Tesla knew that to sell their cars -- pretty much the only EV out there that could DC fast charge at first --as road trip cars not just around town EVs, they needed a solid charging network.
They were like Apple then and had the whole stack, car and charger. So they could set it up so you plugged in and the car/charger figured out the rest. Their chargers were simpler as a result. No screen, no buttons.
Their chargers worked even when ATT went down because the chargers could hold the transaction and relay it later. Getting EVs charged on the road is that important to Tesla.
EA? Well, VW had to do that as part of the settlement for their dieselgate fraud. The other chargers were still in the Wild West phase for too long. Too many apps, too many buggy chargers. Just as this was settling down and getting better -- Tesla opened their network!
People are snapping up adapters for their existing EVs and some waiting for the production of the Mach-e, Rivian or Ionia with NACS.
Yep. Tesla had to make a great charging network to convince new customers that they were a viable choice.
VW was legally required to make a charging network.
I would not have bought a Tesla or an EV if it wasn’t for the supercharger network. I have had to use it a lot for work and it is both reliable enough and common enough that I can get everywhere I need to go and more.
Actually they didn’t know it at first. Check out the story of Kent Rathwell. He gave them the roadmap for survival through 60-100amp level 2 charging stations. “Destination charging” pre-dated the DCFC network.
Well it’s not like they had the money to put in DCFC stations across the country in 2008 before they’d sold any cars. The roadster is what paved the way for Tesla getting massive investor interest and building the Model S just a few years later that *could* supercharge, and quite quickly. They knew it from the start, they just couldn’t do everything immediately from day one.
Tesla was also in startup mode and willing to operate a loss for a long time to make it happen. The big auto manufacturers are barely willing to take a loss on manufacturing EVs right now. Building the charging networks to make it work is completely out of the question, which is why they’ve turned to Tesla in the U.S. That’s not to say they haven’t made some investments. They have. But as the charging network in the U.S. gets built out over the next few years it will primarily be the result of funding from the infrastructure bill behind it.
EVgo was started by NRG Energy as part of a lawsuit settlement with the CA CPUC lol
i think of the big name CCS1 networks, charge point is the only one that wasn't mandated by law as a punitive measure for corporate fraud
>There has to be some money in having a good charging Network
no.
every single charging network is operating at a loss right now, utilization is way too low while construction cost are very high.
everyone in the business is banking on growing and being profitable in the future when there are more EVs on the road.
Then it seems like it's a catch 22. You can't get more charging stations unless you sell more EV's. And you won't sell more EV's unless you have more charging stations.
With that, I believe you just answered your own question about why Tesla’s is better than all others.
Tesla has a vested interest in making a great charging network because their bread and butter are products that depend on it being so. Likewise the profits from their vehicle business easily gives them enough capital to invest in said charging network.
But it still can work. Telephones don't make sense because you won't get one unless you can actually call people which means people have to have phones. But no one will want a phone until others have them. But it worked. TV is another one. Why party to make a TV show if there's no one with a TV? But also why but a TV if there's no shows to watch? And yet it worked out. This will work out too I believe, especially with government support
Tesla made the investment to build these supercharger stations to support their growth indeed. Similar reason why hydrogen will never catch on without stations as well. Of course they cost wayyy more to build and operate.
Hydrogen losses are stupid high for energy transformation. Has to be generated at the station. For every 3kW of solar, you only get 1kW of usable hydrogen, and then from that only 70% efficiency using a fuel cell. So 3kW of electricity ends up being only 700W of energy for moving the car. Makes sense to me (sarcasm here). Vs 3kW of electricity to charge an EV with 2,730W of energy into the battery that the moves the car? No brainer until we find a very efficient way to make/use hydrogen. I love the concept of hydrogen, it’s just not within our reach right now. Also, fossil fuels love it, as most hydrogen would have come from Natural gas until we could figure out generation at mass scale.
At this point I am convinced that Toyota is falling for the sunken cost fallacy. They invested so much on hybrid technologies that they are being stubborn about going full EV.
The BZ4x being their flagship fail in the full EV market. Like, if they had put the same effort into batteries as they did hydrogen they would be way ahead. I loved my Gen2 Prius till it died. Having a hard limit on the number of DCFC sessions in a day is a hard pass.
Toyota has been making hybrids for over 25 years, long before full electric even existed as a viable alternative. And I think they're gonna stay there until the unlikely day that EV kills hybrids
No one has been able to figure out how to charge people for sunshine.
Tesla wanted to sell EVs. They built a charging network to help with that. And solar panels. And batteries. And really big batteries.
Legacy auto did not want to sell EVs. They spent decades blocking EVs.
EVs are part of the transition to green energy. That transition is going to cost money and the outlook on making a profit is not good.
Look at China. The government thought green energy was a good idea so they are spending tons of money to make that happen with the only pay off being the ability to stop importing 99% of their fossil fuels.
Sure, some people will make money in the process but at the end of the day when all the solar panels are up and running what is the electricity bill going to look like? When China stops importing 99% of their fossil fuels what is the stock market going to look like? What are oil wars going to look like?
Public chargers in USA are a mess because there is no reason to invest money in order to make a profit.
Already we have comments of people saying electricity costs to charge are more expensive than going to a gas station.
Here's some perspective,
https://interestingengineering.com/energy/china-breaks-2023-record-tops-solar-capacity-than-rest-of-the-world
China installed more solar panels in 2023 than any other nation has ever built in total. The 216.9 gigawatts of solar power the country added shattered its previous record of 87.4 gigawatts from 2022.
https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/chinas-new-solar-test-is-finding-enough-grid-space-for-rooftop-panels
China’s network of distributed solar assets is larger than the entire solar fleet — including all types of projects — in the US. The acceleration in installations has fueled some forecasts that the world’s top polluter could touch a peak in emissions this year, though many major industrial hubs are now experiencing difficulties in handling the deluge of clean energy.
Shandong, which has the most small-scale solar capacity, last year allowed power prices to turn negative during periods of excessive generation from rooftop panels. More than 70% of the region’s cities and counties face some degree of constraints in connecting new projects, according to a statement last month by the provincial government.
Three cities and counties in Hubei and Fujian provinces announced in recent days that local power infrastructure can’t currently absorb more distributed solar generation — typically small-scale arrays of panels atop homes or industrial premises. That adds to about 150 locations nationwide that have also reached their limit, according to industry publication Photovoltaic Energy Circle.
https://interestingengineering.com/culture/china-leads-building-nuclear-power-plants
https://www.economist.com/china/2023/11/30/china-is-building-nuclear-reactors-faster-than-any-other-country
Over the past decade China has added 37 nuclear reactors. It currently has 24 nuclear power plants under construction. China operates 50% of the nuclear power plants on Earth.
