WSJ Rumble Seat, "Thank Tesla: The Biggest Obstacle to EV Ownership Will Soon Be History"

[Bouldergramp]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/thank-tesla-the-biggest-obstacle-to-ev-ownership-will-soon-be-history-dc9945be?st=00npwdpsepcjq5w&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

 

[wmcbrine]

Or, you know.... condemn Tesla, for refusing to join everyone else in standardizing on CCS, long since.

 

[Flyct]

Or, you know.... condemn Tesla, for refusing to join everyone else in standardizing on CCS, long since.

The Tesla slim NACS plug compared to a bulky CSS is night and day better. The Tesla slim NACS will do L1, L2 or DC L3

 

[wmcbrine]

I'm aware. The question is, was it better enough to hold up the process of standardization itself, for several years? Many people point to the variety of plug standards as a psychological barrier to wider EV adoption, as in the headline quoted here. But it was Tesla, mainly, that was holding out. I don't think that deserves thanks.

 

[GRA]

^^^ Indeed. I posted the following back in 2013:

As a potential user I don't care which standard is ultimately agreed upon, or if we wind up with a couple. All I care about is being able to connect and get electricity anywhere I need to, and I'll leave the details to the engineers. OTOH, as someone who has an eye for design and ergonomics, I find the need to have two separate charge receptacles [Note: I was talking about J-1772 + CHAdeMO for LEAFs and others] for the same car to be an unnecessary complication, and I expect it's probably more costly as well as taking up extra real estate. CCS looks like a kludge and is big and ugly (as is CHAdeMO), but I expect it to work okay. If I were emperor and could dictate which standard to use in North America, I'd go for Tesla, as it's small and elegant, and Tesla has been showing people how fast you can build a good network if you're committed to it.

I considered CCS-1 "good enough" per my sig, and the failure to standardize on one or at most two connectors/standards much earlier has hindered adoption and made the whole process of teaching newbies and finding compatible charging stations far too tedious. I was very surprised that Ford agreed to switch as late as they did, and the dam broke. Still, while we'll ultimately arrive at the better connector, the additional multi-year delay in achieving standardization is not helpful. Plus, the connector is the least of the issues when it comes to improving the charging experience - it's activating and paying for a charge, as well as simply maintaining the DCFCs and EVSEs that're the bigger problems. Tesla has demonstrated it's possible to maintain their DCFCs, because they were motivated to do so in order to sell cars; it remains to be seen whether, once other manufacturers are using SCs, that charging will be as painless for them as it was when Tesla controlled the connector, the car, the interface and the payment system.

The NEVI requirement for 97% uptime for federally-subsidized chargers should also help, although that still means an individual charger can be out of service for almost 11 days/year.

I remain skeptical but hopeful that the switch to NACS and its actual standardization will finally make public for-pay charging as simple and reliable as buying gas - I've been driving since 1977, and not once have I ever been unable to buy gas at any station that was open. Granted, I've always paid cash, which along with having a human employee of the station responsible for 'activating' the pump remotely has undoubtedly increased the reliability of the operation, as has having multiple pumps per site. I look forward to the day when public pay charging approaches that level of ease and reliability.

 

[NoMoreCO2]

From my understanding, Tesla offered its charging technology to the other manufactures years ago, like about a decade ago. All others refused, in part I suspect not to support Tesla (of course Tesla was not going to give it away, and it expected others to pay towards building out the infrastructure, which the others were all refusing to do) and instead claimed it was government's responsibility to install charging infrastructure. For a while American and Canadian governments also resisted Tesla's technology but they have finally accepted the overwhelming evidence that Tesla has the superior technology with much greater reliability.
So, after a decade of failure, and with CCS standards changing the CCS L3 chargers very undependable and frequently out of order, and CHADEMO becoming obsolete, it only made sense for the other manufactures to finally get on board and commit to installing thousands of L3 charging units that will have both CCS (for their older and current models but not their future models) and the Tesla's NACS connectors. Unneeded duplication for the future.
The other factor is that the other manufacturers were having serious charging staton malfunction issues which hinders the selling of their vehicles and the obvious fact that Tesla is worth more than most of the rest of the auto companies combined and therefore going to be around longer than most of them. So, instead of killing Tesla, they severely injured themselves and with Tesla selling about 65% of all new EV sales still, it only made sense for the government to pressure the other manufactures to adopt the most common, most reliable and least expensive option....NACS.

 

[GRA]

From my understanding, Tesla offered its charging technology to the other manufactures years ago, like about a decade ago. All others refused, in part I suspect not to support Tesla (of course Tesla was not going to give it away, and it expected others to pay towards building out the infrastructure, which the others were all refusing to do) and instead claimed it was government's responsibility to install charging infrastructure. For a while American and Canadian governments also resisted Tesla's technology but they have finally accepted the overwhelming evidence that Tesla has the superior technology with much greater reliability.
So, after a decade of failure, and with CCS standards changing the CCS L3 chargers very undependable and frequently out of order, and CHADEMO becoming obsolete, it only made sense for the other manufactures to finally get on board and commit to installing thousands of L3 charging units that will have both CCS (for their older and current models but not their future models) and the Tesla's NACS connectors. Unneeded duplication for the future.
The other factor is that the other manufacturers were having serious charging staton malfunction issues which hinders the selling of their vehicles and the obvious fact that Tesla is worth more than most of the rest of the auto companies combined and therefore going to be around longer than most of them. So, instead of killing Tesla, they severely injured themselves and with Tesla selling about 65% of all new EV sales still, it only made sense for the government to pressure the other manufactures to adopt the most common, most reliable and least expensive option....NACS.

Tesla's original offer to allow other manufacturers to use their connectors etc. was widely discussed here, and IIRR it involved signing over intellectual property rights and a bunch of other stuff that no other manufacturer in their right mind would do. In short, it was more for PR than a serious offer, basically Tesla saying "give us everything you have". I'll try and find it, but it was a long time ago and 'Tesla' is way too broad of a search term. Hopefully someone like cwerdna will remember enough of the details to point you to it. In the meantime, found this from 2015 elsewhere: https://chargedevs.com/newswire/elo...akers-about-sharing-the-supercharger-network/

and this from 2017: https://www.carswithcords.net/2017/05/why-teslas-charging-network-should.html

I'm not aware that the government is pressuring any manufacturer to use NACS, all they've done to date in NEVI is require CCS-1. That may change in a few years now that so much of the market is switching over, but for now it's CCS-1 plus whatever other connectors the networks care to provide (which will obviously be NACS - even EA has now gotten on board, and we're just waiting for VWAG to do likewise). But until the V4 Superchargers actually demonstrate '1,000V' charging instead of just saying they'll be capable of it, companies like Lucid, Porsche and the Hyundai group are likely to stick with CCS-1.