Volkswagen, Porsche, and Audi say they will use Tesla's EV charging plug | Hacker News Reader

Volkswagen, Porsche, and Audi say they will use Tesla's EV charging plug

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432 pointsthunderbong632 comments

I am the founder of Starlight Charging[1]. We are working on crazy-low-cost L2 chargers for multifamily apartments. Plug-and-charge is a sine-qua-non for us.

One still major unsolved problem is the lack of agreement on a standard for payment/powerline communication from the EVSE to the vehicle. OCPP 2.0.1 and ISO 15118 is supposed to bring "Plug and Charge" capabilities -- this, in theory, would allow drivers to simply pull up to a station, plug in, and charging start right away. i.e. No more fiddling with multiple different manufacturer's apps, no more being SOL if your phone battery is dead.

While we're seeing agreement on the physical standard for the shape and size of the conductors, there's still progress to be made on the protocol between vehicles and charger. Tesla refuses to implement OCPP because they have a great walled garden right now and don't want to release the stranglehold on the payments.

[1] https://www.starlightcharging.com

Can you explain why you feel plug-and-charge is so important? I have used chargers with and without it and while it is slightly more convenient to just plug in and go, it doesn't feel like such a huge improvement that I absolutely need it.

I agree that having a different app for every brand of charging station would be annoying, but what about just accepting a credit card the way we do with gas stations now?

Have you done any road tripping in an EV? my experience of the app-based charging landscape has been complete horror; apps don’t work, chargers don’t start, payments don’t through..

Just last month was a new app at McDonalds in Sweden, that one asks me to, in the freezing cold, scan a dirty QR code sticker, which takes me to a website I’ve never heard of that wants me to manually enter credit card info, like a phishing attack smorgasbord.

It’s the one thing I miss from a gas car: just let me fill up.

I have done multiple 10+ hour (although no multi day) road trips in an ev. It was fine. I had problems exactly one time and i was able to just go to a different charger a mile away.

All of the chargers I've used had apps, but they also allowed using a credit card, which seems like it would have solved your problem just as well. And that's already a solved problem, even if not every charging network uses it.

Now go abroad where charging app is not available in your country or requires local phone number to register, uses local language, or even wants local address or local payment method.

Just give me website god damn it.

My story of charging in Germany one time a year ago:

The charger requires an app, ok fine. Downloaded the app, had to setup the whole account with my address(UK address was allowed as my address), verify my email, verify my phone number(UK one was accepted), fine, done.

Went to add my payment card - nope, the billing address has a pre-filled country field set to Germany, can't change it. It says ring this number in case of any problems. I ring the number just to hear:

"Sorry, our customer service operators are not available on Sunday. Call back on Monday after 9am".

Imagine if filling up with petrol was such a lottery.

German "Sunday is rest day" at it's best.

If fuel stations are essential(as in allowed to be open on Sundays), then with the EVs becoming the norm so should be the support for these stations.

I know it's not quite the problem you are talking about (which would be dealt with by making normal contactless / chip and pin readers a requirement) – but I'd love to see a legal requirement that when your charge point can't contact the piece of shit payment / authentication service the user gets to charge for free. That would soon see an uptick in the reliability of charge points...

thats the only correct eay of dealing with the issue. If you can't maintain infrastructure you failed at your job, why should someone be stranded or freeze to death because of your incompetence

I'm in the process of deactivating my family Apple One account (they overseas) so I can change app store for few minutes and download all the local apps I need.

I have to wait until end of month so my subscription actually expires, then make sure family sharing is disabled (which already screwed up location sharing). Oh and about 2.5TB of entire generation photos are up to be deleted by Apple if I screw up.

I have literally gotten visas for and worked in another country with greater ease than trying to get my Apple account to work well with local apps in my new country of residence while still allowing me to download and update apps from the first country.

Just trying to move to or be in another country and have the App store actually work properly for local apps (and the ones you want to keep from your original country) is a complete nightmare anyway.

It amazes me that for such a progressive and forward thinking company as Apple, that the very thought that their customers might actually move countries with their device and account seems to have been relegated to 'edge case'.

Like i said, credit card terminals seem the best way to fix this problem, Rather than done complicated plug-and-charge mechanism

Yeah, CC terminals (and NFC / tap if you want to be fancy) are working things which work.

The only opposition I've heard is "uwu but charge costs are lower so CC fees add up".

CC fees add up, but/and electricity is cheaper than gas, so net-net, you gain. Also considering the convenience that you have zero worries and you will be able to charge hassle-free in any charging stations, I'd pay an extra €1 to not have any headaches, apps, phone charged, and any/all hoops by any apps.

Things like little kiddy rides and vending machines are able to take contactless payments (in the UK). I don't really see how this can be a valid arguement.

It varies by country. In NZ we pay about $0.5 each time using contactless/apple pay, but 0 when using chip+pin.

IMO websites and/or open API's are way to go - allows third parties to build integrations, automations and superapps that enable all sort of benefits for users.

Some chargers have tap&pay on the machine like a gas pump. No app needed.

This should be mandated by law.

disagree. see my comment above

disagree, explain yourself rather than citing (without even providing a link)

Tap & Pay (Apple Pay, etc) are a great backup option -- and Starlight will implement those, but the primary modality of payment should require no user input. That's what we are hoping to accomplish. It's especially important when you are plugging in every night. Fiddling with your wallet or phone (battery dead??) is just one extra step that ultimately is not necessary if we are to design a system at scale.

This is a smaller use case—folks living in apartments without direct electricity connection. While the case exists and can be improved separately it shouldn't dictate requirements/costs to the rest of us.

Think I'd try to solve that by having the customer register the car/payment once at the kiosk and then handle plug-and-charge-and-bill though your service. Then you don't need to wait for an external solution and can advertise convenience as your added value in the meantime.

IMO that would be better solved by mandating tap and pay payment at EV charging spots. Integrating payments into the charging standard feels like a wild overcomplication by comparison.

Not only that, how do you even propose to do it?

If you just send the payment info via the charging plug, now you have to worry about the payment info being stored in the car and potentially stolen if the car has any security vulnerabilities, including in the charging port.

If you use some kind of tokenization or similar then you're inserting third party payment processors into the system and they'll be wanting a cut.

Just put a card reader on the charger and be done with it.

Wouldn't presence of the key address most of this?

Sure, they can steal the car AND the key, but more often, it's the car alone.

Another reason for a card reader is that it easily handles the case of a borrowed EV.

It is customary when borrowing someone's ICE car to pay for the gas used by returning the car with as much gas as it had when you borrowed it, or even with a full tank. I'd expect people will want to continue that custom when the car is an EV.

EVs could potentially handle that scenario even better than how it works with ICE cars. With ICE there’s always the error associated with how much gas was in the car to start as well as how much should you fill up when returning it. (Yes I know it’s customary to always just return a friend’s car filled to 100% regardless of the original tank state).

Nonetheless with an EV you could just hit a button saying “friend has taken possession” or “loaner mode” similar to valet mode. Upon returning the car and disabling that mode the car could present you with an accurate dollar amount of exactly what to pay your friend.

Particularly in a world where every new phone and smartwatch integrates tap-to-pay, seems like a no-brainer to just integrate at that point.

Cars don’t need to have credit card details onboard.

Hypothetical standard: Charger lets car open a low bandwidth internet connection. Car uses it (or cellular) to open an encrypted channel to a 3rd part service (Tesla/Visa/whatever) saying it’s VIN, password, and the charger’s ID. Charger gets payment from 3rd party.

PS: I would rather chargers just had working credit card readers, but individual chargers don’t do many transactions per day so apps are a cost saving thing.

You're getting at the root of the problem here, which is that Visa doesn't actually support anything like that and "whatever" is going to add another grubby middle man to the transaction, which is the thing that most needs to be prevented.

You're fundamentally trying to transfer your money to the operator of the charger, but they aren't standing around to give cash to, so you want something digital. Alright, so your bank should do this -- you authorize your car's private key to make withdrawals from your bank account at charging points and we're all set. Except that banks suck at this sort of thing, which is why we have the credit/debit network to create some kind of standard. Except the standard is credit cards, not public key cryptography.

You wanted to give your money to the charging point operator but instead you have to give it to your bank to give it to Visa to give it to the charging point operator. Now we're going to add "Tesla/whatever" to the chain? This needs to stop. You stick with the card reader until you figure out how to get banks, using some kind of standard, to support the public/private key thing and we can remove a middle man instead of adding one.

I agree, except Visa and Mastercard are willing to innovate. Apple Pay/Google Wallet for cars isn’t an unrealistic goal.

Visa et al are going to charge a minimum transaction fee for small-value transactions, which covers the typical charging session. Third party services are an advantage, because they can bundle small transactions together and take advantage of their economies of scale and their own fraud models. There is a world where Visa and the payment card industry looked forward in the year 2005 and said “IoT devices like EVs will need payment capability, let’s think about how to be essential to this ecosystem in a way that removes the need for third party services and saves everyone money” but that kind of technical innovation seems to be outside of their core competency.

The transactions are of higher value than many public transport tickets, and those are already common — either as normal purchases from a ticket machine, or with the special transaction type used when the payment card is touched to the reader on the ticket barrier.

Following a recent trip I had a bunch of ~1€ transactions from buying single bus/metro tickets from machines.

Visa charges a 5-10 cent fixed fee plus a percentage for those 1 Euro transactions. Presumably public transport just eats those costs, but in a commodity business like electricity I imagine it’s a noticeable chunk of the profit margin.

1 cent fixed fee + percentage seems to be the standard where I am. It might be difficult in other EU countries but IIRC the fixed fee is capped at 5cents.

The only public information I can find is this, which is from 2013 in London:

Visa credit 0.65%, debit 1 pence. Mastercard credit 0.80%, debit 1 pence + 0.5%.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/costs_to_tfl_for_cont...

> of ~1€ transactions

In Europe, sure because the fees are capped. In the US you pay a fixed fee + x% which makes small transactions like this prohibitively expensive

All the car needs to store is some private key corresponding to yourself, to prove it's that car. On modern hardware you can make these really hard to steal, short of taking the entire chip with you.

Worse case, if someone steals that key (or the hardware that stores it), they can steal electricity with it. Which also means they'll be caught approximately tomorrow.

If you have that level of access/capability, there's better things to do than using it to get 50 dollars worth of electricity and probably being picked up by police as you siphon it.

Besides, there's easier and stealthier ways to get free electricity.

It also brings that part of the charging experience to parity with gas, which is really simple for non-tech savvy switchers to understand.

The process for EV and gas refuelling is then identical:

Lift thingamabob -> tap card -> plug into car -> leave

Easy.

The tap-and-pay RF people need to get their act together. The average number of tries needed to get a good read is > 1. For Veriphone units, > 2.

Please make it clear where, exactly, the near-field antenna is. Behind the screen? Behind the logo that looks like WiFi? Somewhere inside a separate hockey-puck device? And indicate when the reader is active, too. Light up something.

One place I visit regularly had a POS system which worked perfectly. They recently switched it out for a Clover unit with much lower read reliability and a worse customer-facing UI.

For what it's worth, contactless is ubiquitous in the UK – the experience is almost always seamless. The only exception being the odd reader with the antenna in a stupid place (these have gotten less common over time) or when your bank decides to force a pin check.

I want to echo this. When contactless is ubiquitous there are pretty much no problems.

I don’t know if I agree. It’s exceedingly rare now to find a place which doesn’t accept contactless in America, but we have these problems still.

Besides dumb inconsistent terminals, the main thing holding it back is (A) customers don’t use it because they either don’t know it’s much faster than our garbage chip readers, or they have been burned by hunting for the right spot to tap. And (B) even the clerks don’t use it because until about this year there was a significant fraction of cards out there without NFC and who wants to hunt for the logo instead of just always shoving it in the (stupid slow) chip reader. There still might be plenty if you count debit cards which I never use but are very popular.

Sometimes I try to use the tap-to-pay. When I try, more often than not, I cannot get it to work, and then I use the chip anyway.

So usually, I just use the chip to save time.

Yes, this is precisely what I think many people do. Because they are frequently punished for trying it by being made to look foolish. We all roll our eyes when someone in front of us can't seem to master the trivial task of completing a purchase, and in that moment, we are dismayed to realize WE are that person right now!

> It’s exceedingly rare now to find a place which doesn’t accept contactless in America...

Lowe's and Home Depot? Walmart, still?

Companies still hoping to silo people into their own apps or antiquated payment method, which might give them a slight cc processing fee reduction that boosts their margins... at the cost of being a usability nightmare for anyone who doesn't shop there frequently. I expect that frequent shoppers will live with whatever a store does, and set up a custom app, if any, or accept using a physical card.

It's easy to see that their approach is petty, because Costco, which has fanatical customers and is members-only—there are no casual infrequent shoppers—got on board with nfc (card and smartphone) payments years ago. If any business could've gotten away with having their own app and special payment processing deals to save money, it's Costco.

It's very odd, as this has been working smoothly in the EU for around a decade, depending on the country. It's so reliable that you can pay for bus/metro/train tickets in London (since 2014) and many other cities directly at the ticket barrier [1 for photo], which would cause problems if cards were failing or slow.

The only time I'm confused is when there's an unusual card reader, usually a low-budget all-in-one type with a touchscreen, as it's not always clear where the NFC reader is. This is maybe 1-2% of transactions.

Every so often a machine makes the "dur dur" noise and I have to use the chip and my PIN. I'm not sure if this is every Nth transaction, or after spending ¤X. Either way, it's to avoid a lot of contactless payments being made if the card is stolen. (And maybe this is irrelevant in the USA, without PINs?)

"8 out of 10 card payments now contactless in the Nordics" [2]. 54% in the whole EU [3], only 34% in the USA [4].

[1] https://www.intelligenttransport.com/transport-articles/1153...

[2] https://www.nets.eu/Media-and-press/news/Pages/8-out-of-10-c...

[3] https://data.ecb.europa.eu/blog/blog-posts/contactless-payme...

[4] https://ktvz.com/stacker-money/2023/08/01/american-consumers...

Ah, you're right. I forgot about HD which surprises me every time I visit. TBH I have knuckled under for Walmart, which I shop frequently, by using Walmart Pay on their app. I agree that for frequent shoppers it's well worth it, but useless to someone off the street who isn't used to it.

I as a frequent shopper just like the way I can scan my code at any point and then push one button to check out, and that they allow credit cards to back it. For a while before its launch I think it was rumored that Walmart Pay would require an ACH or debit, which would have made it a hard no for me.

I still think that we've seen major progress. For instance, the huge Kroger chain got on board sometime in the past 2 years after being NFC or Apple Pay laggards. CVS a couple years before that, I remember them being particularly prickly about never taking Apple Pay and they came around.

It’s ubiquitous in Australia as well. I haven’t carried a wallet in almost 5 years. My credit card, driver’s license, and other important cards are all digital.

How would paying for an EV charge work like this? Would you select an amount of credit in currency (presumably via buttons on the charger?) then tap-to-pay for that amount?

(I believe there are some limitations on tap-to-pay transactions to prevent a merchant presenting the transaction with a different value after actually tapping the card.)

I think a lot of "pay at pump" fuel stations require a full insertion of the card to pre-authorize a large amount, then release it as a partial refund once the amount of fuel dispensed is known.

Would this be a barrier to EV charging, if you need a way to communicate this upfront, or have to effectively replicate out EMV infrastructure on totally unmonitored terminals with PIN readers (and likely the next card skimming scandal brewing)?

Also, how would contactless-only work for cards that get soft locked to be inserted for a PIN check? Would there be a way for EV chargers to be exempted from this? Or would people end up stuck and unable to charge as there's no available place with a PIN reader they can use to unlock their contactless payments?

They generally pre-auth for either £20 or £40 and then update the amount post-transaction.

In terms of PIN check, the card is just declined with an appropriate error message because you can’t insert it and the next time you use a contactless machine it asks for the card to be inserted and a PIN entered.

For petrol (gas) pumps in the UK it generally auths either £1 or £99.

Makes sense and matched my understanding of the pay at pump preauth for a fixed amount.

I guess the issue then becomes relying on contactless (only) without the hardware for full EMV with PIN, as then someone whose card has been used contactless one too many times can't charge, and potentially ends up stuck there.

It does feel like contactless is a good convenience measure, but probably isn't ideal as the only mechanism on a reader for charging infrastructure.

Unrelated to this, but not being able to initiate charging without internet access (for online auth of cards, and the ones that can only be used online) also is likely to become an issue in rural areas, as well as give quite a few resilience issues if cloud infrastructure isn't available, or internet backhaul from the area is disrupted. Even once power is restored after a storm, if comms are down (like with Storm Arwen), this doesn't sound ideal for EV charging...

I only have experience with Shell, Morrisons, and Tesco pay-at-pump stations. In all of those, you have to physically insert your card and type in your PIN; contactless does not exist.

What's a large amount? I haven't inserted my card at Costco for a very long time now. Just tap.

If the pump pre-authorizes an amount (many non-Costco gas stations I go to make you choose an amount to authorize) it simply never captures more than was actually used.

Now why would any of this be fundamentally different for EVs? You have a rough gauge for how much "fuel" i.e. "juice" you need, pre-authorize enough money but only capture what actually got used. Done. Why do EVs need to be special?

Pay-at-pump is ubiquitous here in New Zealand, I don't think I've seen a station without it for years. This may be because around 90% of all retail transactions are done with payment cards here.

It's easy. You select the max amount (up to NZ$200), tap your card, and it's done. Pick up the right fuel nozzle, refuel, and go. Exactly the same can be done on EV chargers.

The process card-side is not a charge-and-refund as refunds have fees to the merchant. Rather it's a pre-authentication and finalisation. Pre-auth holds the funds for a set time (determined by the merchant agreement with the bank) and the vendor can finalise the charge up to the pre-authentication amount. Most hotels and car rental places do this for security deposits as well, if they don't charge or explicitly cancel your bank will release the fund hold at the end of the holding period.