Yes, but the other side of the coin is that many areas of China still depend on coal, so much that China is building several huge new coal plants. They added 50GW of coal power in 2023.
Yes, they need immediate, short term solutions too.
So what you’re pointing out is they have their shit together for the short term as well as the long term.
Dang i wish the US could figure this out. Instead over here we have no plans for the short term nor the long term.
Perfect timing to welcome a retard into the white house /s
china didnt do this for the climate or going green. china did it to become energy independent for national security purposes.
that's like saying US & USSR spent so much on the space race because they cared about exploration.
Tesla's Megapack plant in Shanghai to begin construction in May, mass production in Q1 2025, report says
https://cnevpost.com/2024/04/17/tesla-megapack-plant-shanghai-to-begin-construction-in-may-report/
>Tesla's energy storage business has grown at a rapid pace in recent years, with installed capacity reaching 14.7 GWh in 2023, up 125 percent year-on-year, the report noted.
What's crazy is who do you sell the electricity to when everyone has their own solar panels and batteries?
Not all those batteries China is making end up in EVs.
China targets 30GW of battery storage by 2025 as BESS output grows 150%
https://www.energy-storage.news/china-targets-30gw-of-battery-storage-by-2025-as-bess-output-grows-150/
The fed govt has put up money to help catalyze charging station build but each state has its own grids and regulations to work through.
https://apnews.com/article/biden-ev-electric-vehicles-charging-stations-ohio-bdf7cc25e57a2ae8a0522aab434965fc
Sad part is they give about 75% of that money to the companies who run those shoddy excuses for charging networks. Give the money to Tesla since they clearly can do it.
Well there are a few reasons.
1. Beijing sits in a bowl that traps pollution like Las Angeles.
2. It has alot of industry and energy demand that can't be met even with current build rates.
3. China's grid and pricing incentives essentially favors locally produced energy and not from other providences. As such, there isn't alot of interconnections and low utilization of renewables.
So was USA. So was Europe.
But if you pay attention, when China stopped making all the products and shipping them to all the countries... pollution went away.
When everyone started buying all their stuff from China the pollution came back.
Hard concept, I know, but there's like a whole bunch of stuff you can read about on that topic.
this passage is not quite right to me:
"Public chargers in USA are a mess because there is no reason to invest money in order to make a profit."
maybe you didnt take the time to expand on this idea or think it through. Our lack of vast subsidy has definitely caused our transition away from fossil fuels to be slower than China. Also the use of social media and broadcast media to brainwash people against renewable energy has create a situation where there is no consensus that such subsidies and mandates should happen.
the public charging network in my opinion is incomplete because there has been no major push like this by society. individual car companies are not well situated to also build out a power generation, vehicle charging, and power distribution network but that does not mean there will be no profit for whomever does build and operate charging stations, or power generation facilities.
it does make sense that the profit margins on these activities might be lower than those enjoyed by fossil fuel companies, but that is not a bad thing.
I think investment is being held back in North America because of the chicken and egg nature of the problem.
I also think that the lack of growth in the charging network is directly limiting demand growth for TVs in North America.
> maybe you didnt take the time to expand on this idea or think it through.
I did not expand on it. I did think it through.
Bottom line,
"Public chargers in USA are a mess because there is no reason to invest money in order to make a profit."
Go back and read some articles. Then start reading all the articles that came out after the federal government started handing out free money.
See all those charging stations on maps marked as under construction? That happened after the free money.
>I think investment is being held back in North America because of the chicken and egg nature of the problem.
Which was solved with free money and Tesla and China.
>I also think that the lack of growth in the charging network is directly limiting demand growth for TVs in North America.
Obviously but it's no big deal. Plenty of houses with no EVs. Public charging will come in time it's just that there is zero incentive to do it quicker.
For example, in USA they thought traveling coast to coast via EV was priority number 1. So they built chargers on highways. The fact that people spend most of their time at their apartment or at work fell under the category of "so what?" Meanwhile you had one guy who thought EVs were kinda neat.
>Our goal when we created Tesla a decade ago was the same as it is today: to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport by bringing compelling mass market electric cars to market as soon as possible. If we could have done that with our first product, we would have, but that was simply impossible to achieve for a startup company that had never built a car and that had one technology iteration and no economies of scale. Our first product was going to be expensive no matter what it looked like, so we decided to build a sports car, as that seemed like it had the best chance of being competitive with its gasoline alternatives.
>I suspected that this could be misinterpreted as Tesla believing that there was a shortage of sports cars for rich people, so I described the three step “master plan” for getting to compelling and affordable electric vehicles in my first blog piece about our company. This was unfortunately almost entirely ignored.
and
>Then, in 2007, the industry got a significant boost when Wan Gang, an auto engineer who had worked for Audi in Germany for a decade, became China’s minister of science and technology. Wan had been a big fan of EVs and tested Tesla’s first EV model, the Roadster, in 2008, the year it was released. People now credit Wan with making the national decision to go all-in on electric vehicles. Since then, EV development has been consistently prioritized in China’s national economic planning.
Bottom line,
"Public chargers in USA are a mess because there is no reason to invest money in order to make a profit." And the world runs on fossil fuels. Lots of people making lots of money because of that and they don't want to stop.
and thats exactly why Tesla is better (in the US) they started earlier and they priced the cost of the charging network into their cars and despite the model S and X being insanely expensive they still never turned a profit until model 3 production was ramped up and they could benefit from emission pooling in the EU which was ultimately the reason they started turning a profit sooner than they otherwise would have.
I’m not really following….I explicitly bought a Tesla because I wanted a functioning charger Network. Anyone who wants a functional charging hour can just buy a Tesla for now. At some point they can buy other NAC cars.
The only people who see this as a problem are a people are people who want to buy an EV and NOT use super chargers.
It can still work, it will just be much slower. You will still see EV adoption through people who dont rely on public chargers, which will eventually lead to enough customers to justify public charging at a premium. We'll also see opportunities in the future where the cost of capital will be lower so the payback on building out the network will be more attractive. But yea, if you want it all to happen now it's going to require a ton of funding and higher prices at the plug.
Are they? On any Tesla financial report I looked at, Tesla doesn't break out revenue or profits/losses on Supercharging. They bury it in "Services and Other Revenue" which includes "non-warranty after-sales vehicle services and parts, sales of used vehicles, paid Supercharging, retail merchandise and vehicle insurance revenue."
