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Comment by mlindner | Hacker News Reader

Tesla doesn't have this problem though so how are they the villain? Tesla created the first global charger network that now other companies are pleading for government help to compete with.

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They are moving to a model where they get billions of dollars in government hand outs to support third party cars, but are not going to actually reliably allow third party cars to change. (Just like other networks are taking money to support standard payments, but don’t in practice.)

I'm not following. Who is moving to such a model?

Yes Tesla should be paid if they're being forced to subsidize their competitors. The entire point of Tesla's charging system is that it's non-profit making. It's based on the idea that it's acts as a value-add to Tesla vehicles. If Tesla is going to allow access to competitors, then yes Tesla needs to be paid for that access, or charge differential rates between Tesla and non-Tesla vehicles.

> Yes Tesla should be paid if they're being forced to subsidize their competitors

The way Tesla gets paid is by users paying for the charge. It isn't complicated.

Tesla prices are usually cheaper than any other EV charging station (or free). From my understanding they charge a little bit above local electricity rates enough to cover maintenance costs.

Are you making the argument that non-Teslas should be charged more than Tesla users. I'm fine with that but I think that wouldn't be allowed under this new provision.

I'm making the argument that all brands of EV charging network should charge all brands of EV. Anything less is backward, primitive, and simply dumb infrastructure.

In Europe, Tesla charges Tesla drivers less for charging and other drivers more. Tesla also has membership pricing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y33AArvMUQ

Other charging networks also have brand specific deals and membership pricing.

> I'm making the argument that all brands of EV charging network should charge all brands of EV. Anything less is backward, primitive, and simply dumb infrastructure.

Okay but this is a theoretical statement and doesn't really jive with the current existing environment. This is a goal, not a method to achieve it.

The method to achieve it is to put CCS on your car and charge on any charger.

There is no mystery here. This is not theoretical. It's the practical reality:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_WjeH3I8p8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPIhazPcY64

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI5EnOo05BE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=theiiFWydmo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G30iqWzEe8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlUZfGMqv_g

I couldn't find that Tesla will receive "billions" anywhere. Only that the US Federal government is giving $5B to states and Tesla is applying for some of that money. Where do you see that Tesla won't reliably allow third party cars to charge?

It's in the title of the article. (The word "some")

Tesla chargers have been open to other cars in Norway since last year and I see many non-Teslas charging. They don't seem to have a problem doing it. You just need to install the Tesla app on your phone and register a credit card number with it.

Snark: millions of petrol stations and vending machines manage to accept contactless or card payment without having to install the vendor’s app.

Tesla cars don't need the app. Only non-Teslas because the makers are so useless.

There's an actually open (no patent pledge), non proprietary standard for signaling payment through charging infrastructure. Several non-Tesla manufacturers already sell cars with this standard, and there are a few non-Tesla charging networks which support it as well.

Once again Tesla continues to push its proprietary systems instead of adopting the standards everyone else uses.

So which manufacturers and charging networks are they? All the owners of EVs that I know all bemoan the lack of any standardization. The only actual standard seems likely to be pushed through seems to be that in Germany (and I think Norway) all chargers will soon be required to accept card payments. Not sure how this will work with the low power AC chargers that already exist and that use NFC/RFID tags or a phone app, perhaps AC chargers will not have to follow that standard.

And it will, presumably, require Tesla to retrofit some kind of user interface to the charging stall. That seems a bit stupid when every car that can connect has a screen that could easily do the job.

And lastly, did this open system exist when Tesla started building their charging network?

The standard is ISO 15118.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_15118

Volkswagon, Ford, Mercedes, Lucid, and Rivian have all standardized on this to negotiate payment. Electrify America and a few others have already implemented this standard in their chargers.

The vast majority of times I've had to charge at a public charger, plug and charge negotiated the payment without issue. I do not drive a Tesla.

> And it will, presumably, require Tesla to retrofit some kind of user interface to the charging stall. That seems a bit stupid when every car that can connect has a screen that could easily do the job.

If they supported the industry standard instead of only their proprietary standard, they wouldn't need to.

Based on the OP I'm really not following this line of reasoning here.

The billions of dollars that are available aren't only to Tesla.

Tesla actually reliably accepts and processes credit card payments without issues, unlike the anecdotes provided by others here with other charging networks and there is no reason to think that Tesla would no longer reliably accept payments given that they intentionally accept payments from all major credit card processors.

Why would they not allow 3rd-party cars to charge? They may have some prioritization scheme for Tesla vehicles, but other than that I'm just not following what you are saying here.

If I were to go to a Tesla station in the US today with my non-Tesla car, it would not charge.

And why is that relevant to the conversation at hand?

> Why would they not allow 3rd-party cars to charge?

Tesla isn't allowing my car to charge. They have a proprietary plug and a proprietary payment protocol. So if I drove my car to a Tesla stall in the US right now, it would not charge as it is not a Tesla. Why would they not, well, because for the past few years they've used their proprietary network as a marketing advantage.

Sorry the conversation was referencing a future state not current state.

Elon Musk said they'd support 3rd party cars by late 2022. 2023 is after 2022. We're already in this future state of "why wouldn't they support third party cars?"

So yeah, why wouldn't they? Why don't they today? It's the same question and it's the same answer.

In order to receive federal funding new chargers would have to be open to non-Tesla vehicles.

Ok, so why don't they do that today in preparation to receive those federal funds? Why wait until the end of 2023 or 2024?

Why would they not allow 3rd-party cars to charge, today, months after their original date they set to allow 3rd party cars to charge?

There's lots of state level grants available to apply for today, so we're already in the "billions available for public EV charging" future state.

It takes time. They are already very busy rolling out new chargers all the time. This is layering even more work on top of that.

Its been almost a year since first announced, you'd think they'd have at least one charger with CCS by now given how fast and bleeding edge Tesla's technology allegedly is.

That’s a choice you made. I do hope they open it up though because they will make a ton of money and use that to expand the network even more.

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