Public transport transactions (where the reader is directly on the ticket gate) are exempted from the soft lock, so maybe EV chargers could be too. At least for small amounts.

That makes good sense to exempt those kinds of readers from the soft lock. And given that's possible, it would likely make sense for some similar kind of leeway on EV charging.

Not that there's likely to be any real repercussions in many places given a lack of criminal enforcement around theft/fraud, but EV charging requires the user of the stolen card to stick around in a given area to charge the car, so it's likely lower risk than other places where a stolen card can be used for a large transaction in a short period of time.

I imagine you'd eventually get some people going around offering people "cheap" EV charges for free (for cash), and then tapping a stolen card on the reader, but there's always going to be someone trying to exploit stolen cards in innovative ways.

I'm not sure how it works at the protocol level, but I've been using contactless payments at gas stations here in the US for years now. You just tap to pay before you start pumping, then after you're finished you get charged for the amount of fuel dispensed.

I'm increasingly finding that my phone is detected while I'm still moving it towards the scanner, and it complains that my phone moved too fast. Then I have to wait like a schmuck until something resets and I can do it again.

Okay, hear me out here. What's stopping us from just having payments be out of band, like with petrol?

Is being able to ask your car to make a long drive across long distances on its own actually something people want to do? Or is it a solution in search of a problem?

(Disclaimer, I live in the UK and not the US. It's possible there are cultural reasons I've missed.)

I saw that Norway is now mandating tap and pay at all new EV charging spots.

I agree, that's the way to go. Charging an EV has to be just as easy as filling up a gas car. Pull up, tap you card, plug in. There's zero reason for having to fiddle with apps and memberships and qr codes and whatever else bullshit.

I've done a fair amount of road tripping (~15k mi over 1.5yr) along the WA/OR/CA/NV corridors where Electrify America is dense enough to use solely, which is convenient since my car came with 2 years of free charging from them.

Ignoring their pervasive station reliability problems, their app is pretty bad and only barely functions.

* I've had to skip a perfectly functioning station because the app thought I was still charging from the previous time and wouldn't change its mind about it.

* Their Carplay app has literally never worked for me, not once (usually it shows me still charging from a session >1wk ago even when the regular app doesn't, sometimes it doesn't boot, sometimes it shows me as not logged in. The main screen has never once rendered.).

* One of their level 2 stations (which tend even less reliable) existed in the app on about 50% of refreshes.

* The app requires a pretty solid signal to work at all since it seems to consult their API to query for stations near where you are and then you guess at which one it is ("is this the target one or the mall one? it's the target that's in the mall?") which is pretty silly when you're parked at the station so it's in range of your hands and eyes.

* I eventually figured out that I can add the EA plan to my Apple Wallet and tap the phone instead of ever opening the app, but that seems to randomly select between the "free" plan (rather, included in the purchase price of my car) and the $10 balance that they make me maintain for god-knows-why when at California electricity prices no charge has ever been below $10.

* The stations have credit card readers which I've never tried to use but almost always when I see somebody having trouble at a station it's because they're fighting with that thing. I assume EA's response would be "just use the app, it's so much better"

That's all just one app, not a slew of them for every charging network in my area (which also includes at least evgo & chargepoint just to cover the big ones). The sooner this app bullshit can die the better.

Every time I use the app I have to force quit it at least once to get it to stop doing whatever backend query it's doing. Doesn't help that their chargers are barely compatible with my car (2014 i3) so the charging fails to start about half the time. The machine itself rejects the charge in about ten seconds so no big deal, but the app isn't built to handle this case and takes multiple minutes to realize something is wrong. So my charging cycle is to initiate via app, plug in, see a failed charge, force quit the app, find the station again, and repeat probably twice. Probably isn't this bad with newer cars, but I love my car otherwise. Made sure to get the one with the extra scooter engine in the back, so I can just drive around on gas if it comes down to it.

Yeah I agree having a different app for each station sucks, but I don't really understand how plug-and-charge would solve this. For anything that does support plug-and-charge, don't you still need to register the payment method somewhere in advance?

Unless we have some universal payment processor which all the charging networks agree to use I will still need register through an app or something when I encounter a new brand of charger on a road trip.

It seems like the real solution is a law which requires the stations to accept a more universal payment system like credit cards. I think there is already a law like this in California IIRC.

> It seems like the real solution is a law which requires the stations to accept a more universal payment system like credit cards.

No shit, Sherlock? In the UK a lot of fuel pumps have credit/debit card readers built in, and if not cards are accepted everywhere for payment already. But yes electric charging companies here are still wierd about accepting such standardised payments, and we did just introduce a new law about it [0] promising "most" but not all chargers will accept cards.

[0] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-laws-to-make-charging...

Tap & Pay still requires you to fiddle with a station and slows you down. If you are plugging in at home (which is our target market), the fewer interactions needed the better. Imagine every time you get home you need to take your wallet out, tap the machine, wait for some 3rd party api to talk to the charger in the dimly lit basement, and then and only then you can leave. This is like 30 seconds of your day wasted.

Plus, ultimately we want to make charging as cheap as possible and having to pay the $.30 interchange fee each time a user plugs in would add a ton of overhead to our cost model.

Surely the interchange fee can be negotiated for volume? Or even mandated by law. When I tap my credit card to buy a 1$ bus ticket I doubt the interchange is keeping 30 cents?

There are transit systems that have made this work smoothly, you just walk up to a gate, tap your card as you walk through, so I can't imagine the barrier is technological unachievable. Seems like similar frequency and $.

It takes something like half of a second for my Apple Pay Amex/Visa to let me through the barrier in the London Underground, and the complexity they have to deal with for fare calculations is quite something too.

This is true. Apple Pay has been something we're keen on adding

The fare isn’t calculated on the spot though, a base amount is authorized and then only charged later. Not that the plug needs to figure that out immediately but it’s worth noting.

GP is talking about L2 charging for multi family homes. Not DCFC.

But I agree, DCFC need to all accept credit cards like gas pumps. Fortunately NEVI funding requires it.

If I may ask what seems like an obvious question… why can’t they just use credit card terminals like gas stations have been using for many decades?

They could, and many do, but the difference is that those types of interfaces are mandated/regulated while EV charging is not. Guess what's slightly cheaper when amortized across tens of thousands of customers in the products lifetime? Not to mention the amount of data that could be mined from those customers by having yet another app on their phone with bullshit location permissions "for the best user experience."

Every gas pump has looked/functioned largely the same since the widespread adoption of cashless payments around the world. Until governments mandate a standard payment interface, I think it's more likely that companies will continue to find ways to mine data from consumers through shitty apps.

Oh, and that's not even to mention the companies that include some amount of "free charging" credits with the purchase of the vehicle. Not only is that cost baked into the cost of the car, you're also disincentivized from using the network at all because of how crappy it is. /tinfoilhat

Yeah that just seems like a poor decision on the part of these charger owners. I feel like there’s an opportunity for a company called “EZCharge - we take credit cards”. People will seek it out when looking for a charging station because they know they won’t need to download a BS app.

Or maybe another solution would be like WeChat Pay in China, something that’s so ubiquitous that all stores just have a QR code you scan to pay for anything nowadays. I’m surprised nothing like that has taken off in the US, it’s crazy convenient.

There is no way to communicate when you are charged up that way, maybe via an SMS that you add with your phone number. Also, you have to communicate your charging preference somehow. It’s not like pumping gas, you rarely want it to stop at 100%, although the charging standard might at least be able to control that from the car.

True I see what you mean, but that would seem to be an easy function to build into the car’s charging controller. I’m not sure how it works today but I would imagine most cars have a “stop charging at x%” function already without depending on the charger for that.

Ya, I think they even get status otherwise I’m not sure how electrify America’s app works in the first place.

I once charged at an L2 in Canada that involved a QR code, and then payment via a web form. In that case, a POS would make the setup too expensive compared to just putting power out there with a networked microcontroller.

> There is no way to communicate when you are charged up that way

Cant' the car do it?

Or ya know.. the pump, like has existed for decades..

I thought the problem was that it takes long enough that you aren't by the "pump" during process. Also that the chargepoints are likely less infrastructure than a pump. So something has to contact you (SMS/email/whatever)

Yeah... cars come with internet connections these days, I'd say it's the car's job.

> Not to mention the amount of data that could be mined from those customers

That was my cynical take on it.

IIRC the federal infrastructure bill required chargers to accept via CC reader or plug and charge. So I'm sure we will be seeing more chargers with it shortly.

Yep: https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2023-03500/p-48 https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2023-03500/p-370

> This final rule establishes a requirement that charging stations must provide a contactless payment method that accepts major credit and debit cards and accept payment through either an automated toll-free phone number or a short message/messaging system (commonly abbreviated as SMS). Payment methods must be accessible to persons with disabilities, not require a membership, not affect the power flow to vehicles, and provide access for those that are limited English proficient.

So solving this problem would be as simple as mandating/regulating it? Sounds like a no-brainer to end this debate, standardize things, and allow the build out to happen in a quick and standard way across companies.

With all the EV goals that various countries are making, this seems like a foundational part of it. Consumers aren't going to buy into EVs in mass until charging in a solved problem.

The epic solution is free charging financed by gasoline taxes.

That would be quite effective IF it were tenable, but this is a solution in search of a revolution, lol (speaking strictly for the US). I wish I were joking, but politically you would have an easier time abolishing Christmas than something like this. Pitchforks would be wielded by 2 groups:

1. numbskulls who hate EVs because they believe that being able to add 400 miles of range in their F150 in 5 minutes (ie gasoline) is the only okay way to do energy for every vehicle.

2. People with a good point that EVs are very expensive and why should poorer people subsidize the rich when the poors can’t even afford an EV.

That second point is personally the sticking point for me. No reason the less-well-off should subsidize those who have the ability to purchase a new vehicle.

Most of the tax revenue does not come from the poor though. They could still be given EVs regardless.

RV charging has much smaller installations than gas. Instead of gas stations, the most common SV charging will eventually be thick poles on the footpath so you can charge wherever you park, or small one or two bay charging facilities at various businesses. That's the sort of charging infrastructure you want and seamless payment solutions is an enabling tech.

What's RV and SV charging?

S and R are on either side of E, so I'm guessing I meant EV.

But why not just have contactless bank card payment?

Yeah it is a pain, I have an electric car, but only because they force you to use their broken apps. All they have to do is let you pay with a bank card and it'll be just as easy as buying petrol.

So, I haven't got the money for an electric car... One just can't use the payment card at a bog standard self service payment terminal? I had assumed that, but apparently no? You seriously visit random websites and enter CC details?

Right, many or most don't have credit card terminals. You plug in, load an app, find you station, select a port number, tell it to start and hope it works. It doesn't sound that bad, but the chargers janky, the apps are janky and it takes a long time often with multiple attempts.

Installing random apps sounds janky as hell. I only install vetted apps from F droid. I wouldn't give a charging station access to my phone.

It is janky as hell, but it sounds like EV owners are making their lives more difficult in just slightly different ways from how you're making your life more difficult :)

I really can't believe how the idea of giving random companies access to electronics, which is what installing an app means, ever got normalised, even among techies. I guess people also do give out tons of personal details just because some form asks them. It goes against any and all security advice even regular people are now given. I guess it's true: the brosephs ook over...

So having an electric car requires an smartphone, one on which you can install random software, where you want to install random software, and have internet (cause I suppose there's no WiFi at those bornes) and you have a CC (also not true for many).

Good to know that this isn't for me.

I don't disagree with your principles; I was definitely on your side of the issue ~25 years ago and I suppose I still am, intellectually. I never changed my mind, it just wasn't important enough to me to put the substantial effort into. (which is, I suppose, what "they" are counting on). More power to you for investing the effort rather than just taking the path of least resistance.

Many things and services now 'require' an app, but I never do and in practice that doesn't seem much of an issue. It's just sad to hear it won't be possible to sidestep if I ever do own (or rent) an electric car, which ofc I fully expect. I already caved by having a phone with Google Play services enabled for a few banking apps. But I figure I can have some trust in them, since they are my bank.

A friend of mine has a card with which he can charge at certain places, but definitely not all (so he has some anxiety over that, in new places you never can be sure it actually works). Is such a card an option at those places that 'require' and app?

And what's even the reason for this? Those unmanned fossil fuel stations debit your card with some largish amount before you can take fuel. Why would things need to be more complex than that when charging electrons?

> It doesn't sound that bad

It does tho, even before getting into the reliability issues I don’t want to have to install random applications.

This is exactly it. My dad almost missed some of my sister's wedding fiddling with the same type of crappy UX on a no-name charger.

You have this problem because they’re not Tesla. Thats why everyone is adopting NACS and Tesla superchargers

That is entirely the fault of that charging network for implementing a user-unfriendly and unfamiliar interface. How is grandma, who can't even manage a QR code, expected to switch to EVs like that. That company should fail because their business is bad.

I mean... you can't just fill up. You have to scan a card, wait 5 seconds, enter your zip code, select the button for "grade". Credit card skimmers at gas stations are a big problem too.

You may have been used to that process so it seems more fluid, but Tesla charging is truly "plug and charge" at superchargers

That's nothing in comparison to what we get in Switzerland. I went to a public parking garage yesterday that advertised ev charging spots. I get there and there's just an nfc module. I had to look for and google some logo on the station only to find out that to charge with that provider you need to order a physical badge and pay 50 bucks upfront. That sort of crap is why I don't rely on anything other than Superchargers. And I won't for a long time even after they do get their act together. It's just too much risk.

Recharging electric vehicles is not like refilling gas-powered cars. You will intentionally drive a gas vehicle down to 20%, even 10% tank left before going out of your way to a gas station, maybe once a week on average. But with electric cars, you should intentionally be plugging in to recharge as frequently as possible, at least once a day, as you are penalized (with longer recharge times) the longer you go between recharges.

Imagine needing to negotiate a credit card with your wall outlet before recharging your phone every night, and you'll get an idea why people would hate needing to pull out their credit card for every EV charge.

You must not have had a dad that harped on you about letting your tank get below 50%. If I let mine get down to 10%, my dad would have taken my keys away. There are many reasons people give for this that do not involve zombies and go bags

Your car is rear-wheel-drive and the extra weight you are carrying around in the fuel tank helps your acceleration in the snow?

no, i had a small truck, so we'd just throw extra ballast in the back to help with that

Driving with a near empty tank is more likely to cause corrosion.

this isn't technically correct. the low levels are not causing the corrosion. it's the contaminants that float in the fuel is the issue. when the tank has plenty of fuel, those floaters are not near the fuel pump. as the levels lower, the contaminants become more concentrated and are more likely to interact with the pump. at least, that's how it was described to me. by described, of course i mean harped on at every opportunity the parental unit could berate about lack of proper care for the car blah blah blah

Water (usually what corrodes fuel tanks) sinks to the bottom when it separates. Plus running any other contaminants through your fuel pump is exactly what you want - burn them up and get rid of them, don't leave them floating in your tank until you get a hole in your tank from them.

I remember the garage owner telling my parents they should only half fill the tank to reduce the weight being driven around.

It's pretty much completely pointless to worry about when you fill up your tank. Just fill it up when you need or want to.

nonsense like that gets you sent to your room without dinner.

With EVs I have the opposite habit, I try to recharge at 5-10% on road trips because it recharges faster. (At least with Teslas, I would not want to do a road trip with anything else.)

For apartments I think it makes a lot of sense. Having to do a couple transactions every road trip is one thing, but having to complete a transaction just to top off every night the way a homeowner would sounds really annoying.

The flip side to that is that you'd only have to setup the app once at your home. If the charging activation is as smooth as chargepoint, it wouldn't be bad at all.

It would be easy to support both options. Many gas stations have their own app payment system.

I am thinking of buildings where they got 100+ parking spots, and one can install a charging station for his/her/their car. THAT station needs some 'lock' (software or hardware). Otherwise what stops someone else to abuse my parking spot's 'e-pump', when I drive to work and the spot will be unoccupied for the next 10h?

So some hoop-jumping should also be required.

For apartments it would make more sense to have it read the same key fob you use to open the gates or whatever. Then just add it on your monthly building bill

Not a bad idea. We are looking into this. One issue is that the vendors for these keyfobs are super fragmented -- even more so than Plug & Charge adoption.

Worth being aware that, as well as keyfobs being super fragmented, many are woefully insecure. Think "they just say their ID number when you put them in a reader field".

That means you can trivially clone them. Not hugely exciting for access to a (common) hallway in a large building. If cloning someone else's fob gets you free car charging, the incentive is there to clone them. Also, not all buildings will use unique fobs per "unit" (and you'd likely need to support per-resident/tenant fob uniqueness... And something for guests!) -- sometimes it's a single hardcoded value for the whole block or door zone that the fob opens...

You can, of course, build something proper using NFC (and a smartcard running a smartcard applet), which is effectively like your own custom mini "chip and PIN" EMV system -- you would have to design and implement the wire protocol to authenticate the card etc etc, and all the security design around that, but it could be done. That would at least let you have something more than simply shouting your tag ID number into the air like a super basic NFC tag (or RFID keyfob).

> That means you can trivially clone them.

i have cloned keyfobs for like 5 building at a local laundry. Never met a fob they couldn't clone

Yeah - there's even some fairly capable "cloners" available on eBay for most of the common formats. I guess that the ongoing use of (derived from magnetic stripe) Wiegand interfaces mean that most can be cloned like this.

There are absolutely some unclonable (without massive expenditure on defeating CC EAL 5+ smartcards) access control systems, but those are never the cheapest, so they don't get adopted outside of (very) high security environments.

I wondered if we'd see a shift once the Flipper Zero hit the ground, but it's probably still a bit too early on that.

A lot of hotels used to use insecure (and pretty easily cloned with an Android app) Mifare Ultralight NFC on room keys, but I've not seen one of those recently - most seem to be Mifare classic now, which is secure if your keys aren't compromised.