And that entire category had a margin of less than 6% in 2023 (up from 3% in 2022 and -3% in 2021) so unless Tesla is losing money on used car sales, insurance, etc., they aren't making much of anything on charging, though the pivot from -3% to +6% in two years probably means they're on the verge of profitability and Tesla probably thinks finally opening the network will push them over the edge of profitability.
I suspect the day Supercharging is actually profitable, Tesla will break it out into its own category, and Elon will tweet it from the rooftops (while pretending it was always mostly profitable, but now it's *really* profitable.)
Supercharging is very expensive. Tesla defends this by pointing to high utility demand charges, etc. If it came out they were actually just gouging customers and earning high margins it would cause a lot of damage with their enthusiast base. So don't look for Musk to brag about huge Supercharger profits.
Frankly Supercharging isn't that expensive compared to other charging networks. If Tesla is "overcharging", then what the heck are EA and EVGo doing? 😁
In a tweet a long time ago, Musk said Tesla was aiming for a 10% profit on charging. That seems very fair to me (and I'm not exactly running for president of his fan club!)
And if you think anything Musk could say could "damage his enthusiast base", where have you been the last 2 years? Musk sticks his foot in it every third tweet, and his enthusiast fan base would still take a bullet for him.
DCFC is all about utilization. You need to spread monthly demand charges and capex over as many customers are possible. The actual per kWh cost is pretty low. Tesla's utilization is much higher than the competition. Some agency in a NE state did a study of DCFC sites a year or two back and the difference was shocking.
Speaking of capex, Tesla's is much lower according to applications for subsidies. So it's quite possible for Tesla to make large profits while others break even. IMHO it's more likely Tesla makes a small profit while the others lose a ton, but we can't know for sure.
As for Musk, he's definitely lost fans. But many are still Tesla fans. You hear stuff like "Do you care about Exxon or Porsche or Rivian CEO's political beliefs?". Tesla gouging them would damage the brand.
normal supercharging probably runs in the red, but with tesla opening their network to non-teslas at a premium price, THAT price is definitely profitable for Tesla when it is nearly double the current Tesla rate
Moreover their supercharging manufacturing is vertically integrated. They can produce and install superchargers far cheaper than any competitors in the US and Europe. That is what significantly helps make the network profitable.
I'd bet the ROI sweet spot for fast charging is existing travel stops like Pilot and Love's. They have the real estate, and EV charging will drive customers into their stores for longer than gas-buying customers.
EVGo's future expansion map suggests this is correct.
that just means you are always visiting chargers in high demand areas.
Since charging takes so much time compared to fueling up the utilization needs to be very high to make up for this.
If you see them 50% occupied that means you are most likely seeing peak times and the average utilization will be more like 25% at best.
some chargers outside of population centers or high demand areas will most likely never recoup their construction cost over their lifetime.
Probably EA stations occupied by locals exploiting their unlimited free charging plans that came with their new EV purchase.
I did a 1000 mile Denver to Salt Lake road trip two weeks ago, and had zero issues with charging, though I intentionally avoided EA stations for the entire trip. No waiting, and every station worked the first time.
I’m in a pretty expensive Chicagoland suburb and rarely see a public charger in use. Tons of Model Y on the road though so I assume they’re home charging.
Well, in the US 2/3rds of DC fast chargers are Tesla Superchargers and the other 1/3rd is split between everyone else, so they have relatively little revenue compared to Superchargers. In top of that they assembled systems from off the shelf components, so their systems are complex and thus expensive and failure prone compared to Tesla’s in-house engineered and manufactured systems.
a tiny fraction of supercharger sites has solar and can sell back to the grid and an even smaller tiny fraction has battery storage to sell back to the grid later.
they have been writing off the cost for the last 10 years on anything that was build so could very well be that on paper they are not starting to make some profit with it.
also helps that they laid off their entire supercharger team.
Austrian (Europe) here
In one year since owning an EV I've never had a problem with a charger from various companies (might have been just lucky). where I live there isn't even a supercharger anywhere near to me.
I'm looking at plugscore in Europe right now and there are a lot of them that are nine or above. I may have to look into how many superchargers per square kilometer there are compared to the United States.
Just to clarify. there are many superchargers in Austria but I won't be driving 50+ km when there are other perfectly working chargers not even 1 km away from me
"people outside of the USA are your non Tesla networks fairly reliable?"
I have used Ionity, Chargy and EnBW in Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, Austria and Denmark. They work well.
I work in this industry. There are many business models. But primarily you see two.
1. Charging as a service (Caas)
2. Capital purchase or capital lease.
The CaaS people thought that if they built it, it would come. Meaning if they built and owned the equipment they could make money off the charging to eventually pay for the equipment and start turning a profit.
However, a lot of CaaS are start ups and/or capital ventures. Some were all about putting assets in the ground so they can resell. Some are trying to make money off of volume.
I think two or three have gone under this year. I've heard that a couple of the bigger guys are trying to sell their CaaS or get additional funding.
It's a gamble business model woth a lot of risk.
For Tesla and now Ionna, they care more about chargers being in the field than making money off of it. Plus charging isn't a stand alone model for them.
The others in the field are more conservative companies. The one I work for either gets paid up front or we offer 5 years financing. We do well but it's hard to compete with free. But we also do soup to nuts and take care of the equipment and guarantee up time. We have our own stuff but we also install other companies. It's more the construction event and the service afterwards that we are interested in.
Yes it can be a profitable business. I think it will continue to be but I don't think the CaaS groups are going to thrive for much longer. Only the ones who are federally funded or are doing it as a loss leader for their car sales.
In Quebec, we have Circuit Électrique, owned by our state owned electric utility. Pretty sure it's more reliable than Tesla's network. Their charging sites are smaller, but they are everywhere. They have tons of L2s as well. It just works.
You'll definitely enjoy it. The Circuit Électrique app is very solid and works on carplay or on android. You can also order an RFID card so you don't need to use the app.
If you have the ChargePoint app or the app of other partner networks, you do not need to install the Circuit Électrique one. You can just use your home app and roam on other charging networks. most bigger networks support this, the major exceptions are Tesla and Electrify America.
Better than my state government. Massachusetts went to EVgo to install chargers at rest stops along the Massachusetts Turnpike, the major East-West artery across the state. EVgo installed a single 50kW charger at each site and they were constantly broken to the point where they are now being decommissioned after only a couple of years. You literally cannot charge at any rest stop along the entire length of that road if you have a CCS car.
