teslas (at least from what they showed), and Tom barely got that cord to plug into the F-150 after a few tries. Tesla will need to lengthen their cables if they want to accommodate all makes and models.
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Or, Ford will have to put its Lightning charger port somewhere else more easily accessible on the vehicle, or even simply change the hinge side of the port cover to the right side. Or, Lightning owners can spend their time at EA and take their chances whether one of the EA CCS chargers will actually work or not.
 
I’d laugh if Tesla doesn’t lengthen the cables out of spite and still being open to other brands.
 
AndysComputer said:
A fair comment but I take everything he says with a pinch of salt.
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Well, take out your salt and get ready. Now Elon Musk says Tesla will create its own electric utility (of sorts), selling excess electricity from installed Powerwall systems to EV owners at a flat fee of $30 / month for "unlimited overnight charging." This "dollar per day" unlimited charging will be initially available, according to the company, to Texas residents around July 2023. See a more detailed story here.
 
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