At that point why not just accept tap-and-pay in addition to the car identifier over the plug?

I feel like no matter what you’ll need to accept credit card payments in these sort of shared environments.

Our current plan is Plug & Charge (via ISO 15118 as well as a fallback to our NFC cable) and Tap to Pay as a backup in case you haven't set up a payment method on your vehicle.

With an L2 at an apartment, you might be plugging in daily. It'd be nice to keep the steps as minimal as possible.

Having said that, something like an NFC card + QR code support would be good enough, IMO. The main thing would be to keep the app as simple and fast as possible.

QR sticker manipulation is too easy of a vector for me to take anything seriously when it comes to "just scan the code, enter card data, and carry on" is just too easy to fake. it's even easier than credit card skimmers. I like QR codes and their convenience for non-critical things like marketing. For things that are direct payment links it is just too unsecure for my comfort

That's a fair point. TBH, a combination of GPS (or just smart defaulting) and entering a short code would work pretty easily as well.

They could also put the QR on a small screen to make it harder to fake. A little epaper display wouldn't add much to the cost.

also, who plugs in daily? do you fuel your ICE car daily? other than professional drivers, i'm doubting this is the normal routine for normal drivers. the irrational idea that EVs need to be plugged in at any and every opportunity is something that should be rationalized away. <referring to your point earlier>

i don't own an EV, so maybe my preconceived ideas of only charging when necessary may be what needs updating??? however, regular battery maintenance routines suggests daily charging might not be the best for the battery.

I'd guess that most EV owners with home charging do plug in daily, but also limit charge based on the type of pack. For most of us, that means ~80% as a daily limit, if not less.

In practice, I don't think EV owners are seeing a meaningful difference between repeatedly doing charges from 70 to 80% vs periodically doing bigger charges (eg, 20-80%).

So why not have a full-enough pack every morning? It is one of the big conveniences of an EV. Obviously this will be different if they don't have home charging or have a less than convenient setup.

When my car is home, it's plugged in always. That way I can pre warm or cool the cabin before I leave, and the car dumps a few more percent into the battery (usually it internally charges to about 80% to save the battery, but if it knows you're leaving soon it bumps it up). Then again my car is 2014 and has a much smaller battery than modern cars.

The problem with fancy variants on trying to "better protect" a QR code is that users don't know what to expect, and the lowest common denomenator of social compliance means they'll (have to, if they want to not be stranded) eventually scan whatever QR code is there, in an attempt to charge.

It feels like this whole "scan the QR code" is a reverse of the ideal paradigm that is (obviously) very easily exploited by scammers and opportunists, especially if payment information is requested! We spent long enough trying to train users to not enter usernames, passwords, and payment details into random web pages when asked... Now they're being asked to do it!

I don't think a QR on a small screen is the answer - people will just cover it with their sticker. If that's not good enough, they'll make a sticker that looks like a small screen with some frame around it.

We need to treat the charger itself as an untrusted piece of infrastructure, and do discovery the other way around. If a user knows they are going to an "ABC Corp" charger, there is presumably a route for them to use a relatively trustworthy discovery platform (i.e. an app store, their EV charging map already knowing where they are headed) to navigate the user to the genuine interface.

For the issue of "which charger to activate", I'm not an EV user, but this feels like if the car communicates any form of usable information to the charger, this could be used to help the user. Easy (and private) paradigms like unlocking a given charger by a map view wouldn't be intuitive for people with reduced spatial awareness (or at night when nobody has a clue where they are in relation to things on a map), but at a small enough charging station you could just ask the user to confirm if they are using "charger 3" (like gas station pump numbers), since that's the only port with a car not yet enabled to charge. For larger places, surely it's easier to use "pump numbers".

(Which is effectively what you are suggesting with a short code, but I think the QR part is a potentially bad paradigm we should try to kill off before it sticks around!)

Yep. Regular petrol stations figured out pay at the pump decades ago. Why is this such a problem for EV charging?

That’s a easyn one. The charger manufacturers (ChargePoint, etc) want to rake a percentage of the charging revenue for themselves, so they force you to route payment processing through them.

Companies don't want want the hassle and expense of PCI compliance across their charger network. If it's just session auth shit going across the wire, they only need to worry about PCI compliance on the back end.

By collecting lots of info about you, they get a lower processing rate because the transaction is lower risk vs a swipe/tap.

They can save on transaction fees if they consolidate charging sessions; say you do 2-3 charging sessions in one day.

They want all the personal data they can collect on you constantly if you have the app installed, and to spam you with marketing notifications.

They want resistance to using a different charging network. Charger Company A's charger is $1/minute and Charger Company B's charger is $1.10, and they're on the same block? Obviously you're going to go to the cheaper one if you can just swipe your credit card.

If you have to download an app (using your mobile data, and it might be quite slow), register an account, etc - then you not going to bother with the cheaper station.

This is before EV charging becomes a commodity or a public utility...

Though public utilities are typically even worse, than the current landscape of charging apps :(

Honestly, it may not matter if companies don't want it.

Consumers are going to demand it, and it may be necessary before EV's become ubiquitous, assuming they do. One thing that has helped their case in the US is that payments have historically been a pain in the ass anyway, compared to many other countries. That is changing though.

> Charger Company A's charger is $1/minute and Charger Company B's charger is $1.10, and they're on the same block?

I’d go to the one that accepted my credit card and didn’t have an app.

EV are brand new and give us a chance to think of new and interesting solutions for problems that were solved decades ago. The average baby is about 75% water so do you really want to go through the trouble of separating it from the bath water? /s

I think the credit card thing would require the chargers to be monitored in a way.

It's a really big improvement, I don't want to mess around with some random app or some credit card reader. Having experienced it I'd never go back

Tap & Pay with a ccard still requires you to fiddle with a station and slows you down. If you are plugging in at home (which is our target market), the fewer interactions needed the better. Imagine every time you get home you need to take your wallet out, tap the machine, wait for some 3rd party api to talk to the charger in the dimly lit basement, and then and only then you can leave. This is like 30 seconds of your day wasted.

Plus, ultimately we want to make charging as cheap as possible and having to pay the $.30 interchange fee each time a user plugs in would add a ton of overhead to our cost model.

This would be infinitely better than the current model, where you have to install a bullshit app, which doesn’t work over 20% of the time.

I’d happily pay $0.30 per charge session to just use standard NFC or chip payments.

Also, why in god’s name would I have authentication on my home charger?

> Also, why in god’s name would I have authentication on my home charger?

Not everyone in the US lives in a single family home

But if you have a dedicated spot, then the problem is still solved.

Surely this could be dealt with by accepting a "membership card" over NFC. I'm sure my dad has a token for the parking barriers at his place of work which can also take direct card payments.

As an added bonus, when you have family or friends visiting they can pay to charge as normal (at presumably a slightly less attractive rate).

Currently, I just plug into my friends’ charger, and it goes on their electric bill.

I usually bring 10x the dollar value of the charge in booze and food, so it doesn’t matter.

Also, they don’t have to stress out over trying to figure out how to pair my car to their house and charge me $5 while they’re trying to plate dinner and deal with their kids.

If they cared about the $5 (or if I had a hummer and they had a DC fast charger, so it was $20-50) I’d happily pay cash or apple pay or venmo or really any option other than authenticating with their landlord.

If it’s a multi-family home system, why not just use contactless badges/fobs to identify each family? When you move in you sign the contract, give your bank details and get a fob. Then just badge with the fob to charge

Not a bad idea. Will look into it!

The only EVs I've used are the hire-from-the-street ones available in some cities in Europe. There's generally a small credit (free minutes) if you leave them charging at the end of a trip. There are RFID tags in the car to activate the charger — I assume it's essentially equivalent to a company credit card used to buy petrol, or when you hire an ICE car with fuel included and there's a special credit card in the glovebox to use to pay for the petrol.

E.g. https://www.greenmobility.com/dk/en/faq/

In that case they often already have a fob to enter shared (secured) parking anyway, that also works on doors, and is registered with the building management...

That makes sense that the use case in a shared home lot is different than out and about, but still doesn't obviously suggest payment routing over the charger - wouldn't monthly billing be better from the consumers point of view? You'd only need a car identifier for that.

Yes, to your point the Plug & Charge mechanism is just for authentication. Through our integrations with Yardi, Buildium, etc. payment can just be taken out of rent or tacked onto the sub-metered utility bill.

Gotcha, that makes sense.

How do you handle for example visitor spots (e.g. one off charge) in a multi-family unit?

For routine home charging, you don't want to require a credit card transaction.

Because according to the parent commenter, any company that doesn’t let them take control of their payments is a walled garden. I mean, how is their startup going to make any money if these charging companies don’t give it to them?

This road trip video does a good job showing the papercuts and more significant issues that make a non-Tesla road trip painful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92w5doU68D8

Lol, why would one want more friction on a particular activity?

There really additional friction dealing with payments, cards, buttons etc. Personally when I park, I just want to stick the charging plug into my car and walk away and not think about it, the same way I do with my phone every night.

The plug and charge solution will seem an iteration or two more advanced than others. And it serves as a customer delight.

That’s where governmental regulation should kick in and require compatibility, so you aren’t forced to change charger because you either change car or power company. I expect EU to get there at some point.

It's interesting that governments are more interested in telling you what kind of stove you can buy and seem to have zero interests in telling EV makers what kind of plug they have to use.

It took them the better part of a decade just to bring Apple to the table on USB. I don't have the same faith you do they're going to be able to even partially repeat this success in a much more diverse ecosystem like vehicles.

> I expect EU to get there at some point.

IMHO, the EU should have done this yester-five-years-ago. It's absolutely baffling they haven't already, considering they're going to outlaw ICE cars in just 6 years time, yet we don't yet have friggin EV charging regulations in place to ensure it always just works for evryone.

I assume politicians are too busy with the inflation/CoL, wars, migration and how to win the upcoming elections in 2024, to worry that we'll be caught wither our pants down on the EV infrastructure side in a few years, because they've been asleep at the wheel.

Mark my words, come 2029, and everyone's gonna freak out, there will be outcry from the voters, and the ICE ban will be postponed for 5 more years so we can get charging infrastructure sorted.

How do you expect EU lawmakers to require a standard which quite possibly hasn't even been invented yet?

I wouldn't expect any standard becoming a legal requirement until one with open specification becomes available and a significant part of the industry has switched to it.

Did Tesla not release all of their patents a few years back? Can people not just… use the stuff?

It came with a lot of strings attached. For instance, in order to use Tesla patents a company cannot attack Tesla for any intellectual property matter. Also, Tesla still makes use of trade secrets and its design patents are not released.

Which is the reason why about no one took on the offer, it is a legal minefield for not that much value. NACS became a thing only after they truly released the standard.

What was missing from NACS? Design schematics or something? Until now I was under the impression that their patent release was a noble gesture.

The patents for the NACS connector were open sourced. We are utilizing that for our charger hub/connector.

The communication and payment protocol is still proprietary.

Any thoughts on having a credit card reader instead?

You could either 1. itemize the charging bill on their monthly rent, if that parking spot is reserved for one tenant. Really should be no difference from the rest of their electricity use. 2. Charge a flat fee on their rent, and then give them charging for free between off-peak hours. Some utilities offer very cheap off peak rates for EV charging, 3. integrate a credit card reader or bill acceptor for cash payment. Option 3 seems hard if you are trying to cost optimize the charger hardware.

I am bearish on universal PnC being practical to implement. Every EV manufacturer has to make agreements with every EVSE operator to use the same root CAs and same billing system. If you think of an EVSE like a vending machine, there really is no interoperability precedent for this kind of payment. Tesla is special case because they operate both the cars and charging network. But if Pepsi owned and operated all of their vending machines, we probably would have seen the same walled garden.

Can Tesla refuse to charge a car at their whim? Because, say, you were banned from Twitter/X? Too many fast charges this week? Covered the driver-facing camera?

Tesla currently revokes supercharging status on salvage title vehicles on their network. Depending on the title and circumstances, it can be annoying to get working again.

There are hacks to make the car appear as if it is another car...

Using sine-qua-non was a classy way to obfuscate your meaning. I liked it and I don’t know why exactly. I had to read a definition to understand something that was so simple.

Glad my high school Latin classes came in useful for something.

Why does it need to be app based? Can’t you use CC terminals like a normal gas station? Swipe or tap card like any other payment?

Isn’t that what OP is saying? That it shouldn’t be app based and that the new ISO would resolve that by having the car communicate with the charging station? /edit I may have misread that

/edit2 the proposal uses certificate exchange between the car and the charging station. No app.

Ah, I hyper-focused on the dead phone and many apps and totally missed the communication hopefully moves directly between car and charger.

I think you'll need to pivot soon. Tesla has it all figured out, including destination charging.

How are you still in business when everyone will use Teslas standard chargers?

Tesla only defines the plug (the interface). Different companies can still manufacture their own plugs and other equipment. Focusing on frictionless payment seems like a good business idea.

How will you pay with cash under such a regime? No EVs for the poor, let them eat cake.

Good idea. Go ahead and get started building that and let me know how it goes.

Buy a prepaid card. Just like you have to do now for large numbers of places - including filling up with gas at many places.

EVerest is an open source project that solves for these sorts of interoperability challenges by integrating with all existing standards and making it easy to add new ones. Here's a brief video overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIsvUof3UWo. You can learn more here: https://lfenergy.org/projects/everest/.

Some feedback: I only barely realized "plug-and-charge" means something specific. [1] Generally speaking, I wouldn't expect people to know what you mean by the phrase. The problem is that people think they know because it sounds so obvious. The phrase comes across more like: "obviously, yeah, I plug it in and it charges". That understanding leaves vague the number of steps required between "plug" and "charge".

[1] e.g. "The Plug and Charge protocol tells the charging station what kind of EV you're plugging in and conveniently bills you." from https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a35044132/plug-and-charge-...

This is helpful. Generally the customers that land on our website are people who are researching which EV charging solution to install in their apartment complex, so I assumed that they already knew the term. But I guess it's helpful to spell it out.

further: EV user and have also have been involved (lightly) in some public(ish) EV Charging projects -- this is the first time I've come across the term "Plug And Charge" in reference to a protocol!

Upside: Every day is a school day and now I have something fun to read in to!

The phrase seems like it's charge as in billing, not charge as in electricity. Not sure if that is intentional or a happy pun. Anyone that has only experienced Tesla may even assume that superchargers are what everyone else experiences too. Just plug it in and get charged... and billed.

Aah wait so it's Plug-And-Supply-Currency rather than Plug-And-Supply-Current?

It’s both. Plug and charge (sometimes referred to as P&C) is the full stack of systems and interactions involved in driving up to a charging station, plugging in your vehicle, transferring electrons, and getting charged for it, all without having to open an app or present a payment instrument at time of charge.

Electrify America has supported P&C for DC fast charging on Ford vehicles, for example, but it required setup beforehand, and came with downsides (like not supporting EA’s member-discount charge rate).

I feel like stuff is pretty easy and solved for at gas stations for payment? Why wouldn’t I just pay at the “pump” (charger) exactly like we’ve all been doing for decades now?

Payment done by the car automatically seems like a solution looking for a problem.

Imagine if you had to pull out your credit card every time you wanted to charge your phone at night. This is how most EV drivers charge, so the paradigm for charging an EV is totally different than filling up at a pump.

I got frustrated with dealing with all these charger manufacturer's lousy apps, and that's what led Starlight to focus on building a seamless plug-and-charge experience. No apps required, just plug it in and go.

> Imagine if you had to pull out your credit card every time you wanted to charge your phone at night. This is how most EV drivers charge, so the paradigm for charging an EV is totally different than filling up at a pump.

I’m confused. I have limited expressive with EVs, but when I used a Supercharger, it seemed exactly like a typical gas station experience, other than payment and time spent. Why can’t the payment model be adapted? What am I missing?

Edit: I get it now. It’s aimed at residents, not visitors.

But as a resident, I’m just paying for my electricity monthly, like everyone has been, for literally decades?

But you're thinking of it as an end customer. What if instead of a 'charging' station getting all the transaction fees the car manufacturers could haggle for some bps and work their way towards a controlling interest in this consortium.

Manufacturers want in because of all the potential $.

My feeling (I've worked on EVSE's but not particularly Plug and Charge) is that standards end up being overly complex with too much potential for different implementations to disagree.

Even something as simple as charging control via control-pilot/proximity signals is already problematic with some vehicles.

Maybe because I'm an engineer and not a business guy, I do not understand why not implement the bare minimum that works and leave advanced cases for later.

Drive upto charger

Plug in

See cost per kWh on the display

Tap contactless card

Charging starts. Status shown on screen.

Optional QR code to a website to monitor charge status

Exactly the same method as buying gas. No need for apps or accounts or anything.

Has anyone pointed out that the people who own Teslas, are likely to also own several of the other cars such as audi and porche?

I think people are missing the big story here. This is Tesla winning the charging network battle (it wasn't close before this). Any EV car (which will eventually be all cars) will immediately be available for Tesla's supercharger network. This gives Tesla a massive revenue stream and scale to grow that network even bigger. Anyone who wants their superchargers has to also support all Teslas.

But it also takes away Tesla's biggest advantage, no? The charging network was a big reason to buy a tesla and now that's gone.

So perhaps they will actually end up losing more revenue than gaining.

I would expect that in the near future EVs become commodities based on a small handful of licensed platforms. Owning the charging network is a nice hedge against losing the battle to become one of the platforms.

Maybe, but a charging network is not quite a trillion dollar business, not to mention that the charging network will also become a commodity (especially since the charging protocol is open)

I disagree. People like their car to look new/different, and volumes on cars are high enough that the advantages of a custom platform is worth the cost of designing it.

The design of the car is only loosely related to the skateboard that contains the battery and the drivetrain.