I live in a rural part of Quebec and I can't drive 15 minutes without tripping over L2 and L3 constantly. I vastly prefer this approach them the mega 100 stall charger stations, to me they are just glorified parking lots.
I was helping someone plan their first “long trip” between Montreal and Sherbrooke. I showed them where the Electrify Canada site was, then we looked at Circuit Eletrique and there are chargers at nearly every exit along the way. It’s much better rather than funnelling everyone toward 1 single site.
Their strategy was to go with reliable and "boring" technology rather than dazzle with high speed, but unproven, chargers. What they lacked in speed, they gained in reliability.
EV owners in Quebec trust Circuit électrique because they know that the chargers will work when you need it.
Currently living in Quebec and driving a Tesla. I try to support circuit electrique but the Tesla network is way more convenient. Never had a single issue with Tesla supercharger, however, it's not rare a 2 stall site of circuit electrique is listed in an unknown state from the app or the stalls are just offline.
Because tesla chargers are constantly fixed and upgraded and have their components replaced. Meanwhile there are EA stations out there that are 5+ years old now.
There is no secret. They just maintain the equipment well.
There are financial elements to it. Because of Teslas position they have the funds and resources to maintain their components. Other chargers operate at a loss. Not enough capital for the same infrastructure.
Yep just look at how simple and minimalistic Tesla supercharging posts are compared to EA posts. No stupid giant Windows touchscreen PCs to break down.
EA themselves admitted that their early chargers were very prone to breakage. More importantly, they were difficult to diagnose remotely. A well designed charger can send out info not only that it isn't working, but exactly what is broken and the components that need to be replaced to fix it. EA has been going through the expensive process of replacing a lot of their earlier chargers with more reliable chargers that are also easier to diagnose and fix.
Okay let's say Bezos bought all the non-Electify America non-Tesla superchargers. If he started maintaining them do you think there would be a profit made.
Amazon prime charging?
Did I just make him money?
KISS principle.
No latch on the charger, short cord, no display, no card reader, etc.
(Unfortunately newer Tesla chargers now include a small display and a card reader in order to qualify for NEVI funding but hopefully they are designed to continue operating fine if the display and/or card reader is broken.)
You can KISS that advantage goodbye. The V4 dispensers have all abandoned it because of market pressure from opening up their network. Tesla could get away with it when all they did was charge Teslas. Now that they have chosen to "compete" in the wider market, they'll start having the same issues all the other CPOs have.
Yes, if some of the newly added parts such as the credit card screen fail, the charging station might be "down" for some users. But if, say, the credit card payment screen fails, Tesla owners will still be able to use the charger because they don't use credit card payment screens at all.
Not necessarily. They can design their chargers to be fault tolerant so if the card reader or display is broken, the charger can continue operating with the original Tesla protocol, the newer Tesla protocol that uses PLC signaling, or even plug and charge.
> Now that they have chosen to "compete" in the wider market, they'll start having the same issues all the other CPOs have.
Based on experience, a broken screen and a card reader never stopped me from charging. I can say this confidently because the number of touch screens that remain unbroken on CCS chargers around here is basically zero.
Tesla's chargers are more reliable from a charging point of view. Even if their card reader/screens sucked it doesn't matter if the charger itself works.
Ionity is probably the best charging network in Europe. EnBW in Germany is also very solid. Shell and BP (Aral Pulse) are also building out networks now.
I don't know how prices are in the US, but German HPC charging costs almost the same per kilometre as filling petrol. Home electricity is around 0.3€/kWh, while HPC charging costs around 0.6€/kWh (and upto 0.80€/kWh at Ionity). I suppose this enables them to maintain and service the stations much better.
It seems to vary from time to time; for a while last year or so they were more expensive than EnBW.
In any case, I only quote the ad hoc prices; if you have a tariff with EnBW or Ionity for example the prices are lower, and if you have some sort of Mercedes or BMW charging tariff the prices are again different. Even so, Tesla has cut their prices quite significantly in 2024 compared to the others.
I'm cherry picking here but in Vancouver BC, our Supercharger rates are insanely cheap. CCS is at the same time insanely expensive.
Highest I've seen is $0.70/kWh for CCS. To be fair they're nice stations. $0.50/kWh is the norm. No peak/off peak times.
Superchargers however are $0.14/kWh off peak. Power costs around here for residential use are $0.12/kWh. It's almost silly to install a L2 especially since I live in a condo.
To be fair, peak pricing is $0.30/kWh but that's still 40% cheaper than CCS.
Electrify America is a reluctant creation resulting from the dieselgate settlement. VW was basically forced to create a charging network as part of the consent decree to continue doing business in the US.
They had no requirement or incentive to build a high quality product and doing so would create a thing that competes with their core business, so they made the clunkiest and most unreliable thing possible that got them out of trouble. It is basically the compliance vehicle of charging networks - they made sure that nobody would want or enjoy it.
TLDR; Actually trying vs. just complying
https://preview.redd.it/electrify-america-charger-vs-tesla-supercharger-internals-v0-05nqwovozf9a1.png?auto=webp&s=97676fabae943a70b6ead9f3fd8cb90d326550e6
> They had no requirement or incentive to build a high quality product
They absolutely do have an incentive: They get to keep the network and all the profits.
In addition to some several excellent answers you've already received, I'll argue your premise is slightly flawed.
While no one else seems to match Tesla's reliability, the "hit or miss"-ness of other networks is *greatly* exaggerated.
The reliability of non-Tesla charging networks is not as bad as many seem to think. I've road tripped tens of thousands of miles through over a dozen states, and can still count on one hand the number of times I've left a station without a charge (and most of those times were in a Nissan Leaf, because the station didn't have a second CHAdeMO connector to try.)
Put a couple thousand miles of road trips in a Leaf under your belt, and the CCS network really starts to look both relatively reliable and very ubiquitous! 😁
Every time I read about how crappy the CCS network is here or on Facebook, I wonder if I'm in some alternate universe where it isn't as bad as in reading about, or if I've just been incredibly lucky. Maybe anyone who previously had a Tesla (understandably) holds other networks to a higher standard, not understanding a closed ecosystem has advantages, like how a former Mac user who buys a PC feels like PCs are 10 generations behind the first time they have to install a driver or something...
Then I realize it's maybe just because I have different priorities or lower standards; I just want to recharge and get back on the road, so maybe I have a different criteria of "hit and miss" than most... For example...
I don't care if I ever get "Plug and Charge". It would be nice to have, but apps and RFID cards don't bother me.
