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Comment by wodenokoto | Hacker News Reader

> ... as the world's most valuable carmaker looks to bring electric vehicles into the mainstream.

Didn't the EU tell them they had to?

Yes, but that doesn't exclude the possibility that Tesla had plans to open up the charging network at some point anyway.

Well, we have a control site, a.k.a the US. Do they open it there?

We'll see. I for one believe opening up the network will lure more customers into the Tesla fold. At the moment though, Tesla's bottleneck is still ramping up production, not landing new orders.

If their network is underutilized, they have an interest to open it. If their goal is to build a walled garden, they will not open it. So far the latter hypothesis matches the observations better.

Especially considering everything they do with their software + their very harsh anti-repair perspective.

In the US Tesla are the waste majority of EV, and those that are not Tesla usually can't charge anywhere close to fast enough for it to be reasonable to charge at a Supercharger.

The markets are just totally different. In the EU there are lots of cars that could use the Superchargers so you can make way more money there then in the US.

They always said eventually they would open it up to everybody. Its a balance between it being a selling point and making money from higher utilization.

It's not a good control since there are other differences between US and EU, most notably charging connectors standards and chargers per cars (US superchargers are more crowded than EU on average).

There is no EU directive that requires Tesla to make the charging network available to non-Tesla vehicles. Just that fast charging stations must support the CCS standard, which Tesla used in Europe for years already.

As far as I know the EU did not tell them they have to do that.

If I'm wrong, please provide a source.

It's mentioned in the 2014/94/EU directive on the deployment of alternative fuels infrastructure [0], see (26) and (33). It is not a law but it is a guideline for EU countries to implement it as law. And the countries that make up the majority of the EU's charging infrastructure plan on doing exactly that, so any delay would have put Tesla in non-compliance.

Furthermore, this 2021 European Court of Auditors special report pushed for the same [1].

A Supercharger station gives access to private users with an authorisation or a subscription so it's considered accessible to the public. All charging stations accessible to the public should to allow multistandard recharging.

[0] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...

[1] https://www.eca.europa.eu/Lists/ECADocuments/SR21_05/SR_Elec...

2014/94/EU requires that public charging stations support a common technical standard, ie: CCS.

There is nothing in it that requires Tesla (or any other operator) to make their network available to all makes of vehicle.

However, without an "open" charging network Tesla cannot access government funds for charging network expansion that is available to their competitors.

> "It is not a law but it is a guideline for EU countries to implement it as law."

This is how all EU directives work. Member states are required to implement EU directives in law.

Thank you.

I only read about the german minister of transport, Andreas Scheuer, was in talks to Tesla to open up the charging network. The source I have is here:

https://ecomento.de/2021/06/16/tesla-soll-supercharger-fuer-...

So, I think the logic was: eventually it will happen anyway - so it's better for Tesla to do it themselves before they are forced to, so that they can do it on their own terms. For example, so that Tesla drivers will never have to wait longer than x minutes.

I see. That's not "EU telling them they have to".

That's a minister of an EU member state allegedly telling them he would like to force them to do it.

Still the acting Minister of Transportation in the biggest EU member state. That hair splitting is showing some lack of understanding how this stuff works.

I think Tesla saw the writing on the wall in the EU, which is that the EU doesn't want closed eco-systems, including payment, for EV charging. Now you can do it when forced or leap-frog that and get some positive PR from it. Plus you might be able to do it on our own terms. I highly doubt Tesla would have done it yet without some pushing from the EU.

I'm sorry, but as a non-german european citizen I really do not consider an opinion of a german minister all that important.

He has zero authority to order companies what they have to do or don't have to do in my country.

Directly, no. Indirectly one cannot ignore the influence Germany has in the EU, so his word carries some weight, especially if you are a multi-national company operating in the EU.

That being said, Andi Scheuer is quite an incompetent idiot.

It's not only the minister's opinion, it's Germany's opinion. As minister he is allowed to make deals in the name of Germany.

Germany and France are the main financial contributors to the EU budget, so they are involved in pretty much all EU matters.

>> As minister he is allowed to make deals in the name of Germany.

That is very true. It also is part of the problem with that particular Minister, one of those deals cost Germany north of 500 million for nothing.

Don't infrastructure subsidies in the member states usually require an open system as well?

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