Skateboard makes even less sense for EVs than for ICEs. in an ICE you have a large engine and various axels that have to be in specific places. With an EV you have more room to move the motors around where they makes sense. While you need a lot of batteries, each cell is small, so you want to put things like seats in the car first and then add cells anywhere there is extra room.

Yeah some cars (like the polestar) have really shallow rear-seat legroom, which was a total showstopper. They could have move some of those batteries to the trunk/frunk

They could, but there is also a cost to separating the batteries. More cables, which means more resistance, which means inefficiency. Not to mention the extra design and manufacturing costs.

In practice, I don't think any company is meaningfully splitting up their battery pack to take advantage of "better" packaging logistics elsewhere in the frame/body. I know in this example, they could still likely be loosely attached in the same plane, but with less density under the cabin, but I think my point holds.

Considering 90% of modern consumer automobiles use a monocoque frame the design means everything to the chassis

All cars made by the Volkswagen group are based on like 20 platforms. For example the Audi A3 and the Skoda Yeti are the same platform. They look quite different.

> People like their car to look new/different

That's true in my experience. Though it is interesting that cars look more and more similar over time rather than different.

There are probably two main answers to that.

- People generally like their vehicles to look different but not too different. Design of everything is a fashion industry.

- Fuel efficiency, practicality, and safety requirements all lead to a certain level of convergence.

Why would this be true for EVs when it's clearly not true for ICE vehicles?

>> Owning the charging network is a nice hedge against losing the battle to become one of the platforms.

Charging networks are IMHO not a viable long term business model. Building out a "platform" to sell commodity electrons is utterly stupid. Nobody wants the stupid app, they want to charge at McDonalds along the highway while they grab something to eat.

>Charging networks are IMHO not a viable long term business model.

Sort of like gas stations weren't a viable long-term business model?

> Nobody wants the stupid app, they want to charge at McDonalds along the highway while they grab something to eat.

So you should put your chargers near convenient amenities... like a convenience store... like a gas station?

Tesla isn’t building C-Stores that sell Gas or Electrons. The superchargers I’ve seen are in some random parking lot without a restroom or convenience store selling stuff.

Some of them, but I've also seen Tesla at various truck stops. In rural areas building at a convenience store make sense: they already have restrooms, some form of restaurant and various other things to buy on site - everything a traveler needs for a quick break to fill the car before getting back on the road.

In cities I think we will see less chargers as most people just go home to charge. However in poor areas they will be at places like grocery stores so you those who don't have at-home charging can charge and shop.

Not quite. Gas stations don't have enough to keep a person busy for an entire charge session. You need real shopping or a place to sit down to eat. They will also not be needed in town near your home, since people will just charge at home.

Norway is perhaps a bit special, but this is very common for service stations along the roads or in Oslo to have many fast chargers. You can buy a drink or some food, and most have some space to sit down.

I remember the first time I visited a gas station in Belgium (?) off the highway that actually had 10 or so "standing tables" to eat at from the two restaurant options in the building. We sit for 4+ hours between fill-ups; why do we not see this as the standard in most places, with more limited seating for the elderly/disabled or children who cannot reach a full height standing table?

As an American, it was really eye opening!

> Sort of like gas stations weren't a viable long-term business model?

If you only sell gas and nothing else you can only compete on price. Good luck with that.

Infrastructure (to provide fuel or energy for transportation) is a long term business model.

Aren't superchargers just the endpoint? Isn't the actual infrastructure mostly the power/energy companies?

Yes, but those already have most of the needed infrastructure. Most gas stations have enough power to run a couple level chargers - they just don't have the chargers (note I said 1 or 2 chargers, not 8+ which is what anyone serious about charging needs to install)

If Tesla hasn't played nice they would have lost too as everyone else rolled out the CCS standard cars networks would have responded and most chargers wouldn't support your Tesla.

I wonder how profitable operating the charging network is. I've always thought they probably operate the locations at break even at best, but I honestly don't know.

I do think any Tesla owner will tell you the charging infra is always scales behind demand and there are often delays waiting for an available spot. Hopefully a universal standard means more operators will participate. I just hope the payment experience can remain seamless.

I feel the bigger goal is the viability of the network effect (clustering) of electric cars. When Tesla was the only electric car company most buyers thought it was neat but didn't really consider it. A lot of buyers want their next vehicle to be EV but have range anxiety. While the Model 3/Y was top seller amongst EV buyers it's overall marketshare is still miniscule. More competition drives more churn which creates more transactions.

> While the Model 3/Y was top seller amongst EV buyers it's overall marketshare is still miniscule.

Perhaps I'm misinterpreting your statement, but the Model Y has become the best selling car in the world. That includes ICE vehicles, not just EVs. If you exclude trucks, I think it has also recently become the best selling car in the US, overtaking the Rav4.

> but the Model Y has become the best selling car in the world.

That doesn't directly correlate to marketshare. The MY is going to need many many quarters of being the best selling car to have marketshare equal to many other ICE models.

Tesla is intentionally obtuse about their numbers. But the Corolla still reigns supreme at +700k. They combine the total sales of 3+Y against the Corolla.

https://www.autoweek.com/news/industry-news/a44600661/is-tes...

is it really gone? Tesla will still have a OEM advantage here in the software and internals. Alot of the "Technology" here is the software that does thermal management and the like. Tesla's still charge faster on a supercharger than a ford f-150 would, and i imagine some future where buying a Tesla gets you "Credits" to use at the chargers.

Tesla has much different goals than the other car manufacturers. Although energy sales are only around 5% of total revenue, Tesla expects that to change going forward.

Tesla already charges more to charge a non-tesla.

Tesla was always going to lose the EV battle in the long run - if not to VW and co, then to BYD and co.

This lets them pivot to something where they have a huge moat.

They have less a moat here. Anyone can buy a level 3 charger and install it. while the economics of that are not clear, they are becoming clearer as EVs catch on. Many gas stations are looking at if chargers make sense long term, and if it does they will also install chargers.

Seems like the auto market is plenty large enough for multiple winners.

Will Tesla slowly reduce market share as the market grows? Yes, But I don't see a situation where Tesla doesn't have quite a while of sales growth and best in class EVs.

Yes and no. Tesla already has the #1 selling car (Model Y) and makes up more than half of EVs sold in the US. Eventually other networks were going to catch up. Now the other half will pay them too but they own the network. Long term it was the right choice.

But like you said, other networks will eventually catch up so long term tesla won't control the network either.

I think this actually helps Tesla in that department in another way - By everyone switching to NACS the entire fleet of CCS is now an adapter away. People will just default to NACS chargers...that will by majority be Tesla. Then Tesla can reinvest in charging stations with this new money and flood the market. Tesla could wholly snuff the market out while the companies are busy retrofitting chargers with Tesla's own plug.

People buy Teslas because they like them. Although chargers are necessary, they aren't sufficient.

Walmart has had 25 years to outcompete Amazon, and is still clueless. Phone makers have had 15 years to beat Apple, and the competition is still not as polished.

(Personally, I don't prefer Teslas or iPhones.)

Fragmented infrastructure benefits no one. Imagine if you could only fill up your ICE vehicle at shell stations because of your vehicle's brand.

Fragmentation of the charging infrastructure puts a hard limit on EV adoption, they will never replace ICE vehicles unless the infrastructure becomes as ubiquitous as gas stations.

It benefits Tesla right now - because people bought Teslas due to their charging network. It'll stop being a big benefit and that's great for competition.

It's hard to make direct analogies because unlike gas vehicles, EVs "refuel" at home. You wake up every day with a full tank of gas. Fast DC chargers are mostly for road trips.

And while it's a good thing that everyone has adopted the same charging standard, branding is just as important. Gas at gas stations is fungible. EV chargers are most certainly not. Right now Tesla's charging network is the only option that is fast and reliable.

So long as the charger supports the same connector they all work - some might be a level2 charger that takes forever, but you plug it into any car.

Gas stations can choose from 3-10 grades of gas (octane, ethanol content, road tax) to sell, and 2-6 grades of diesel (cetane, gel point, road tax) depending on what the distributor offers - no station sells them all (at least not that I'm aware of), and getting the wrong fuel can be fatal. Stations also can choose their own additive package which can make a difference.

Note that in almost all cases there is only one distributor you can buy from. Electric is generally a legal monopoly, while gasoline the closest supplier generally has a pipeline and thus can offer much cheaper prices so while it is legal to buy elsewhere it isn't practical.

> unlike gas vehicles, EVs "refuel" at home. You wake up every day with a full tank of gas.

Only for the subset of the population that owns a home with off street parking. People in denser neighborhoods, appartments buildings or who rent their property will be looking to top off while running errands or at work.

If I'm in such situation, I never buy BEV unless charger is installed at my parking. Without home parking charging, it's pure downgrade from gas experience. It will be eventually installed if govt really care about BEV.

> Without home parking charging, it's pure downgrade from gas experience.

That may be your perspective, however I have family members who owned a plugin hybrid, had no at home charging capabilities, and found the experience superior. I suspect this is a use case that will become more prevelant at the regulatory incentives begin ramping up.

> It will be eventually installed if govt really care about BEV.

I don't realistically see us being able to rollout sidewalk chargers on the scale needed to provide home charging at the sidewalk for people without driveways or garages.

Did Your family have PHEV (not BEV) without charger? It just work as a great hybrid car with overkill battery capacity, so it works.

They did, but used it as a purely electric vehicle except for road trips.

Honestly I doubt it. Musk already said himself that the company hinges on getting to full self-driving eventually, so it wouldn’t be surprising if every other decision is ultimately in service of that however unlikely it now seems.

Either way, I think it’s terrific business. Would you rather have a dependable advantage that helps you stay further ahead of competitors in one industry, or have slightly less of an advantage (when you’re already in the lead) and get to dominate a whole second industry too (gas stations, for which superchargers have no peers in the EV world).

Every new manufacturer switching to the Tesla standard further incentivizes e.g. BP, Shell, etc. to offer charging though. I don't see why they'd dominate this space.

Im working on the assumption that they’d need Tesla’s consent to use their interface and protocols.

Nope. Tesla has opened up the standard, but there are a few caveats.

Exactly. But with a twist:

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bp-boosts-ev-chargi...

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/uk-pet...

Not necessarily. Using the plug doesn't imply that you have to use Tesla's charging network, even while still using Tesla's charging hardware.

Tesla is already working on deals to sell their super/ultra-fast chargers to others like EG Group and BP. Expect the number of those deals to grow.

I would argue that this will benefit those with with Teslas. As Tesla scales up to meet the demand for their charging hardware, the cost should drop while availability increases.

Moreover, as the number of independent networks that use Tesla's charging hardware grows, there will be additional pressure/leverage/lobbying on the government, electric companies, etc to provide the behind-the-scenes infrastructure that theses charging locations require. Tesla has on numerous occasions asserted that this is one of the most difficult parts of growing their charging network in places that have the greatest demand.

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/uk-pet...

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bp-boosts-ev-chargi...

by opening up supercharging network, Tesla becomes eligible for billions of federal money. that tips the scales towards open superchargers.

The actual gains are never discussed. It could be massive or much less than you expect.

https://electrek.co/2023/08/25/tesla-supercharger-network-bi... ("Tesla Supercharger network to become $10 to $20 billion a year business, says Wedbush")

> With Tesla now having a fleet of millions of vehicles using the network and opening it up to EVs from other automakers, financial analysts are starting to see the Supercharger network has a massive business that is going to partly replace gas stations, and they want to value it.

> Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, who has been covering Tesla for a long time, came out with a new note to clients today in which he stated that he believes the Supercharger network will represent 3% to 6% of Tesla’s total revenue or $10 to $20 billion in revenue by 2030.

Estimates aren't gains. Something in their financials report would be a much better and accurate representation of gains.

Valuations and future revenue expectations are based on forecasting, based on currently available information.

At least they are not charging a license fee for the connector.

Yet

It's a standard published by SAE:

https://www.sae.org/news/2023/12/sae-j3400-tir-released

Access to Tesla's charging network is a separate issue, but the connector itself is a published standard.

Probably having the brand Tesla exposed to other cars drivers will be enough PR.

How is the brand exposed? Do the plugs have to have the Tesla name or logo on them?

Google “Tesla supercharger” and you’ll see plenty of pictures of the huge installed base with the brand clearly there.

That being said, if any of these legacy companies who were not willing to invest in a charging network decide they want to finally step up and install some chargers of their own (I’m not holding my breath for any at scale), I’m pretty certain there will be no requirement for Tesla branding. Elon has said he doesn’t give a shit about branding.

It’s more important people will see the Tesla product and witness the features of Tesla cars first hand.

Agree, the brand and the product.

Tesla has plenty of PR for the brand already.

But people will be able to compare how fast Teslas charge, and how Teslas are able to just plug in without using an app or swiping a credit card, and how the owners can watch YouTube or Netflix while charging. Things like these will be the real eye opener, not the brand exposure.

The billions in federal government subsidies (funded by the Inflation Reduction Act) will more than make up for any potential licensing fees. I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla is paying other manufactures to switch; we may never know as the agreements are confidential.

Please link to an article that documents a single subsidy that Tesla got from the government.

Crickets. Legacy auto has gotten so many multi billion dollar bailouts but people keep repeating this lie about Tesla without delving into big oil and legacy auto.

The federal government is currently running a program where they will give you a $7500 tax break for buying a qualifying electric vehicle. Tesla, being the go-to for electric vehicles at the moment, is obviously a large beneficiary of this, even going so far as to adjust the pricing on one of its vehicles to meet the program's requirements.

Tesla are getting exactly $0 of this money (it goes to the customer).

Also, every other automaker can make cars that qualify. In fact, many already do!

Also note Tesla do not make a single PEHV, so in fact plenty of automakers make vehicles that qualify and Tesla doesn't.

Here's the lists:

EVs: https://electrek.co/2023/11/07/which-electric-vehicles-still...

PEHVs: https://electrek.co/2023/11/07/which-electric-vehicles-still...

> Tesla are getting exactly $0 of this money (it goes to the customer).

You're technically correct, when limiting to first order effects of the rebate. It would be equally technically correct to state farmers don't get any money from SNAP (it goes to the customer!), and yet SNAP is "surprisingly" (to pendants) included in the Farm bill.

Your assertion that Tesla doesn't get any money from subsides is radical because it suggests that either subsidies don't work, or the do work with none value making it's way to the upstream industry the government explicitly set out to support with subsidies. Either one of these positions need supporting evidence.

> it suggests that either subsidies don't work, or the do work with none value making it's way to the upstream industry the government explicitly set out to support with subsidies.

Did the government set out to subsidise an upstream industry, or did they set out to incentivise consumers to purchase certain products? i.e. EVs not ICE.

> Either one of these positions need supporting evidence.

Interesting that mine do, and yours don't.

> Did the government set out to subsidise an upstream industry, or did they set out to incentivise consumers to purchase certain products?

It's both. If you want customers to buy certain products in large volumes, there has to be capacity to manufacture said products in large volumes.

> Interesting that mine do, and yours don't.

Me asking you for evidence does not preclude you from asking the same of me. If you want evidence that government subsidies and incentives do work, I can readily provide that[1] - it seems pretty self-evident to me considering history, and international trade complaints about subsidies.

1. https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/1/534, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10131743/, cash for clunkers, etc

I said will which means it's in the future.

The IRA EV grants can be found here: https://www.atlasevhub.com/materials/the-inflation-reduction... and if you think Tesla is not going to apply (amd receive) most of the $7 billion for infrastructure, I don't know what to tell you (I'm willing take the other side of your bet in this though). Earlier this year, most in the industry assumed CCS networks would get the money because the law was written with a requirement for interoperability (3 or more makes).

Time line of events:

2014: Tesla opens up its charger patents

[Crickets]

2022H2: IRA signed with billions available to fund interoperable charging networks (i.e. CCS at tine of signing)

2022 November: Tesla renames standard to NACS.

2023: Tesla signs agreements with other manufacturers to use it's network.

Do you suppose it was a coincidence that Tesla's standardization and agreements came within months of billions of federal money being put in the table? Billions that would have gone to an competing charging networks/competing standards?

> which will eventually be all cars

God I hope that day is long long in the future given the current ecosystem surrounding this crap. The last thing I want to add to my car is the multi-variant USB-C, thunderbolt, lightning adapter bullshit with accounts and subscriptions. It's the very worst of tech bro culture applied to critical infrastructure. What if the car makers owned and/or could strike deals with specific gas stations is an idea that only sounds good in a shareholder's mind.

Every day as car companies try to turn cars into toasters with subscription bread I'm happier with my ICE car / ebike setup. Gas used almost every day, 0. Range anxiety, 0. Using infrastructure that has been stable for longer than my parents have been alive, priceless.

I have a Tesla with no subscription and a single plug I use when I go out. Not sure what you are on about.

You can plug in at home and use chargers very rarely. After a year or so, I’m yet to try use one.

I guess this very much depends on your driving patterns.

Anyone who has an ICE car will probably still prefer that for long trips. Most people are multiple car families and so will have that choice today.

Even if the EV was the choice, a lot of people will fly (or take a train) for longer trips and so never hit the limits.

The free standard autopilot on teslas makes highway driving much less taxing. I also have an ICE car, but will always take the Tesla on long road trips. Charging stops make the trip take maybe 10% longer, but that’s fine with me.

If ICE cars were invented today, every manufacturer would try to lock you in with their own shape of fuel tank opening. Have a toyota? Use the round fuel pumps. Ford? You need to find a pump with a notch on the end of the end so it's compatible with your tank. BMW? Two notches--find a different fuel station! Jeep? Square shaped pump! Or you need to keep a set of $100 dongle adapters in your trunk at all times. $400 for the California-approved dongles.

Oh I know, it's not a condemnation of EVs the technology. The actual technology is amazing. It's just that companies can't seem to get out of their own way and our government is completely inept at forcing everyone to be less shitty.

If cars were invented today, they'd never let us have them.