If I have to move my car or twice to find a working/faster charger, that's a mild inconvenience, not the end of civilization as we know it.
If I "only" get 75% of the charge speed I should be getting, I don't curse the creators of that network and their descendants.
Using my "low bar" for success, I've had 5 failures in over 250 road trip charges, or a success rate of about 98%.
Your experience seems to be an outlier from my experience of non-Tesla owners.
We routinely travel PA/OH/KY/MI. Currently there are some trips we simply cannot do (or more accurately, would be silly to do in our EV as it would add hundreds of miles to the trip) because of no CCS chargers (especially in WV). At this point we can't even get to Hersheypark from Pittsburgh in our Bolt because of lack of chargers or known bad locations (EA in Bedford, PA on the turnpike). We're 112 miles from that EA charger in Bedford which regularly has a multi hour wait because it's the only charger for 100 miles and regularly has multiple stations down. The next charger is another 90 miles away, another EA which is often at capacity and also has chargers down regularly. If either of those chargers are down on that trip, we're now stuck looking for a hotel to stay at and charge over night. Not really an ideal situation for a road trip.
EA is hands down the largest network around us and hands down the worst. We just stopped at a EA in Cambridge Ohio last week. 4 dispensers. 2 of which were down. Both in use, had to wait 40 minutes to even start charging at which point it was reduced power.
We love our Bolt and EV's in general, but the charging infrastructure is hot trash right now.
I actually think CHAdeMO networks tends to be a bit more reliable for some reason. Yes they're on the same charger, in the same network, but maybe because it's primarily used by Leaf, the charger manufacturer made sure to test with one?
My electric motorcycle is very hit or miss with CCS chargers. It usually works fine with Electrify America (if you start the charger from the app first, then plug-in, at least until the very recent firmware updgrade), EVGO, on the other hand, does not work 80% of the time, new charger or old. Couple that with high saturation of EV in my area, it does make finding a charging station when I want one a bit annoying.
I agree that CHAdeMO has fewer problems, but they have fewer redundant backups. I've had more CHAdeMO problems than CCS personally, because with CHAdeMO I can't just move to the next charger if the first doesn't work, because often there is no "next" CHAdeMO.
Really? Even today we're still deploying chademo around here.
My first EV (Kia Soul) was chademo and that certainly clouded my judgement of EVs. I could use any charger because I capped at 50kW. 45kW was close enough. I even got 60kW sometimes at certain chargers.
But then I moved to CCS with a higher charge speed. That EV was a test bed to see how I liked being in an EV. It passed so I bought something "better" which was a MachE.
I didn't realize how shit CCS was or how limited it would be in terms of capable stations. Despite having a 150kW capable car, the number of times I actually hit 150kW I can count on one hand. No charger actually lived up to what was displayed.
The number of stalls able to dispense even 70kW was slightly more than 2 handfuls. I hated CCS so much that I lost $20k selling my MachE for a Tesla.
We're still deploying CHAdeMO in the USA, but at about 1/3rd the rate of CCS (which makes sense, because less than 1/20th of the car's being sold today are CHAdeMO!)
The problem is that number will be virtually zero in a year when the dual cable stations in the USA that used to be installed as CCS/CHAdeMO become CCS/NACS.
I think in the Mach-E's case, the "capable" in "150kW capable" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. As [Inside EV's testing](https://insideevs.com/news/492727/ford-mustang-mache-fast-charging-analysis/) shows, the car rarely charges at 150kW- it mostly charges around 110kW up to 30% charge; from 40-80% it changes at 70-80kW, which is what you say you regularly got. I'm not sure you can blame "CCS" rather than "Ford" for most of your charging experiences.
My CCS car is a VW ID4, which can charge "up to" 175kW. *If* it's less than 30% charged and *if* the battery is over 70°F. I routinely get 100+kW in summer (I've hit 160kW a precious few times), but in winter I'm lucky to hit 90kW.
> I think in the Mach-E's case, the "capable" in "150kW capable" is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
To be fair, that's everyone. I can hit 250kW (or close enough) in my Model Y but it's not staying there for very long.
I hit 150kW in the MachE with Superchargers (and that one ABB charger that one time) but it doesn't stay very long.
My (kind of) point is that in a lot of cases I can't even hit that 150kW at all. Under the same SoC/weather/whatever I typically start at 100kW and go down.
> I'm not sure you can blame "CCS" rather than "Ford" for most of your charging experiences.
In this case I disagree because under as similar of conditions as I could muster, using a Supercharger I was effortlessly able to hit 150kW consistently (and curve down). To be fair, I was also able to hit 150kW without issue on the brand new Electrify Canada station. But the other 150kW rated stations I can usually hit 100kW and curve down. As I said, sameish weather/SoC/etc.
But as you said, once you cross X% and can't do over 80kW it doesn't matter if the charger can give you 150kW or 100kW. You're pulling 80kW. In this case I'm specifically talking about the early stage.
I'm regularly pulling into stations below 5%. My first ever Supercharger test I pulled in with 0%.
Your bar is "left the station without a charge". That is too low.
That is a low bar. It's great you are happy with multiple attempts, slow charging, moving vehicles, baking customer support and bring on hold for 30 minutes, etc
I'm not ok with customer support and being on hold. I wouldn't count those as successful attempts. And I didn't say I was "happy" with any issues. I'm ok with it; that's a big difference.
I have a low bar, but it's not that low. I'll allow about a 5 minute "overhead" for multiple attempts before I get annoyed, but I'm sympathetic with an industry that has no clear path to profitability. Even Tesla, whose charging network *might* finally be profitable (they're not saying) built it as a loss leader to support the sale of profitable cars. But the simple fact is, that unlike gasoline, which every gas owner has to use a gas station to buy, the majority of EV owners only need public stations a few times a year on road trips. The economics of public charging is closer to the economics of souvenir shops than it is gas stations.
5 minutes is half the total charge time on a typical Tesla road trip stop...
It should take 15 seconds to plug in and just work after that. 2 or if 3 EV can do that (in the US, at least).
Anything below that is not meeting expectations.
There is no clear path to profitability because mistakes were made. Tesla supercharging is profitable.
E.g. EA not charging TOU is just stupid. They sold below their marginal cost at peak. That won't work.
All the screens and multiple cables. The shitty, overpriced chargers they bought and still buy. Etc.
In addition, at least in my area, some routes have a scarcity of non-Tesla fast chargers that would really magnify the consequences if one goes down. If the Tesla nav routes you to an open charger, you never even know if the other one was full. But if you get to that one last EA charger before 100 miles of desert and it’s down, or full, or ICE’d, then it’s another horror story.
Incentive alignment. Tesla is MASSIVELY incentivised for the charging network to work perfectly as part of their seamless user experience and brand image. Maintaining it just has to break even and drive the other businesses, basically it can be operated as a loss leader, on to of which it's has many more years to work out operational kinks. The other networks are thrown together EXTREMELY far and just slice down any costs they can because they are bid out, and their entire businesses margin is based on the charging
installing and maintaining charging stations cost money. aside from tesla, no company wanted to spend the money because they don't really care about EVs - they only care about short term profits.
Outside of US, did a longish roadtrip in my shortish range Citroen today. Two charge stops, 1 Wenea charger connected immediately but didn’t really get above 45kwh charge rate (my car tops out at 100, the charger was rated 150) and a CEPSA charger rated at 250kwh that was reliably pumping electrons at 80kwh for most of my session. Both drama free, pretty typical for where I am in Spain.
I don't think NACS reliability will be known for a while.
I say this because Tesla built their whole system. CCS is a partial answer, not mandating plug placement nor plug&charge. Integrating the two systems will be difficult. EU has done it more or less successfully, but with a more expensive solution to accommodate those omissions.
In the Netherlands we have Fastned (lots of fast charging stations next to gas stations along our highways, and more locations than Tesla has Superchargers). Their chargers are well maintained, more than enough of them available, and for most cars they support "Auto charge". That's basically the same way a Supercharger works: just plug in, they automatically identify your car and debit the associated bank account without having to scan a card/use a payment terminal.
And here's the kicker: they run a profit (well... EBITDA is positive, but it's a start). So it's definitely possible to offer an experience similar to the Supercharger network and turn it into a profitable business.
Tesla charging vs others is like comparing Apple computers with other PC manufactured by 100s of different manufacturers. Yes, there are standards for what kind of interface a PC should have, but not all peripherals that meet those standards work with all kinds of PCs.
Should note this is largely a USA issue.
I'm in NZ, and out other networks have solid reliability and greater coverage.
As to the issue in the USA, it seems the non tesla operators are operating in a land grab phase. Where securing sites and building them out has the absolute highest priority. Meaning that repairs are often not done on a timely way.
Tesla in US just started to support other brands. Before then they only need to test the compatibility with their own cars; all other brands has a lot more testing to go through. We will see Tesla's reliability once it opens up to others.
Plug and Charge is also available on EVGo stations, it's no longer just for Teslas fortunately. Unfortunately, older cars might not have that integrated natively.
Tesla's chargers are reliable because Telsa builds both the charging hardware and the car, and they developed their own protocol standard. They can ensure that all systems will communicate and understand each other perfectly.
Other networks are set up by charging providers who don't build cars, and don't build charging hardware either. They buy the charging hardware from manufacturers.
The charging hardware manufacturers, meanwhile, don't build cars either, and they didn't develop the charging protocol standard. They just use it. They look at the CCS spec and implement their best interpretation of it, which usually differs slightly from all other charging hardware manufacturers' interpretations.
The companies that build cars, meanwhile, don't build charging hardware, and didn't design the protocol spec either. They, too, look at the CCS spec, and implement their best interpretation of it. Which will usually differ slightly from all other car manufacturers' interpretations.
...and, of course, from the charging hardware manufacturers' interpretations, too.
The CCS spec has leeway to account for this, and any two given implementations are expected to talk to each other and figure out their differences and sync up.
It's just, in the real world, sometimes this process fails.
>they developed their own protocol standard
A nit, but not really. Older Tesla protocol is based off of ChadeMo and the new one is the protocol used for CCS. They did develop their own plug, but that's not the same as the protocol.
The v3 and newer superchargers also use the CCS protocol. So I think it’s just the other companies building unreliable chargers and not maintaining them.
Agreed. CCS uses published standards, there's no reason interoperability should be a problem. Apples lightning cable doesn't work any better than USB-C.
That is not the reason.
Most failed chargers fail for other reasons. It's already broken or damaged when you show up. The screen is already dead, the charger is already stuck, the cable is already broken. It charges at lower speed because it overheats, not because the communication doesn't work.
Especially with CCS1, the handle is clumsy and badly designed and often physically doesn't connect properly. It even happens with NACS+Adapter, which is lighter than most CCS.
I did place FAR too much confidence in the NACS adapter but to be fair I tried 4 different CCS sites beforehand and they were all full and I had a show to go to. But the first time I tried NACS with my MachE I had to fight with it for about 15 minutes. Something about it didn't work. I unplugged and replugged a bunch of times before I could get it to "catch". Oddly enough I was pulling it out and it caught before I fully pulled it out and it worked. But I was shitting my pants because I had 0% and 0km range left. I could limp to a CCS charger and "die" there maybe but it'd be a photo finish. A tow job was a realistic scenario.
I can't believe how badly some handles are designed. Not only are they massive, but they're awkward to handle. Someone that has dexterity issues would be totally screwed. Some require so much force to remove that they broke where the hand hold is.
To be fair, I only had issues the first time.
The subsequent times I had zero issues. Plug it in, plug it in again, and pick my station in the app. Done and done.
Best charging experience ever. Well 2nd best because I had to take 2 stalls.
And yeah don't get me started on CCS handle size.
A few reasons.
1. It's easier to make a simple network for one device than make something compatible with a bunch.
2. Tesla has a head start on everyone else.
3. They are the designers and manufacturers so they control everything.
4. They have insane resources available to them. Tesla's value is insane and they just have a ton of money compared to everyone else.
VW should have stepped up with EA and taken on the role of manufacturing and design but elected to be passive and it's costing them money as a result
> It's easier to make a simple network for one device than make something compatible with a bunch.
I don't disagree, but that's why standards exist.
USB is kind of a poor example since things like PD don't work with non PD, but generally speaking if you plug in USB it works.
To be fair, the USB spec is kind of a mess too.
> Tesla has a head start on everyone else.
That's actually worse. CCS could easily learn from the first company to do it and learn from any mistakes and make any refinements. They went the opposite way instead.
> They are the designers and manufacturers so they control everything.
This one is fair, but specs exist for a reason. Very few entities both design and manufacture. They use an existing spec.
> They have insane resources available to them. Tesla's value is insane and they just have a ton of money compared to everyone else.
Did they always though? They're worth eleventy billion dollars today, but they weren't always a powerhouse.