"It's like a horse and buggy, but much faster and heavier."

"But it'll know somehow how to avoid other vehicles and pedestrians and trees and houses and such?"

"No, the driver has to pay continuous attention or it'll veer wildly and hit whatever's in front of it."

"Shouldn't it run on rails? Or between protective barriers?"

"Painted lines."

You should have looked up what was really said about cars (both gas and electric!) when they were first invented. Some of them look much like your list, but others it looks like you made up something when reality already had an example.

That's a good and hilarious point.

In today's safety obsessed world, cars are a terribly unsafe anachronism. Somehow tech people are more afraid to run an non-sandboxed tab in a browser than drive a 3-ton vehicle 1 painted line away from similar vehicles going the other way with a speed differential of 100 miles per hour.

That fair, I guess, since physics aren't part of a JS-bootcamp.

Blaming collective action problems on techbro culture. History would like some of your time :)

Blaming cultural problems on culture -- yes that's correct.

Use whatever words you'd like if you don't like tech bro as the colloquium. But the intersection of this behavior of end-to-end control and things labeled "tech" and headed by "tech people" is very nearly a sphere.

For the people whose whole shtick is building autonomous systems we are remarkably bad at letting go and letting those systems be autonomous when it benefits the customer.

It's like we all watched Robocop, a film about how terrible it would be if an autonomous system created for the improvement of society at large was programmed to always obey the will of its creators for their personal gain and said, "That's a great idea, I could productize that."

> This gives Tesla a massive revenue stream and scale to grow that network even bigger.

Tesla's supercharger network is a loss leader whose purpose is to sell their cars [1], whose margins are also under pressure.

There's no significant barrier to entry for EV supercharging other than perhaps having a profitable business to pair it with. The NACS connector and the exclusivity of its charging stations was a moat, one that Tesla traded for tax credits.

It's mostly a real estate game. Shell is already adding EV chargers at key stations. Others will follow.

1. https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/ev-charging/major-autom....

Nah. The real win here is for the public. The "standard" charging plug and cables weigh a LOT, so much that my elderly mother probably couldn't use one. The "standard" also mandates the use of PowerLine Communication chips even though the signal is not over the high power conductor.

We are all better off just biting the bullet now and changing everything over to the Tesla plug.

Agreed. Thank you Tesla for helping bring about a better standard here!

Better maintained than the horror show that is Electrify America as well

I've posted about this before, but the reason EA is such a horror show is due to their history. EA was created basically as government-mandated punishment against Volkswagen for dieselgate. So it's not that surprising that they didn't feel incentivized to deliver a great product.

Compare that to the Supercharger network, where providing a great experience is a huge selling point for Teslas.

I might despise Musk, and I'm not a fan of Tesla lately, but you do really have to hand it to them: they were prescient and put in all the hard work of building out the best fast charging network, so good for them for reaping the benefits.

> EA was created basically as government-mandated punishment against Volkswagen

I didn't know that. Do you have some documentation about that. Would be fun reading material for the holidays

> I might despise Musk, and I'm not a fan of Tesla lately, but you do really have to hand it to them: they were prescient and put in all the hard work of building out the best fast charging network, so good for them for reaping the benefits.

Same boat club.

The Wikipedia pages for EA and the VW emissions scandal give a good overview with linked sources. As part of the consent decree, VW had to put $2 billion into EA.

> I might despise Musk, and I'm not a fan of Tesla lately

I’m getting sick of this tiptoeing in every thread that mentions Tesla. No ones going to come to your house and beat you if you say something positive, un-hedged, about Tesla

That's not the reason I mention it. So often with any discussion about Tesla's fortunes you get ardent fanboys and detractors, who appear to be arguing much more from a tribal perspective than from an unbiased consideration of the facts. Thus, the reason I mention it is to emphasize that I'm not a Tesla fanboy, yet, from solely an objective perspective, I think their work here is deserving of praise.

> Thank you Tesla for helping bring about a better standard here!

You should probably thank the government, too. When the feds decided they were going to put billions in subsidies to a national charging network, the original regulations basically required CCS, because that was really the only cross-platform game in town - Tesla was proprietary and not open to other automakers. In a brilliant bit of chutzpah, in response Tesla renamed their charging system the "North American Charging Standard" and started coaxing other auto companies to get on board, which most other companies were OK with because Tesla has by far the best fast charging network. But it was really the government subsidies, and the threat that Tesla would be left behind if everyone else went with CCS, that sparked the opening up of NACS in the first place.

A large number of standards are what one company did on their own and then made available to everybody via the likes of ANSI/ECMA/ISO. There are a number of reasons a company would want to do this.

Rough consensus, running chargers at work. [1]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rough_consensus

This is basically how USB C became a thing. A group of engineers at Google created the connector design and then gave it to the USB standards body to use as the next gen.

Citation, please. More bluntly: I simply don't believe you.

Google has absolutely none of the expertise required to put such a connector together. It requires a very specific set of skills in chip design, signal integrity, and connector design which Google has none of.

There was a similar rumor making the rounds about Apple, spurred by Gruber.

But 9to5 Mac did some sleuthing and it seems that, in the case of Apple, it’s not entirely truthful: https://9to5mac.com/2015/03/14/apple-invent-usb-type-c/

Google also doesn’t seem to have fulfilled a bigger role than Apple did.

Apple is, at least, far more plausible as they did design a connector in the same timeframe.

I have no idea if Google had anything to do with USB C but "design" doesn't mean "build schematics for". It could be that they just had a few specs they liked and thought would make a good connector and did a rough proposal of form factor and specs.

That's not useful. Here's my diagram for a new connector -> .

Connector design like this is a delicate balance between signal integrity (wants biggger) and mechanical integrity (wants bigger) and size (always smaller).

As for signal integrity: A lot of the signal integrity was papered over by having complex interface chips. This is why there is so much training and negotiation in USB-C.

As for mechanicals: The whole point of USB-C was to take failure-mode data from the previous generations and design a connector that avoided those. USB-C, in spite of how many people bitch about it, was designed so that the the most probable failure modes (which they learned from prior things like mini and micro USB) occur in the cable--ie the replaceable part.

None of this design expertise is inside Google.

In practice none of that is true, the cables hold up fine and the ports wear out. Lightning was a FAR superior design and form factor to USB-C, where what you’re suggesting was actually the case.

I have never encountered an iPhone with a dead lightning port, it’s always the cable that wears out. There’s tons of laptops and android phones with worn out USB-C ports

Go look at the number of engineers that were on USB-C. Apple, not Google, contributed 18 of 79 named engineers listed on the connector certification project, or under 23%.

Intel had the most, as well as the editor position.

I think those 79 engineers should have paid more attention to compatibility and longevity. The cable should have been tested in a dirt tumbler. There is no way a cable should have 32 pins without some kind of built in self test of connectivity on all the pins every time you plug it in. Pins should be reassignable so that when 6 of the 32 pins are dirty/broken the cable still works at a slightly reduced speed.

All the Comms should have been done via an OFDM-like scheme rather than just a binary sequence over a twisted pair, giving far more throughput and allowing for compensating for conductive dirt in the plug causing crosstalk.

Overall, I believe such a design would have reduced costs, since there is no longer a need for such precision on cable and plug manufacture, which more than compensates for a tiny OFDM 'modem' inside the USB phy.

TIL, one more terrible design I can thank Google for!

Maybe in another 30 years we’ll get a properly symmetrical design with something approaching lighting’s durability.

The properly symmetrical design already exists and it is the phone connector, e.g. TRS

NACS / J3400 still uses CCS communications, just over Tesla's connector.

Cable weight corresponds to charging power rating and choice of materials, not plug choice.

A combined CCS2 plug is chunkier and might be a bit heavier, but not compared to, say, using a fuel pump.

Just go try them both. CCS2 Has separate AC and DC conductors, and the plug is huge owing to having 2 pair of charging pins and backward compatibility. They are more awkward and heavier than a fuel pump, and significantly heavier than the Tesla plugs. It's terrible.

> They are more awkward and heavier than a fuel pump

Really? I don't doubt that Tesla's plugs are smaller and lighter, but it always seemed a bit caricature-ist about people saying how horrible the CCS plugs are and that they weigh like a million pounds or something. They certainly never seemed heavier or harder to manipulate to me compared to a gas pump, so I just never understood this complaint.

I do think they are worse than fuel pumps in those aspects but the real issue is that, when you pull up to a gas pump, you usually pull your car right up to the pump and it's just a foot or two away from where the pump is.

Parking lot style EV chargers mean that I'm frequently pulling the charging cable across the front of my car and trying to plug the cable in straight while the tension on the cable is pulling it sideways. It frequently means it's a two hand job, one on the cable to keep in straight and the other guiding the plug in to the port.

Where did you charge?

I recently tried the ones at Esso in Canada, it literally feels like 4x the weight.

I've never needed 2 handles to manipulate a gas pump or Tesla charger, but with the CCS I had to use both hands and my body weight to sorta force it around. It was wild.

NACS is fundamentally incompatible for 3-phase power. You need a live, a neutral, a ground, and two extra wires for each extra phase.

I’ll take my chunky connector with 22kW over your sleek one with 7kW :)

> You need...

I submit a counterexample of the huge network of Tesla superchargers that can do the job quite well with the NACS connector.

    maximum power output of 600 kW and a maximum current of 615A at 1,000V

https://www.notateslaapp.com/news/1269/tesla-v4-supercharger...

The practical limits are based on the cars and their batteries, not the charge port.

Supercharging, yeah. But you (or rather "everyone") won't constantly be supercharging. You'll mostly do it at home or at your office. 7kW :)

Places where you don't need a fast charge? Overnight at home. From arrival to lunch at work. After lunch to quitting time. And even those times assume you drive more than 50 miles/day, which most folks don't.

What was the problem again?

While not the norm, 100km each way is not an unusual commute (I did that for years). With winter driving, long days out and long commutes, I suppose you could get to a point where 7kW AC slow-charging does not cut it, and having room for cheap upgrades don't hurt.

You want to charge as slow as possible for your need, but needs do vary.

Why would you consciously pick 7kW over 20+ just because of a sleeker connector?

> What was the problem again

Why would I want to wait for more than I have to? e.g. I forgot to charge during the night and need to go on a trip in a few hours. Now I need to find a fasts charger and pay for it instead of charging at home, why exactly?

>The practical limits are based on the cars and their batteries, not the charge port.

You're referring to DC fast charging. For AC charging the NACS is limited to single phase. This is a charge port thing, not the car or battery.

Which doesn't matter much in the US, but it does in Europe.

So what? For high-power charging, DC is better anyways. For low-power charging, having extra phases is useless.

In europe the connections are a lot lower amperage, around here for example 35 ampere per phase. But having 3 phases is pretty normal and the standard in any new house, which means 3 phases can let you charge at 22kW with a few Ampere left, while with 1 phase you can only charge at 7 KW.

That does make it useful to charge it in a few hours in the afternoon, instead of having to wiat the night.

In which European country is triphasic power for houses becoming normal?

apartment blocks always do

In Denmark, the only places without triphase power are some very old apartments in inner Copenhagen. To be fair, some of those apartments predate US independence by a hundred years. Those buildings do have triphasic power, but had a silly scheme where each apartment got two random phases.

All houses have triphasic power (usually 35A per phase, sometimes 63A), and all apartment buildings with electrics from the last 2-3 decades provide triphasic power to each apartment as well.

Our ovens and cooktops expect triphasic power, with a two-phase downgraded configuration for backup.

Same for Sweden I believe.

In the Netherlands pretty much every house has it. Even if it's not connected yet the lines will have been buried already.

Where I am (Eastern Europe) the cost difference is insignificant. There is no reason to not get triphasic for new detached/semi-detached houses.

Super chargers can charge a Tesla up to 250kw

The cost of getting one is what?

I have a 22kW CCS charger at home and it is seems perfectly fine.

My point being the connector, which is the topic here, is the exact same form factor while still delivering 10x what that chunky one does in the poster's situation. The choice isn't "small tesla form factor and slow" versus "chunky and a tiny bit faster"

The cost of the supercharger isn't really relevant either, most US homes are gonna max out at 200 amp service which is a max of 48kw, but realistically probably half that due to your house needing electricity and a single custom circuit unlikely to be over 100 amps.

CCS1 has separate AC and DC pins in the connector, but no cable has conductors for both. I've looked, since I was trying to make a passthrough testing device! Is CCS2 different?

If you get the DC cable, you have conductors on the pilot pins and the DC pins, and the AC pin positions are just empty.

If you get the AC cable, you have conductors on the pilot pins and the AC pins, and the DC part of the connector isn't there at all.

Nope. No separate AC and DC conductors for CCS2. From wikipedia [1], the DC cable has: PE, CP & PP (comms), fat DC+ and fat DC-. That's it. In the AC portion of CCS2 there are connectors for Neutral and up to three lines (for three phase charging), but these are not present for a DC cable.

I have to admit I haven't used Tesla plugs, but there is already a slight difference between the cable from a 50kW charger and a 350kW charger.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_Charging_System

How? Once you add thermal management and active cooling to be cable.weigjr is no longer coupled to power delivery.

I actually got a CCS adapter and did exactly that with my Tesla this week.

Esso in Canada has free DC charging for a while through their Journie app.

It is like manhandling a pressurized firehose, and I'm a 30 year old male who works out. I had to actually put my phone away and use both hands to force it around, I'm accustomed to the Tesla connector I easily one-hand.

And despite how big and thick it was, it was still so weirdly heavy I had to double check it wasn't somehow secured to the ground as well.

There is a 0% chance either of my elderly parents would be able to get that plugged in.

Shall we call it... I don't know, a "win-win"?

Can other manufacturers produce Tesla charging cable else we're setting up a lightning cable vs USB-c situation for future us

How long does it take to charge if my EV battery is at about zero with a supercharger? The same time it takes to pump gas?

No. Much longer. And it depends massively on battery size too since they vary quite a bit more than gas tank sizes.

https://insideevs.com/reviews/516438/tesla-supercharger-comp...

Battery size only really matters if you are maxing out the charger since the amount of power the battery can take scales with kwhs. To be fair being charger limited is pretty common currently, but in ideal conditions a larger battery will be able to charge more miles/minute than a smaller one.

Depends on the EV. A few years back I did a ~400 mile road trip in a Model Y. We had to make one top-up charging stop which took about 15 minutes. We walked to a spot and got a snack while we waited.

A similarly-sized ICE vehicle could have possibly done the trip without a stop, or required a quick 5-minute top-up depending on conditions.

I've done lots of long road trips in ICE vehicles and we usually stop to walk around and stretch for about the same amount of time and with the same frequency as charge stops call for.

If you're trying to shave every minute off of a trip you'd come out behind, but IMO you're a glutton for punishment if you're trying to race through a 1000+ mile road trip without stopping for more than 5 minutes at a time.

I travel a lot in my SUV in remote areas like between Reno and Vegas.

As a gas driver I like the fact there's a gas station in remote areas and it takes me three minutes to fill my tank and go.

When do we think as interested EV driver will my driving experience match my gas car diving experience and needs? Are we there yet?

Maybe in future with different approach like https://youtube.com/watch?v=VmWL1hZQmD0

Oh just maybe (yikes) ..I'm on the fence about buying an EV as gas car provides me the best experience for my needs. I drive a Ton and in remote areas too

Do those places have no power sockets?

Regular outlets are limited to 1.5 kW, so charging a car takes more than a day.

You assume the slowest outlet + full tank worth of driving. Possible, but not how most road trips happen.

Are you imagining a road trip where you ask random strangers to move their oven and run a cord out the window for several hours?

I'm guessing 5-10 years. However in 30 years the opposite question will be the case - if you are driving a gas car you will have to plan ahead. As EVs take over gas stations will start to disappear.

Well maybe you hope ..have skin in this game... as nothing is for certain. Hybrids seems to becoming even more popular as well other car manufacturers are looking into hydrogen and other sources.

In five to ten years we'll see if indeed there are more EV chargers everywhere like there are currently gas stations. An infrastructure that's over a 100 years old.

I'm all for new tech but as a UX professional new tech needs to provide an even better experience which personally something like a key fob (can be RFID hacked, you lose the fob you have to get your car towed to dealer and pay additional / hundreds for a new key fob)is a terrible UX compared to just a metal key (can't be hacked.. can easily drive to dealer to have a metal key made).

The hybrids I see have so little range on battery only that it may as well not be an option. Meanwhile if you charge at home electric is much cheaper than gas when you can find otherwise similar vehicles to compare. Sure hybrid does save gas and so is cheaper, but the savings I could get from a car that does all my normal daily trips on battery only are compelling.

FWIW there are ~9 superchargers along Highway 95 between Reno and Vegas, and it's a 400 mile trip. You would probably only need to stop and charge once.

It depends on the EV and the supercharger. But in general it'll be slower than pumping gas. My CCS car takes around 15-18 minutes to get to 80% (because of diminishing charging curves, with most (all?) cars it's faster to do 5 charging stops from 0-80% than 4 charging stops from 0-100).

I haven't done a super long road trip in an EV, but for drives with 1-2 charging stops it doesn't feel that different than ICE cars, especially if have passengers and invariably end up waiting for everyone to go to the bathroom, get a snack, etc. Only exception is places like quartzite where there can be a long line of EVs waiting to charge.

we took a road trip last summer about 4000 miles in our model Y Long range. You end up supercharging approximately every three hours for about 15 minutes. it actually worked out very well because our first stop of the day was almost always lunch. we picked hotels that had chargers on site so we started each day with enough charge to make the next supercharger.

Were you traveling in remote areas something like between Reno and Vegas or other similar long remote stretches?

So stop in Tonopah NV,which is half way inbetween. Most EVs have the range to make it that far. I just picked that town by looking at a map - I'm sure there are a couple other choices even tough it is a desolate area.

I don't know if there is a charger there today, but it is an obvious place where one is likely to be added sometime.

minneapolis, mn to kitty hawk, nc

There's 3 Tesla superchargers between Vegas to Reno, in Beatty, Tonopah and Hawthorne, which is roughly 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 of the way through. So definitely doable but definitely less convenient than an ICE car that can make that drive in one shot without refueling.

Not sure how much margin that Tesla will be making on the charging. I don't think the financial details of these deals have been disclosed. Adding lots of revenue but with no margin doesn't really add value to Tesla.

(Of course, to the extent they get funding from the government or other manufacturers to offset the capex required for building out more stations and chargers, that's great for Tesla & anyone.)

In states where they are registered as an energy provider? A lot. A 10-80% charge will net Tesla $20. Comparatively a gas station that refills a midsize car with a 20 gallon tank will only net $6.

And where is that?

I think you mean it will _gross_ Tesla $20. From my research, Tesla is (currently) not making much on energy delivered. That _will_ certainly change in the future though.

Using Texas as an example:

10-80% on a Model S/X is 70kwh. Rate billed to customers will vary from 30-50c/kwh at time of charge. Spot in Texas typically ranges from 5c to 15c/kwh. Assuming charge equipment is fully depreciated all they need to pay is maintenance and network cost, which is marginal across a bank of 20 chargers.

70kwh x 25c = $17.50.

Using California as an example, they are charging $0.12 / kWh more for non-Teslas than for Teslas. I don't see any reason to assume that delta would be different in other locations.

Since the Tesla-Supercharging business is running at break-even, you're looking at something like $8.40 for a non-Tesla adding 70kwh.

In Tesla's most recent quarter, their revenue for "Services & Other," which is where Supercharging lives, was $2,166M, while the cost of revenue for Services & Other was $2,037M. So, a gross profit of $129M on revenue of $2,166M or ~6% gross margin. This is in line with their previous statements that they run the Supercharging network at breakeven - although they don't seem to publicly break out SC-specific numbers from the Services & Other totals.

There may be outlier locations, but overall Supercharging is not a big profit center for them. Maybe it'll improve with scale.

Sure, that's supercharging Tesla vehicles. They are of course going to charge more for non-Teslas.

Using California as an example, they are charging $0.12 / kWh more for non-Teslas than for Teslas. I don't see any reason to assume that delta would be different in other locations.

Since the Tesla-Supercharging business is running at break-even, you're looking at something like $8.40 for a non-Tesla adding 70kwh. So that's pretty close to your gas vehicle estimate.

People also made the argument that the exclusivity of the Tesla supercharger network was a positive for Tesla. It's hard for both to be true.

I think the reality is that uncertainty about charging away from home pushed a lot of people towards Tesla who might otherwise have considered a different make/model. With that gone, a moat vanished. That being said, competition in the US EV market is still weak. Maybe the added charging revenue outweighs that for now, but long-term, it seems like it will undoubtedly be a negative.

I think the difference is that over time Tesla has streamlined mass production, installation, and reliable operation of their chargers.

They are averaging 1.5 charging stations installed per day over the last year in North America. Each of those stations has at least 8 chargers, some of them have 24, 40, or more.

They have moved to pre-fab construction where a row of 8 chargers are all installed in a concrete slab that can be dropped into a site and commissioned in a very short time period.

Basically nobody else is keeping up with them at charger deployment in the US and that creates a market opportunity for Tesla and a need to make some return on all of that construction by increasing utilization rates.

The price of charging is already dominated by the marginal cost of electricity, in the same way the price of filling your gas tank is by the price of gas. That will only be more true as charging gets faster. So an advantage in fixed costs is unlikely to be much of a strategic benefit. If they can save 100k/stall, that's great. But that is only a few hundred million a year at that install rate.

> The price of charging is already dominated by the marginal cost of electricity

No it isn't. Most level 3 chargers are 3x-4x the price of electricity.

PG&E commercial energy rates in California are $0.36/kwh including delivery[1]. Tesla charges about $0.50/kwh[2].

[1] https://www.pge.com/tariffs/electric.shtml [2] https://electrek.co/2022/09/28/tesla-hikes-supercharger-pric...

Up to around $0.70 now at peak times:

https://www.reddit.com/r/TeslaModelY/comments/17bls7u/woke_u...

How are you estimating demand charges?

Cries in Australia numbers.. There are 79 sites in total (recent list1), and a different source gave me 1958 for USA (October 2023).

With US population ~14x that of Aus (~350m vs ~25.5m), the ratio of chargers in the US is over double ours, plus your build output is way higher too.

We share that the non-Tesla chargers are largely useless.

1) https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/growth-of-supercharg...

Times change and companies need to adapt with the times. 2015-2022, exclusivity would be a huge positive for Tesla. Their vehicles would have lots of charging stations while other vehicles wouldn't. That's great for Tesla.

When the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure plan, it became clear that CCS would become the dominant charging standard in the US - unless Tesla acted fast. Tesla's port would go from an advantage to a disadvantage. Tesla has 12,000 US chargers today. Maybe the company would make that 25,000 by 2030. The NEVI pushes for 500,000 chargers by 2030 with the CCS port. Toward the end of the 2020s, Tesla would feel pressure to switch to CCS because the majority of chargers in the US would be CCS. Tesla owners would complain that their Tesla vehicles used a different port from 95% of the public chargers.

By pushing the industry to adopt the Tesla charger, they ensure that chargers built using the NEVI money will most likely have Tesla ports. They could even argue that the administration should drop the CCS requirement given that the industry has moved to the Tesla port.

Tesla's port would have gone from an advantage to a hinderance. If Tesla didn't move the industry to the Tesla port, they'd eventually have to move to CCS. People would want their cars to be compatible with 95% of the chargers out there. When Tesla announced a switch to CCS, sales of current vehicles would likely crater. With Tesla abandoning their port, people would want to wait for the new model. Tesla might need to offer steep discounts to get people to take the "old" port. Instead, by moving the industry to their port, they put the uncertainty on competing vehicles; they make potential punchers of competing vehicles more likely to buy a Tesla or delay their competing purchase. That either adds to Tesla sales or makes competing companies question their EV commitment.

It's not that Tesla wanted to give up their moat. It's not that Tesla wants a bit of charging revenue. It's that if 95% of the chargers in the US become CCS, that moat is trapping Tesla in rather than keeping competitors out. Yes, having Supercharger exclusivity would still be an advantage for a few more years - and it will still be given that it'll be a couple years before competitors have Tesla's port on their vehicles. However, Tesla doesn't want the situation where their port becomes the odd one out where Tesla owners need to fumble with CCS adaptors. Maybe Tesla gives up a year or two of Supercharger advantage, but they ensure that it doesn't become a disadvantage.

Agreed, I think its much fairer to say they snatched a stalemate out of the jaws of defeat rather than just "this is good for Tesla".

Where is the FTC?

Good take, I think that’s accurate. Part of me still wants to believe that Tesla as a company also just wants to help speed up the global transition to EVs (more than they already have). Maybe that’s naive though.

I think a more pleasant way to put this is that NEVI created circumstances where Tesla could capture more value from an open standard than from a closed one. And did so at a relatively modest cost to the taxpayer, compared to the public benefits it will produce.

PS Did NEVI (or IRA) actually mandate CCS, or did it simply mandate an open standard, which CCS was the only option to satisfy at the time?

I think the idea is that so far, and for now, the chargers have indeed helped them keep a significant lead in EV sales. Eventually though, many other companies will also be selling very good EVs, and if Tesla doesn't open their chargers, the rest of the industry will standardize on something else, and it will eventually get good (or at least good enough) out of necessity. So instead of being the only decent option, Teslas will be the odd one out that have their own weird charging setup. As long as that setup is good it might not be too much of a detriment for them, but eventually it would stop being a major benefit either. So, better to use their current position to become the dominant charging solution for all brands.

They were never going to corner the EV market long term. But they actually do have a chance of being the dominant charging supplier for every car on the road.

Yeah, I was holding out on buying Ionic5 because of the lack of good charging network, even though I will only use it for occasional roadtrip. I will be charging at home for everyday use.

Now that everybody is in Tesla supercharger, Teslas are losing its appeal to me now.

I just need to wait until 2025 when everybody actually uses NACS. lol.

You don't need to hold out on buying a car you like because of the shape of the charge port. Passive adapters will be available since the actual communication protocol is the same. Since you roadtrip occasionally it won't make much difference in convenience.

The flipside argument is that Tesla has by far the largest fleet. If Tesla had forced the industry to standardize on a non-Tesla connector, and subsequently more charging options had popped up to support it, there was a risk (to Tesla or their customers) that they would have to retrofit millions of cars or force their customers to use annoying dongles. Now that risk is gone, and they also own the dominant charging network in North America and billions in subsidies.

To be clear, this is only in the US. In the EU for example, Tesla were required to adopt the common standard instead, and Superchargers will already charge every EV on the market, as will every other charger.

(No specific comment on the quality of each of the charging standards.)

There is no such big story here.

The estimates are somewhere around 10B $ of revenue (not profit !) per year by 2030, and that's an optimistic scenario. Base case scenarios are much worse. And even that hypothetical 10B$ is hardly a 'massive' revenue stream for a company projecting to sell 10 million cars by that time (I would put their chances of achieving that goal at 0.01%). As usual with Tesla - it's all about projections, hyperboles etc, while usually ignoring actual numbers (not a shot at you, just an observation).

There is a fair point to be made though, that this is a big loss for Tesla, as their charging network was pretty much the sole remaining advantage over their competition.

> by 2030

> a company projecting to sell 10 million cars by that time

At their latest investment day they very clearly said their goal is 20 million cars a year by 2030.

Yeah, but that was on the investor day - a lot of stupid things was said on that day. Like, and I quote here, "demand for our existing vehicles in terms of the desire to own them might as well be infinite"...

Yeah, infinite demand for sure ! That's certainly why they were cutting prices aggressively.

> Yeah, infinite demand for sure ! That's certainly why they were cutting prices aggressively.

The Model Y is now the second best selling vehicle in the US, and the number one in the world. They're selling every single vehicle they can make, right on 2 million vehicles this year.

So far, demand continues to exceed production.

Is that true ?

As far as we know, the factories are not operating at full capacity and the inventory increased considerably lately. And this is despite the price cuts.

Indeed.

https://www.topspeed.com/tesla-model-y-second-best-selling-v...

https://www.greencars.com/news/the-tesla-model-y-is-the-best...

I understand the ridicule that the EU gets sometimes, and especially so when trying to regulate stuff like AI where it seems the EU wants to regulate more than to create start ups etc...

But this is one thing the EU just nailed the hammer into the wood immediatly, and rightly so.

I can't even remember the time it was. Maybe 2013? 2014? They just set a standard and everyone, even Tesla, adopted it.

Every single EV can plug into every charger. Whether it's a public one, a private at the office, a Tesla supercharger or a home charger at your home. Plug and go!

Glad to see NA finally agrees on a standard now. This can only help EV adoption. Especially given the sorry state of other chargers than Tesla's over there.

Eh, I think if NA had forced a standard quickly (which the US has actually sort of done with the infrastructure bill), it would've been CCS which has a lot of downsides

Any downside other than bigger plug?

And plug is bigger partially because it needs to support 3 phases, which isn’t a thing in USA houses (while common across the whole world) but is a thing at industrial locations. Tesla plug doesn’t work with 3 phases.

CCS1 used in North America is only single phase.

CCS2 used in Europe (and elsewhere) supports three phase.

The electricity grid has three phases in the US right? Are devices seldom connected to three phases?

Three phase power is out there but you never see it in residential and rarely in commercial. It's pretty much just an industrial kind of thing.

I have two 3-phase 480V 16A sockets in my 50m2 European apartment.

I disagree with the rarely in commercial. It's extremely common in commercial environments from what I've seen.

Bigger plug is a big one, like you mentioned. 3 phase isn't an issue in the US version IIRC, but it still has more pins than NACS to maintain backwards compatibility.

Thicker + heavier cables too (not sure if that's required by CCS or just an implementation difference w/ NACS). Together that makes CCS much more unwieldy than a gas pump.

The NACS latching mechanism is a lot better- latch failures are a big part of why so many J1772 chargers are broken and unusable.

CCS is a worse standard than NACS. The connector is huge. Also CCS locks the cable on both sides (charger and car), so a bad charger or cable can strand your car. NACS locks only on the car side.

Both have up and downsides to them. The NACS is physically smaller yes, but CCS2 supports 3-phase power, which NACS does not.

In the end the most important thing it that you can charge when you want to. So I'm glad there's now a standard in NA. And congrats to Tesla, they've earned it.

The CCS2 does not have the issues of the CCS1 but is as big that is the only downside. But if you want to fit 3 phase AC charging you need a big plug.

Huh? If anything this disproves your point. Industrial players quickly (all things considered) converged on a superior format. I usually agree with you on standardizing stuff like this but this isn't an example of top down standardization leading to better outcomes. Not necessarily worse, but not better either.

Well there are now thousands and thousands of chargers in the US that have to be retrofitted to NACS, if possible.

On top of that many cars will now need adapters to charge at public infrastructure.

And in the meanwhile many people still can't charge at every public charger because they have CCS or Chademo or Tesla and the charger has another one.

> converged on a superior format

I don't have any skin in this game (not American, currently own a Petrol car in SEA and a Diesel in Australia), but isn't the move to NACS almost entirely driven by manufacturers wanting (customer) access to the better-maintained and faster charging network, rather than some intrinsic benefit of the plug itself?

Superior in what way?

CCS2 is terrible, I'd hate to be forced to use that giant bulky connector and cable. The EU got it wrong. Design by committee always sucks.

It was designed by VW I think, who handed it over to other car companies so there could be a universal connector.

The reason it's bigger is because it supports 3-phase power, which NACS does not. 3-phase power is a big thing in Europe.

This is very true about 3 phase, but I have heard that there is interest in it being used in EU for AC charging in public garages because it can handle anything up to 277 volts vs J1772 which can only do 208/240. So they can give it 1 of the 3 phases @ 220V and it will work unlike J1772. Allegedly.

But I kind of doubt it will go anywhere when they've been forcing CCS2 on everyone.

The CCS2 AC-only connector (the one for normal charging at home, destination charging and so on) already supports 3-phase with up to 480V phase-to-phase, up to 22kW. It's larger than the NACS connector — there are two additional large pins — but not unwieldy.

so much so that I have a 22kW 3 phase charger at home. (AC, type 2)

3 phase is stupid. DC or bust.

Do you know what you are talking about. Can't decide whether you are joking or whether you really think people should charge via DC in their homes

The CCS Type 2 plug was designed by Mennekes - it's even referred to as "Mennekes plug" in some places.

I stand corrected! Thanks

It is a horrible, heavy connector.

It's big, but it really doesn't matter in practice. Yes, J1772 looks nicer and is easier to handle, but it can't pump as much wattage as CCS2, and in the end that's watt (:P) matters.

It matters when it's -20C and the cable can't bend

Honestly hasn't been an issue to me.

I'd also like to point out that that's really only true with cables designed to carry currents that can't be supported by J1772 anyway...

I've used both the US Tesla plug and CCS2. CCS2 is bulkier and heavier but it makes no difference in the daily life. A standardized connector is also a lot nicer than dealing with adapters.

>Every single EV can plug into every charger.

Nit picking, but there's a bunch of Nissan Chademo still around. Like my Leaf. I'm a bit perplexed that Nissan is still selling new Chademo cars here, since it's on the way out. I very rarely need DC charging though, and there's still lots of Chademo locations if I do. That aside, the Leaf is a wonderful car.

As a fellow Leaf owner, I agree it's really perplexing and frustrating. I was looking at what else Nissan are doing, and while they've gone for CCS on the Ariya (and also got the active battery thermal management), frankly I don't want or need an SUV.

DalasEVRepair on YouTube is testing a Chinese CCS to CHAdeMO adapter. If that ever becomes a reliable product, then NACS to CHAdeMO would be an incremental change.

Convert 50kW by random cheap adapter, it looks like a one of the most dangerous thing.

Serious question is every EU charger outlet billed in a common way, like with cash, an app, debit/credit card, in car screen, with a payment screen, or preconfigured to bill seamlessly?

Seems like the billing issues at non Tesla chargers in the US were a large part of the issues..

Here in Germany at least, most chargers accept RFID cards for billing, and basically all through an app.

My only problem with it is that the app that comes with my company's card is total crap (often won't start to charge, and then sees the charging port as being in use for like 5-10 minutes, so you have to wait that long for a second attempt. It's HORRIBLE.)

I can only talk for France. The payment is not standardized. Tesla is plug-and-pay like in the US but others are not. Every charging stations brand has its own app with the same issues as the US, where it may or may not work that day.

There is no mandated billing method, but the ability to pay without registering an account is mandated. Additionally every charger has a unique id with a QR code.

Usually you either just plug it in (first party charger) or just scan the QR code with your favorite charging app which will handles the billing (third party charger).

I don't have that in my country, so that probably is not mandated in the EU or is very recent.

A law was passed earlier this year that means mandatory card/contactless payment, and prices clearly shown (as opposed being hidden in an app). Unclear exactly when it will be enacted though.

Thanks, what do the unbanked do in the EU? Some local cities have banned cashless stores, wonder if this will apply to EV chargers which seem to be unmanned.

>Thanks, what do the unbanked do in the EU?

Prepaid debit cards? Or otherwise charging at home / workplace.

I doubt there is any overlap between "unbanked" people an people who can buy EVs

Whilst I cannot speak for the entirety of the EU, at least in the Nordics, I'd say life would be pretty hard in many other aspects if you're unbanked. Just getting a salary would become problematic. Very few employers would pay out salary in cash.

Public charging would be far down the list there.

Thanks all who replied!

In practice, it seems most charging stations I see here in Switzerland have 3 different plugs: AC, CCS DC, and CHAdeMO. And half of them have an attached cable and half are BYO.