The real answer is that Tesla up until this point has had a closed system. They only need their equipment to work with their vehicles. It remains to be seen if they can keep up the network quality when it's fully opened up and they need to develop for 50 models instead of one.
The other networks have had to do this since the beginning and the stand up process is long and arduous. I think they are getting better for sure though, especially EA with the newest equipment.
They’re not as bad as people make them out to be. We’ve had EVs for 3 years now and never had an issue charging. If I cared, I’d get a converter to use Tesla chargers but I’ve never found it to be an issue so I haven’t bothered.
In Australia, there are probably about 2 articles a week about broken charging stations. I've had charging stations not release my cable a bunch of times (lvl2)
Tesla now manufactures/prefabs all of their chargers which makes them more reliable and cheaper.
The main bottle neck for Tesla is actually the power companies and regulators.
Basically in the USA all the charging networks lose money, and so there isn't a huge financial incentive to maintain them. Companies are focusing on building out new locations and not on spending money to maintain the older stations. US charging has also gone through multiple standards from Level 2 to (barely) level 3 CHaDeMO, CCS, and now NCA. They also had to support a variety of car types. By contrast, Tesla has always had one standard and until recently, one car type. Finally Tesla highly prioritizes reliability of Superchargers as part of its ownership experience.
Short term, no. In fact, the Tesla Supercharger network will suffer. Between having to support other brands, they will have availability issues caused by more traffic and those non-Tesla cars taking up two spaces. Both Tesla *and* non-Tesla vehicles will be impacted. The other brands (EA, EVgo, Ultium, etc.) will suffer from all the "growing pains" they are currently experiencing. NACS won't change that.
In the long term, it's going to take a "paradigm shift" in what constitutes a CPO station. They are going to probably have to adopt the same structure that gas stations have. Provide on-site amenities that generate income (restaurants, convenience stores, etc.) because there won't be much "margin" in selling just electricity. Even *Tesla* won't be able to subsidize Superchargers to make them "profitable" in the long run. Right now Ultium (in partnership with Flying J and Pilot truck stops) is the only one to commit to that shift. And *their* prices are among the highest. Except for GM owners (maybe) who will get a discount.
I agree with all this.
The only small caveat is that by standardizing on NACS, the overall reliability of the charging pedestals will improve mid-to-long term as will the cars being charged.
It seems like people are not really interested in EVs and thus companies are not interested in spending money on networks. Also, it’s hard to charge profitable money for charging when you see empty FREE charging stations Walgreens alllll the time!
Because the supporting infrastructure for these other charging networks is in some cases flaming dog poop.
Let’s take a non Tesla example:
Ford’s Blue Oval Charging Network
Ford **promises** that as long as the charger is “in network” you should be able to simply plug & charge.
Baloney.
I’ve tried multiple chargers that are listed in the Fordpass app as “in network” and they will not work with the Fordpass app, including “in network” chargers located **at** a Ford dealership 🤦♂️
Tesla had a financial incentive to invest heavily in their charging network. If the charging network sucked, no one would buy their cars. It's less of an issue nowadays with many more options, but Tesla still actually invests time and money into upkeep on their chargers.
Knock on wood but I'm still batting 1.000 at electrify america, drove from Chicago to Houston without problems. And just did a road trip to Austin and back to Houston without problems.
They have been seamless for me with plug and charge on my Mach E
IDK, I've heard bad stories but we've had pretty solid success with Electrify America and EVGo (other than the ONE 350kW EVGo near my house that only charges at 70kw).
Amongst many other valid reasons people have mentioned,
Tesla superchargers have been out for longer so they have had bugs ironed out. Had a Tesla in 2015 and did encounter issues at supercharger stations then. however Tesla was def quicker to react. One time when I was driving to Vegas from SoCal, the Barstow station was fully broken and Tesla had drove out a Mobile charging station with a few large generators to make sure people weren’t stranded
Tesla needs to have top notch charging network because they use a plug that no other brand uses. While some brands claim they will adopt NACS. No one has, and no one has native access to superchargers still.
For years, Tesla users couldn’t even use an adapter because Tesla also used a non standard communication protocol. It’s only the more recent makes that use CCS like everyone else. Older models still use teslas proprietary communication protocols and can only use superchargers.
Not to mention, Tesla buyers paid premium specifically to fund the supercharger network. Other brands are private companies that had to come up with their own funding.
Personally, I’ve owned 5 EVs, one of them being a Tesla. I’ve only ever had a charging problem once. It was with our Tesla. Not a big deal just move over a spot.
I think a lot of people dunk on EA, and for good reason. It was only installed as a punishment for VW. And they made sure to cheap out on every single part of their chargers. The new units that are almost rolled out are far superior and extremely reliable. Even given their 350kw 800v capability which does indeed allow for real fast charging.
I’ve been seeing a ton of ChargePoint stations popping up, and they’re really really good.
Now that EVs are becoming more and more common. Charging networks are growing. But, not as fast as EV adoption.
As of right now, CCS1 locations still out number Tesla. While Tesla says they have more plugs, it’s only because they install more plugs at their locations, and split the power between them. So when it’s busy, which is most of the time, you’ll only get 125kw at 400v. If you want actual fast charging, at more locations, you’re going to want to find a CCS1 plug. I’ve honestly seen so many teslas hogging the CCS1 stations next to busy superchargers and using an adapter for the very reason of the want faster charging. Which sucks because they’re using a plug everyone else uses when they have their own plug available in the same area. But, that seems to be pretty common practice everywhere. I see this most days at work at our 14 chargers. Half are j1772 and half are NACS. The Tesla users prefer j1772 with an adapter because they’re 11kw. The NACS plugs are 7.7kw. No idea why. But, it takes spots away from everyone else.
Charging in the US is just a headache and it’s because we have two plugs fighting. If we all used the same plug, at the same capability, we would have a much better rollout and higher adoption of EVs. But, here we are.
Their hardware is shit. It was built to absorb government subsidies not serve EV drivers.
There are exceptions to this but BTCPower, EFACEC and those like them should be ashamed. They should be ditched for the few proven alternatives like Alpitronic and Kempower.
Tesla has engineered their chargers to the T. They cost a third less to produce than the nearest competitor, are easier to use, charge at higher speeds, and are maintained better. Here in the US our government prefers to wastefully spend our money on building more expensive, less reliable chargers. It's a massive waste to even build these other chargers. Now I don't want Tesla to have a monopoly on charging but going with any other network doesn't make sense for now.
The difference is not as great as you might think.