And Europe even did it better than China. Connectors are also standardized in China but AC and DC use completely different connectors. And the AC connector had enough pins for 3-phase power but two were unused.

Great work by Tesla recognizing that infrastructure is half the equation for an EV future.

They have moved the EV future forward by at least a decade.

Logical move. North American Charging Standard does not exist in Europe making car re-import much more difficult.

If it’s electrical it wouldn’t be too hard to conver from one standard to another using an adapter, since it’s standard on both sides there will be a money incentive to make one

How about voltage / current / communication? Seems quite a complicated problem, it's not just a case of different USB plug styles..

It actually is very similar to USB plug styles. NACS communicates the same way that CCS does. Converting between NACS and CCS1 or CCS2 connectors should be easy.

The biggest issue is the amount of current involved.

Actually USB is a great example.

USB C can charge at 5v, 10v, 20v, etc. When you plug in a device to the charger a hand shake happens between the charger and device and they choose the voltage and amperage that makes sense. A macbook pro can take 100W over USBC but obviously your headphones or phone aren't going to.

Tesla is using the same communication standard, they just combine AC and DC on the same pins which means an adapter can be pretty cheap.

The voltage and current are determined by negotiation between the car and charger. There were plenty of US Teslas imported into Norway in the early days. They have no trouble charging here. If necessary a simple conversion can be done.

Making my 2015 S70D that had a Type 2 connector work with CCS2 was a 300 USD conversion. I can't see any reason why converting from NACS to CCS2 would be any more difficult or expensive.

Remember teslas come with a CCS adapter that can go the other way.

So there is actually a technical reason here. NACS isn't a thing in Europe because 3 Phase power is much more common in Europe. NACS does not support 3 Phase power, and as a result, is not that common in Europe.

3 phase is very common in the US. Most single family houses don't have it, everything else is likely to have it.

For chargers 3 phase gains nothing. For induction motors 3 phase is useful - but in the modern world even where you have 3 phase you often will run the power through a VFC just so you get control of RPM. For a few other things 3 phase is nice because there is always one phase that isn't near zero to draw power from, but where that matters you can work around it with a few capacitors.

3 phase typically has 400V between the phases and neutral in Europe, the phases don't gain you anything, but the voltage does.

Pretty sure residential 3-phase in Europe is 400V phase-to-phase, it's 220V phase-to-neutral.

make that 230V (min.) or rather 240V (nominal).

230V nominal in EU

You're right, though tolerances allow for up 253V since 2009. I usually measure between 235V and 242V from the wall.

It's 220/240 volt RMS to neutral, which is about 312 volt maximum to neutral at the top of the phase.

Voltage is solely a matter of how the transformer is wound. In the US you get a choice when you contact the power company, 208, 240, 440, and 480 are all voltages I've personally seen in the US, depending on the area (not all utilities will provide all voltages, so there are some I haven't seen)

3 phases give you three times amount the power as 1-phase with only 4 wires (instead of 2 in a single phase, or 3x the thickness).

The NACS standard still only supports single phase power. It was the electrician who installed my home charger that said it is why they weren't in Europe homes.

NACS supports either one or two phases for AC charging which would be used in most home chargers. A really high power charger would use DC with the AC/DC conversion happening before (and that could be from a three-phase source)

What the US has is split phase power, when one phase is 240V and that is split to make two 120V legs. NACS supports single phase power, either 120V (Level 1) or 240V (Level 2).

There is no such thing as two-phase power, there is single-phase or three-phase. Since three-phase is better than two-phase.

You can look at it either way. "Phase" literally means the offset of the waveforms. With 3-phase, each of the phases is 120° out of sync. With split phase, you can look at it as a single, 240V phase with neutral in the middle, allowing it to be split into two 120V halves. Or you could look at it as two 120V phases, 180° out of sync, such that the difference between them is therefore 240V.

> NACS supports either one or two phases for AC charging which would be used in most home chargers.

Lots of european homes have 3-phase service. I have 3-phase 400V in my flat.

Theoretically perhaps, but practically, most single phase AC EV chargers on Europe/Australia etc. are only 7 kW but 3-phase are 11 or 22 kW (both 7 kW and 22 kW are about 30 A per phase, but three phase you obviously have three of them, so three times the power!). That’s not “gaining nothing”!

While sometimes you get more power on 3 phase, that is only about the size of the feed and nothing to do with 3 phase.

But you have three feeds giving you three phases to use, so 3x the power available to you. Out here, even electric stoves (with ovens) have 3 phase connection options and tankless water heaters almost exclusively come as 3 phase models.

Power is volts times amps. 3 phase just means you add the power of all three phases, but you can get the same power from one phase with a little algebra. You need different size wires and breakers, but there is nothing there that 3 phases gives you.

Let's say you have a cable with 2.5mm^2 wires, each of which can carry 20A of current to stay within code. At 230V that's 4600W.

Now you want more power, to keep the math simple, let's say 13800W (3x the power above).

With a one phase system, for 3x the power, you need 3x the size of wire, so 7.5mm^2, ie. 3x the amount of copper (since all wires, neutral and PE have to be that size too).

With a three phase system, you can get the same power with 3x2.5mm^2 live wires (+1 neutral + 1 PE), so instead of 3x the amount of copper, you only need 5/3's of copper to get 3x the power.

Not sure what PE is in this example, but you don't need a neutral in 3 phase.

You don't need it in a "triangle"/"delta" wiring, but you need it in a "star"/"Y" - https://www.electronicshub.org/comparison-star-delta-connect...

PE is protective earth, grounding wire. Usually you need PE and neutral lines separate for FID (GFCI) protection.

You’re again talking in hypotheticals and ignoring the practical factors.

Around here, it’s usual for the utilities to limit residential services to 80A per phase (commercial properties can get a lot more).

So for a residential property you can literally get three times as much power by upgrading from single phase (which is common for small houses) to three phase (less common around here but available) due to this limit.

In theory I could just get a single phase service of three times the current, but in the real world the utility won’t give me that and makes me upgrade to three-phase.

This is by policy, since it helps balance the phases in the grid back to the local transformer, which the utility wants, so they also limit, for example, how much solar export you can do per phase for residential property - theoretically I should be able to export 15 kW on a single phase, but they don’t let me, so in the real world I am limited to 5 kW per phase, meaning I can only export 5 kW on single phase or 15 kW on three phase.

So in terms of pure electrical theory you are correct, but when thinking about real world policies of electrical utilities due to how power grids are designed, you do get a lot of benefit from three-phase.

P=sqrt(3) IV cos Theta not just three times IV

With three phases in Europe you get 400v, which means less amps for the same power, which means lower losses or thinner cables?

You can get 400V 3 phase in the US. While houses don't, almost all commercial locations have it already. So most public chargers in the US have 3 phase available. charge at home doesn't, but those tend to be lower power charge all night vs the charge in half and hour commercial chargers.

3 phases give you 3x the power for only 2x the amount of copper

And two phases give you 2x the power for the same copper.

I'm guessing the calculation would be based the other way, i.e. whether there is an installed base or not. If you have a 3-phase source, not using all the phases would limit total power delivery needlessly. So most European residences will want 3-phase charging.

On the other hand, there are A LOT more volkswagens and audis in europe (and even some porsches) than teslas. Add seat, opel and škoda to this, and the number is even higher.

While that is true to some extent, it's a very dynamic situation/market.

https://electrek.co/2023/12/19/audi-puts-big-ev-push-on-the-...

https://electrek.co/2023/11/16/volkswagens-ev-woes-worsen-ov...

VW owns Audi, Seat and Skoda.

(On a side-note, I own a VW EV and love it)

The main reason is not technical, it's that the EU mandated CCS2 back in 2013. From then on, Tesla's plug became irrelevant, chargers must have CCS2.

There were already two connector standards for NA and EU, CCS Combo 1 vs CCS Combo 2.

NACS / J3400 is a different connector but still uses CCS communication protocols. So there isn't a huge market differentiation border in swapping CCS Combo 1 to NACS.

There is an additional requirement with NACS that the vehicle needs to route both AC and DC charging over the same connector pins.

Adapters cost a few hundred dollars. That's not much compared to the cost of shipping a car across an ocean.

I wonder how much this will have an Osborne effect i.e. will people just stop buying their EVs until they release cars with the Tesla connector?

Buying a car without that plug now is a bit like buying a Betamax player right after everybody announces they'll soon only support VHS.

the Technology Connections video on NACS is very educational on the topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJOfyMCEzjQ

Other Audi EV news: "Audi puts big EV push on the back burner" https://electrek.co/2023/12/19/audi-puts-big-ev-push-on-the-...

Stellantis are the only remaining holdout. It seems inevitable they'll jump on board too.

If they are the last domino, they also have the worst negotiation position. Whatever number Tesla says will be their cost.

Not really, last thing Tesla wants is antitrust oversight for monopolistic practice.

Would be a bit ridiculous to penalise Tesla as a monopolist given they virtually pioneered the industry in America within the last generation.

This is just imagining future scenarios, but I don’t see an inherent contradiction. That’s one way to end up with a monopoly.

Sure? It’s just weird to set the precedent that opening up your standard means you’re now a monopolist.

The conversation is about what if Tesla doesn't open the standard to one company. An unlikely situation likely.

Mr. Rockefeller from Standard Oil on line 2.

why would Tesla be involved? NACS is an open standard

Will every car that implements a standard be able to use the Tesla Superchargers at full speed? Or would the charger decide if it trusts the car first?

Tesla wants government subsidies to build superchargers, that's the reason they pushed for NACS to become a standard (the subsidies require the chargers use a standard - right now they're doing the Magic Dock but that's an ugly hack they probably want to avoid). The rules for those subsidies will require they don't play games with who can use them.

Tesla says they can get NACS to do 1MW. If Tesla can engineer a car that can handle that, would they really be obligated to run that to any crazy hackjob that asks for it? I expect there some to be some minimum standard every car can use, then a shorter list of approved models that can handle more.

>Whatever number Tesla says will be their cost.

There's no number. They won't have to pay Tesla a dime. It's an open standard now.

I work in the Volkswagen Group and will only add that Audi and Porsche have to go along just because of synergy effects, apart from the fact that they also belong to the Volkswagen Group and do what their mother wants.

> ... apart from the fact that they also belong to the Volkswagen Group

Volkswagen group with itself belongs to the Porsche SE holding. The Porsche SE holding is the biggest owner of Volkswagen shares (with 1/3rd of all the shares) and holds the majority of the shares with voting rights.

And the Porsche SE holding shares are mostly held by the two Porsche and Piech families.

So, in the end, Porsche the car manufacturer belongs to the VW group which itself belongs to the Porsche SE holding which itself belongs to the Porsche (and Piech) families.

> Volkswagen Group, which also owns Audi, Porsche, and Scout Motors, is finally doing what nearly every other automaker has already done: announce its intention to adopt Tesla’s electric vehicle charging standard.

The reporting around this has been so poor. NACS is CCS with Tesla's plug on the end.

What's happening is that CCS has won the EV charging protocol wars, Tesla's plug is being standardized as CCS type 3 (aka SAE J3400), and Tesla's chargers will use the CCS protocol (like they already do in Europe and elsewhere).

To use NACS chargers older Teslas will need a CCS retrofit:

https://electrek.co/2023/02/28/tesla-ccs-adapter-retrofit-pr...

When people talk about standardizing the charge port they’re talking about the shape of the port not the protocol. Tesla has supported the CCS protocol for years now.

The Tesla port is vastly superior to the CCS type 1 port. They should get credit for making it an open standard.

Yes, people aren't aware of what's happening. That's a consequence of lazy reporting.

Tesla's charging standard is being dropped and CCS will be used by everyone. It's a shame North America still has years of plug incompatibilities and adapter fiddling to look forward to.

Europe really got EV charging standardization right. The European EV infrastructure is much further advanced than the North American infrastructure thanks in part to sensible standardization.

> It's a shame North America still has years of plug incompatibilities and adapter fiddling

Not really, Tesla has over 24k charging stalls in the US. The second biggest is Electrify America, and they have only 3,800 charging stalls. There really aren't a lot of EV chargers that are non-tesla in the US, unlike the EU.

There are 7,869 locations and 15,661 CCS ports in the US and Canada (versus 2,297 locations and 25,247 Tesla ports):

https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/electricity_locations.html

It's plugs on chargers and inlets on cars. It'll be a slow and tedious process.

TBH, the afdc data badly overstates the number of available locations. Not only do they include a lot of broken or otherwise inaccessible locations, but they include things like this: https://www.plugshare.com/location/1564

I think that currently holds the record for the slowest DCFC in the country. :)

> max 13A, 4kW

Wow! You'd get a better charge from a standard 15A 110V AC plug.

No, you want to compare Watts, not Volts, as Watts measures power and Volts is just potential.

A 15A 110V outlet can supply 1500W continuous (1.5kW). A 4kW DC charger is almost three times higher power than this.

I didn’t include the crappy L2 destination chargers, of which there are a whole lot more of that support teslas.

I was referring to the L3 superchargers / fast chargers or equivalent. The majority of the ones you linked are L2 chargers are are not that useful outside of destination charging.

That is DC fast chargers. If you include J1772 AC chargers in the count the numbers are 66,093 locations and 146,206 ports.

It sounds like you’re talking about DCFC. AC chargers are much more common and they are predominantly using the J1772 connector today.

Stop misleading people.

The opposite is happening. Tesla is opening their network to other brands. Ford and a few other car makers have already agreed. In new cars made from 2025, you can go to the only properly working charging network, plug in the car, and leave with no credit card hustle. Basically, like Tesla had forever.

It's a shame other brands didn't adopt a much better Tesla adapter as a standard. It's much more convenient and light.

I've seen how adapters work; they work badly and are glitchy. So, if someone buys a car with an old port in 2024, they will start to see lots of pain in 2025.

> Tesla is opening their network to other brands.

By implementing CCS. How do you think it works in Europe right now? They all use CCS, both cars and chargers. Tesla included.

NACS is protocol agnostic. Cars in Europe have different plugs.

Tesla will use their protocol and support CCS on chargers.

What Tesla offers to other brands in North America is much more advanced.

New cars will be able to see on the map how many stalls are available etc.

Payments integration etc.

It's a far more deeper integration and I guess that's the real big deal that needs to be standardized.

Tesla got the best-in-class charging experience, and finally, in 1 year, other brands can have somewhat matching capabilities.

> NACS is protocol agnostic.

Yes, it's just a plug on the end of a CCS charger.

> What Tesla offers to other brands in North America is much more advanced.

They're offering CCS. It's how it works whether you like it or not.

I'm not sure what you mean w/r/t the adapters. It sounds like most manufacturers will just use Tesla supplied adapters. I doubt they will be very bulky. They might even be easier to use than native CCS1. :)

No one is installing CCS1 any more surely?

I think they will keep installing them for another few years. NEVI requires it and there are still quite a few CCS1 cars on the road. All of the cars that are switching will still ship with the CCS1 port next year too. They don't fully switch until 2025.

CCS1 is still dominate in North America. CCS2 only got traction in Europe.

It's the opposite. Every single EV car that is sold right now in North America except Tesla will need a retrofit. Read the article you shared. It's for use on other charging stations.

In the picture, you see a dead charger adapter converted into a new Tesla standard one. It's a major pain for other brand EV owners

In 1 year, almost at every charging station, you will have to deal with plugging converters in snow, rain, etc, making sure communication works.

> Every single EV car that is sold right now in North America except Tesla will need a retrofit.

No, they won't need a new ECU because they are already CCS cars. They'll need a dumb adapter if they can't get a new inlet installed.

I expect a degree of intelligence to be important in the adapter. Specifically, unless the adapter is rated for the highest possible current and voltage that the physical form factor can support (1kV, 600A? Is there even a pre-ordained limit? Tesla reports that they’ve tested NACS up to quite impressive voltages and currents.), then the adapter needs to tell the car and/or charger to limit voltage and current. Otherwise it risks arcing and/or overheating.

Also, whatever water cooling magic keeps the charger plug and its terminals cool won’t cool the adapter.

Even the little charge-a-J1772-car-off-a-Tesla-level-2-charger hack adapters are generally dumb adapters designed for 40A or so and are not safe if connected to a full-spec 80A EVSE.

Isn't that negotiation already part of the CCS protocol? Otherwise 400v cars would be fried when they end up getting 800v from an L3 charger, or a Bolt would end up getting 300kW that it can't actually use

Yes, but if there’s a dumb adapter between the car and the charger, how do the car and charger know it’s there and know its current and voltage limits (which may be less than the car’s)?

Can't you just buy the right adapter for your car/? I think that's how TeslaTap does it, they sell a few different amp options.

Or is the issue trusting people to buy the right one?

> I expect a degree of intelligence to be important in the adapter.

No, that's done by the car. The adapter just changes the shape of the plug.

The car controls the charge curve.

> The car controls the charge curve.

Exactly. If a car uses an 800V battery and can charge at 500A, and the charger can supply 500A at 800V, and the adapter is only rated for 150A, something needs to tell the car not to draw more than 150A. Similarly, an adapter rated at 400V that is used with an 800V car needs to tell the car or charger not to charge at 800V (which may mean not charging at all).

All parts of the charging chain have temperature sensors (charger, cable, plug, adapter, inlet, battery). If they overheat they'll derate.

If your car can pull 500 amps then you should get an adapter rated for 500 amps. Here's an example:

https://a2zevshop.com/products/nacs-ccs1

And that just leaves stellantis brands... Abarth, Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Citroën, Dodge, DS, Fiat, Jeep, Lancia, Maserati, Opel, Peugeot, Ram, and Vauxhall.

btw there are provider networks in Europe where you subscribe to a single provider and you can charge nearly anywhere. It’s just that other providers have a roaming fee, which sometimes is double the price, which makes it a little bit stupid. Roaming should either be free or add minimal overhead like 2cent maximum over the costs of the other provider

This makes me sad in a way that's a little hard to articulate. But I'll try!

I plug my $9000 2013 Nissan Leaf into an ordinary 120V extension cord each night so I can commute to a neighboring city for work, and the electricity costs me $20/mo. I also have a 1986 Toyota pickup like on Back to the Future that I had to gas up every other week, using 30 gallons of gas per month and costing over $100. So the operating cost of an EV is about 3-5 times lower than a gas vehicle.

My friend has an EV charging dongle that we jokingly call the octopus, which has a dozen adapters for plugging into every kind of 120/240V outlet like on ovens and dryers. So he charges his car in 4 hours out of whatever outlet is available, for the same $20/mo that I pay.

So convincing the public that everyone needs to buy a $500-1000 charging station for their EV was a social engineering campaign to slow the adoption of EVs.

The real engineering work to let us plug EVs into any outlet has not been done yet. But it would look like this:

* Level 2 J1772 chargers have a resistor that tells the EV how much wattage to draw. But that just passes the buck to the user, who now must ensure that the outlet can provide that wattage. A better system would have a smart power manager that senses current saturation or voltage drop near the point where the circuit breaker trips. We also need smart breakers that add noise/harmonics/phase as they approach their limit, which EVs would detect to self-regulate. And we need breakers that trip for a nominal time like 1 second or shorter, or however long power supplies can continue to operate uninterrupted, so that a tripped breaker isn't a showstopper.

* Nearly all US portable battery power stations come in only 120V with a 30A TT-30 plug normally used for RVs, with no 240V option unless you connect two stations for twice the price. If we want a 5000Wh/240V station so we can charge our EVs on solar power, we'll have to go to Europe or Alibaba to get it.

* Battery chargers, BMSs and inverters are notoriously finicky. They often won't charge below a certain voltage threshold, causing some solar installations to spend part of the day off. We need 95% efficient 10kW rectifiers/inverters that can take any AC/DC voltage from 0-500V and output standard 12/24/48/96/120/240/480V in all phases without requiring configuration from the user, for under $1000.

If we had these ubiquitous power tools, then choice of NACS/CCS/CHAdeMO would be moot.

Edit: I forgot to add that before Google fell, they held their Little Box Challenge in 2014 to develop a high-efficiency low-cost 95% efficient 2 kW inverter similar to the one I mentioned, so the tech has been available for almost a decade now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Box_Challenge

I don't understand your comment. Tesla sells a charger for $230 that comes with 120V/15A and 240V/50A connectors (https://shop.tesla.com/product/mobile-connector). You can also buy a connectors for every type of socket there is (https://shop.tesla.com/product/gen-2-nema-adapters).

I had a 240V outlet installed in my garage and plug that in there to charge. I also bring it with me if I go to cottages, etc. I've used that with questionable sockets and extension cables and the charging speed automatically switches to lower amps if it can't draw the full 12A. You install a dedicated charger if you want 80A or to mount it outside (it's weatherproof)

What am I missing?

NEMA 50 with the mobile charger is the way to go. It is future proof and only charges a tiny bit slower than the dedicated Tesla wall connector. Not to mention with a NEMA 30 adapter it can charge up RVs.

That's pretty cool actually, and very similar to the J1772 Nissan Leaf charger that I have, thanks for the heads up! I've been looking at the dedicated chargers which are more like $500+. Here's what I have, and some alternatives:

https://audiovideo2go.com/nissan-leaf-charger/ $385 since discontinued, used to be ~$200

https://www.vevor.com/portable-ev-charger-c_11497 $115 and up

My point though was that EVs should come with cords like every other appliance. Ideally the car itself would be able to take up to 480V AC/DC and "just work", no charging standard needed. But external power supplies like these have the advantage of being easily replaced.

Another gripe I forgot to mention is that pretty much no EV can charge while driving, which prevents putting solar panels on the roof. There's no engineering reason for this, so I think it's another plot to slow the inevitable designs which Aptera and Lightyear are pursuing. Thankfully there's an adapter to make it work:

https://us.ecoflow.com/products/portable-power-station-groun...

Unfortunately it only works with EcoFlow's power stations, and they're one of the companies trying to get people to buy two at 2x cost to reach 240V.

The reality is that particularly in winter and outside, most recent EV cars will barely gain any charge from a 120V standard power outlet - keeping the battery conditioned eats up all of that power.

When you say winter and outside, what temperature ranges do you mean?

That hasn't been my experience charging outside in the northwest with average winter temperatures.

But the charger does power a heater to keep the batteries around freezing, so you're right, it's better to charge in a garage. And cold weather causes additional losses, but I would expect no more than 20% or so. I lose 10% range just by running the dashboard heater.

>* Level 2 J1772 chargers have a resistor that tells the EV how much wattage to draw. But that just passes the buck to the user, who now must ensure that the outlet can provide that wattage. A better system would have a smart power manager that senses current saturation or voltage drop near the point where the circuit breaker trips. We also need smart breakers that add noise/harmonics/phase as they approach their limit, which EVs would detect to self-regulate. And we need breakers that trip for a nominal time like 1 second or shorter, or however long power supplies can continue to operate uninterrupted, so that a tripped breaker isn't a showstopper.

wouldn't it be way less work for the homeowner to figure out how much current their wiring is rated for, and use an adapter that reports a static current? Why introduce complexity by making current negotiation dynamic?

Technically the lack of dynamic current negotiation is already a problem, because plugging a 20A refrigerator into a 15A circuit will trip the breaker or even start a fire in older homes if the owner decides to put a 20A fuse on a 15A circuit. We just don't normally see it, because most appliances like microwaves are designed for 1200-1800W (10-15A) running on 15A circuits.

Damn, I was hoping they'd adapt USB-C like the Fiat 500 Hybrid.

Will it be possible that Benz uses Nio's battery swap?

I don't own any electric car. What are the advantages and disadvantages of Tesla's standard vs CCS2 (pretty common in Europe as far as I know) ?

...in America. Europe here quite nicely standardising on CCS2.

US is standardizing quite nicely too, on Tesla's charging standard. I can't think of a company that is not planning to use Tesla's charger going forward.

Not really. Many Tesla Superchargers are being equipped with Magic Dock, which is perpetuating CCS.

More manufacturers may be moving to NACS, but it’s not like chargers are moving away from CCS. If anything, the CCS infrastructure is growing.

CCS is dead with this. I expect magic dock installs to stop.

I think they are still a requirement for NEVI, and Tesla has won a few contracts for NEVI sites.

I do expect them to stop eventually though. IMO, part of the reason they exist is that it lets them collect real world data on supercharger and adapter usage before the bigger rollouts next year.

How widespread is that really? After the first deployment (where every EV youtuber east of the Mississippi converged on one tesla lot in New York :-) I haven't seen it in tech news since, and looking in the app I see 2 private ("destination") chargers in all of MA, and none in CT...

> Many Tesla Superchargers are being equipped with Magic Dock, which is perpetuating CCS

This isn't actually the case; while the tech press made a big deal about the project when announced, hardly any Super Charger sites have the Magic Dock. As of this month, it's only at ~50 Super Charger locations. I also think with widespread NACS adoption the rollout will slow down even more - what is the point of the project if almost all new EVs sold in the US will have NACS? There are over 2000 Tesla Super Charger locations in the US.

I have never seen a Magic Dock in the wild personally, for what little additional it's worth.

> https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-magic-dock-supercharger-inta...

> https://supercharge.info/data

Yeah this is being abandoned. But GM at least claims they'll offer a NACS->CCS1 adapter in 2024. So it just on the consumer to bring their own adapter. There is no need to have one at the stall for subsidy eligibility.

Yeah, even Tesla uses CCS.

https://electrek.co/2018/11/14/tesla-model-3-ccs-2-plug-euro...

Same in Australia, Tesla and most other EVs are all CCS Type 2 here, except for some CHAdeMO in Japanese cars, but I can’t see that being a priority for charging networks going forward so I expect that to dwindle and they will have to switch to CCS like everyone else.

IIRC it’s a legal requirement vs just a standard like CCS1. South Korea has the same legal demand for CCS1 so it’ll be interesting to see what happens with NACS there.

I personally don’t mind using CCS vs NACS. I didn’t feel super inspired by the flex I felt when inserting a supercharger’s plug into a Model 3 but clearly it works fine in practice.

My guess is that Electrify America with NACS plugs will still be just as problematic if they’re unreliable in your area. Plug vs Network vs Hardware are being conflated in this discussion. Adding CCS to Superchargers would have worked just as well but that’s not how America works in this case.

CCS charging infrastructure is just awful. This is a problem mostly with infrastructure, but also with design compromises in the CCS design - both physical and software.

I suspect the US would have done the same thing, if manufacturers had done CCS2 instead of CCS1. Also would have helped if the US had done "bring your own cable", which seems to be common in Europe.

Interestingly, the new NACS standardization process seems to be encouraging that as well.

BYOC is only for slow AC charging. All CCS2 DC chargers have cables built-in.

CCS1 is worse than CCS2 in a couple of ways. The latching mechanism is external which is bulkier and more fragile, and it doesn't support 3-phase AC charging.

NACS does everything CCS1 does in a more compact package with an internal vehicle locking mechanism similar to what CCS2 uses. It also doesn't support 3-phase AC charging but this isn't very common in light commercial or residential service in the US.

NACS / J3400 will likely stay a North American standard though, or maybe migrate to a few other markets like S. Korea which have also used CCS1. That lack of 3-phase support makes it a non-starter in Europe and CCS2 works perfectly fine there.

Yeah, because CCS1 only supports 1 phase AC because the usual standard of residential power is 1 phase AC.

In contrast, in Europe 3 phase AC is the standard, so it makes sense to support that advantage (especially the 400V across the legs) in charging vehicles.

Three phase power is not “the standard” in Europe. It’s more available perhaps, but certainly not the default residential hookup.

Europe is big. Where I live it’s pretty much the default. You can get a 1-phase connection, but you basically need to downgrade to it, and all the default wiring would be done in a way to support 3 phases if needed.

In some European countries it is (even in my apartment in Copenhagen), in others it isn't.

Where it isn't the default, it's generally available for an extra fee, and may well be the default for buildings slightly larger than a house — a shop, mechanic, etc.

in The Netherlands is absolutely is the default.

My home, built in 1971, had 1 phase connected to it but the power company already buried the 2 extra copper wires for 3-phase hookup, requiring only a new meter for 3 phase to be installed.

It is the default for building hookups (i.e. excluding individual apartments/condos/flats, but EV chargers don't make sense there anyway) at least in the Western European countries - can't speak for much of Eastern Europe but Croatia where it is also the default. Even during the 60s when the home of my grandparents was built in back-then Communist Yugoslavia, it was already 3 phase.

Our transmission grid (that actually extends even down to Africa and parts of Asia!) is already three phases, we're not sparsely settled to require SWER anywhere, so it doesn't save the utilities any money to not lay three-phase AC to every building by default.

it's standard in France, Germany, Hungary Slovakia and Switzerland, at least.

* in the US only, since NACS is becoming the US standard.

* in north america, which also includes Canada.

Will Greenland use NACS? Probably not.

Huh? It feels like you’re just being overly pedantic for no reason. From Wikipedia and numerous other sources:

> Though a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe.

It's not even clear if it will prevail in México: https://mobilityportal.lat/carga-nacs-estandarizacion-nortea...

You really think GB/T will prevail? Mexico is a very common destination for used vehicles from the US and Canada. The GB/T standard maxes out at 250kW speeds right now. I have also read that the locking mechanism is fragile.

Don't forget the neighbor in the south North America too, Mexico.

You’re absolutely right. Thankyou.

I guess in my head I grouped Latin America with South America which wasn’t correct.

Don’t be ridiculous, Canada isn’t real.

I won’t be surprised if Tesla becomes a platform for other automakers like android from Google in the future

Auto makers are used to making their own platforms, and they won't change. Making a platform is not the hard part, and there are advantages to a custom platform for each vehicle.

Auto makers are used to integrating technology from other companies like Bosch.

But not their platforms. Automakers generally make their own platforms (though they will rebadge someone else's too), engines (again they share with each other, but most have their own), and transmissions. Everything else is outsourced to companies like Bosch.

It definitely seems like Tesla is slowly seeping into the world of other car manufactures in an ongoing manner. And I don't think they/we have given much thought to what's yet to come. Batteries, auto-pilot, training/inference, manufacturing/robotics, and so on...

Do any of really think, especially given the track record, that most of the auto-industry is going to be able to do any of this alone? I imagine that eventually it will come down to a choice between partnering with a bunch of disparate tech/manufacturing companies or Tesla.

We all know there is disruption to come in general, but it's going to hit the incumbent auto-manufacturers like a brick if they don't wake up soon.

While this sounds good, why are we so focused on charging stations? It seems to me, it would make much more sense to have a series of batteries that can quickly be removed, and have battery exchanges.

Then, if you need a charge, you pull over to a battery exchange, swap out batteries in a few seconds, and go on your way.

I have seen this in China with electric scooters, and it seems like it could scale well for cars too.

For most EV's (specifically Tesla) the battery is a structural component of the vehicle (for better or for worse).

Would require a complete architectural shift. Also, they would be incredibly heavy and difficult to swap. Would require multiple smaller batteries. People would abuse them. Would require huge inventory of batteries all over the place. Imagine going on a long road trip, you wouldn't bring batteries with you. You'd swap them along the way. What if a particular vendor/station is out of batteries for the day? Or doesn't have your particular flavor of battery because (like we have seen with charging ports in this exact story) manufacturers couldn't agree on the interface/size? Or the batteries they have are abused and low quality / at end of life? This is very common with scooters. It would be a shit show.

On the other hand, electricity is essentially fluid. It does not require a container. As battery tech improves and as high voltage charging becomes more commonplace, plugging in to charge won't be so bad.

I can think of many reasons:

* Batteries are really expensive and have a limited life. If my batteries were wearing out, could I go to one of these swaps and hope for a fresher set?

* Different sized cars require different battery capacities (EV Ford F150 vs Nissan Leaf). Not a problem with charging cables, but a big issue with battery swapping.

* Battery swapping stations would be orders of magnitude more expensive than charging stations.

* This is not really useful for many (or maybe most) users. If you are driving around town or commuting, charging overnight at home should be good enough for most people. (The main hurdle here would be convincing landlords of the importance of charging).

* It is a lot easier to standardize on a charging port, than to standardize one a battery pack. A standardized battery pack would dictate how the car is structured.

* It would make innovation harder on battery packs. It could make it impractical to try a new battery chemistry or capacity, whereas these are fairly easy changes to make without changing the charging port.

I agree. Battery replacements need to be the goal not charging. It’s WAY more efficient and cost effective since you can charge at off peak times. Smaller EVs like motorcycles have no chance until replacement is an option

why is this downvoted? It is a legitimate question. You can comment if you have a counterargument.

Even if battery swap is a practical solution, fast charging is still needed. Obviously every fast chargers in rural area can't be replaced into battery swap station, too much stock costs. For fast chargers replacement in city, there's no enough space.

Actually I agree with you. My point was just that the comment I responded to was downvoted, and on the face of it, just because people disagreed.

Tesla already tried that, years and years ago. They built a fully automated battery swapping station for the Model S, as a test of concept, and nobody used it. So the program was abandoned as a complete failure, and now Tesla's newer models no longer have the capability.

In fact, Tesla's Head of Design and VP of vehicle engineering discussed this very topic just a few days ago in Jay Leno's video on the Cybertruck [0]:

[0]: https://youtu.be/BGDOKD7ZZqI?si=TR7Txex7qg5VGYar&t=3158

> nobody used it

Nobody could use it. It was by invite-only. EV bloggers contacted them to ask if they could try it and were stonewalled. They only reason they built it was to get subsidies from a CARB program for cars that supported battery swap so they could technically say the Model S supported battery swap.

(now personally I don't think battery swap is ever going to be a solution for consumer cars [maybe for stuff like taxis or buses] but the Tesla effort did not appear to be done in good faith - I don't think they ever believed in it even when they were building it)

There’s also a company in China that does EV swaps for cars. It’s a very cumbersome process, the battery can be thousands of pounds, and there are also cooling connectors to worry about. On top of that, it would require every car to have a standardized battery, or else we’d be back to we are today.

It would require a large increase in battery energy density combined with a large improvement in thermal efficiency to be successful on a large scale. Plug in chargers make way more sense. Solid state batteries are on the horizon that will charge as quickly as filling a gas tank.

I think scooters are about where it stops working well at a consumer level.

Battery swapping exists in the forklift industry but it is complicated and dangerous. Forklift batteries are about a thousand pounds (less than car batteries) and often open cell lead acid (which has additional challenges that lithium doesn't like spills, watering, and gas discharge). In the type of forklifts I occasionally see, the batteries sit on rollers with a side access door and lockout. the tunnel the battery lives in is a little wider than the battery, has a gate that must be reinstalled, and the battery slides around a little during operation. Battery is connected to the system with a flexible connector.

Despite the electric forklift battery swapping industry being a lot smaller than the car charging industry it seems to be a reasonably dangerous affair. there are significant OSHA regulations, and a nonzero number of yearly injuries.

If you were going to operate a car battery swapping lot, you would probably need: powered battery swapping trucks manned by professional operators, a very flat well maintained driving surface, an indoor charging room, a standardized car battery placement, access system, tie down system, and battery size. you would need to worry about things getting caught in the battery doors, the battery - car cable getting severed, making sure you were perfectly lined up with the access door, and about doing some sort of tie down routine.

It's doable but it would be a LOT of work to get right. Batteries aren't as fungible as tanks of gas so you'd probably only use such a system for corporate vehicle fleets or special lease pools.

Second link isn't great and is selling batteries but it seems to cite useful figures

https://www.osha.gov/etools/powered-industrial-trucks/types-...

https://www.onecharge.biz/blog/lithium-batteries-get-the-top...!

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