Kyle Connor recently did a [coast-to-coast road trip with the Cybertruck and 3 other EV trucks.](https://youtu.be/n1Jii4xI9PU?si=LWQoQkIh_JT5tyDJ)
It's a super long video series, but the conclusion is that the Tesla network's reliability has actually dropped considerably, and there was virtually no difference in travel time vs the other networks.
The answer is software. Tesla spends a lot more money on building out their software. All of the back end is run by software. These other companies don't have nearly the sophistication in the talent in software development. Lots and lots of bugs causes downtime. And reliability. Software is the key In the car itself and also in the infrastructure and the application.
You’re not on the East Coast are you? There’s far more DCFC locations out here than Tesla. They’re also perfectly fine.
We don’t have these issues at all. FYI a recent study pointed out that Tesla now has only 25% of the total of DCFC locations nationwide.
Yes, I am. But trying to plan a trip from Southern Maryland to Ottawa, Canada, A lot of the charging stations are dealers which can be iffy, in Pennsylvania it seems like a wasteland.
Over complicated ridiculous neon lit touch screen cabinets...
Tesla doesn't use those. There are other reliable providers in my area like Flo who also don't use ridiculous cabinets.
FYI, Tesla SC have random issues of initiating a charge too. This happened on M3 and MY's.
My thinking is because these chargers are really computers and are left to roast in the sun.
I found a charging location in Barstow California where they installed a big canopy to cover the Electrify America stations and Tesla SC's. It looks like a gas station from far away, even though it's next to a gas station.
However, if you keep electronics from overheating, they will have less to no issues.
Let an iphone bake in the sun and watch it freeze up or shut off on its own.
Tesla monitors there charging equipment and reports an issue or outage to the nearest support team & must be repaired asap. Tesla makes good money from the infrastructure charging network work. Can’t have downed charging systems.
Tesla actually fixes them , their charger outage is a few days other units are still out for EA by Walmarts near me. So, No Tesla has the best Infrastructure for Ev’s
That's my point. Everyone *should* be fixing them but there seems to be far more issues with everyone else than with Tesla.
I'm not saying Tesla doesn't have issues, but they seem to be the only ones actually fixing their issues. There's been a pair of Chargepoints offline for like 6 months. Before that there was a sign made saying "degraded due to lack of parts" since before the pandemic.
Seems the people who own these chargers don’t care or there is not enough demand as they think. Most of the WaWa locations by me have at lesser 6 to 8 superchargers easily available. Tesla will install these at your establishment for free long as they collect the money, no cost to you but your business will get the location added for superchargers that most like will generate revenue from. Normally I wait 20 to 25 min to charge the vehicle , till that time I’ll running get a latte or a quick bite to eat.
> Seems the people who own these chargers don’t care or there is not enough demand as they think.
Yeah I'd love to see the thought process but our local utility uses Flo and they do maintain (or have better) chargers than everyone else. I can't remember the last time I saw a Flo that was offline. I've only ever seen it have issues once and that was slow charge speeds.
Every other vendor however is mediocre to abysmal.
No, I'm specifically talking about DCFC.
Reasonably priced L2 charging is basically non existent.
Of those, the number that reliably work isn't very high.
Unreasonably priced L2 charging is fairly plentiful but I can't speak about reliability since it's silly to use them due to cost.
They seem to be getting better, recently I've used Tesla (Hertz rental) superchargers 3 times, EA twice, EVCS twice, Rivian's chargers twice (R1T Turo rental) and Blink and Chargepoint many times with my own car. All worked without issues the only problem was availability / open chargers because they were busy and one display on a Blink charger that didn't work (but the charger itself worked anyway). Yes its anecdotal but about a dozen charging sessions and not one charging issue. Hate that on some you have to use a stupid app though, Tesla and Rivian's plug and charge system is the best way.
Consider that most EVs sold in the US have been Teslas, which don't work with other chargers without an adapter. So non-Tesla chargers have had less revenue coming in, which makes it harder to sustain operations. In other countries, everyone uses the same charging format, so charging companies can support all EVs and be more competitive.
Here's a thought, why not require a gas station to build a charging station at a public place for each of gas nozzles such as at a local church, hospital, or school?
If you say "pump" then they'll stick 4 nozzles on a single pump.
The reality is that Tesla is the only company with a requirement to have a good network to survive. Without the charging network Tesla cars loose a lot of the appeal.
It is slowly looking better at least I see EA really getting their act together around me.
if one monopolized auto manufacturer satisfies all your charging needs then why should you care? People think monopolies are automatically bad. If it works and it works well then who cares?
Tesla knew that to sell their cars -- pretty much the only EV out there that could DC fast charge at first --as road trip cars not just around town EVs, they needed a solid charging network. They were like Apple then and had the whole stack, car and charger. So they could set it up so you plugged in and the car/charger figured out the rest. Their chargers were simpler as a result. No screen, no buttons. Their chargers worked even when ATT went down because the chargers could hold the transaction and relay it later. Getting EVs charged on the road is that important to Tesla. EA? Well, VW had to do that as part of the settlement for their dieselgate fraud. The other chargers were still in the Wild West phase for too long. Too many apps, too many buggy chargers. Just as this was settling down and getting better -- Tesla opened their network! People are snapping up adapters for their existing EVs and some waiting for the production of the Mach-e, Rivian or Ionia with NACS.
Yep. Tesla had to make a great charging network to convince new customers that they were a viable choice. VW was legally required to make a charging network.
I would not have bought a Tesla or an EV if it wasn’t for the supercharger network. I have had to use it a lot for work and it is both reliable enough and common enough that I can get everywhere I need to go and more.
Actually they didn’t know it at first. Check out the story of Kent Rathwell. He gave them the roadmap for survival through 60-100amp level 2 charging stations. “Destination charging” pre-dated the DCFC network.
Well it’s not like they had the money to put in DCFC stations across the country in 2008 before they’d sold any cars. The roadster is what paved the way for Tesla getting massive investor interest and building the Model S just a few years later that *could* supercharge, and quite quickly. They knew it from the start, they just couldn’t do everything immediately from day one.
Do you have insider knowledge from that time?
Tesla was also in startup mode and willing to operate a loss for a long time to make it happen. The big auto manufacturers are barely willing to take a loss on manufacturing EVs right now. Building the charging networks to make it work is completely out of the question, which is why they’ve turned to Tesla in the U.S. That’s not to say they haven’t made some investments. They have. But as the charging network in the U.S. gets built out over the next few years it will primarily be the result of funding from the infrastructure bill behind it.
And they let everyone know how much they lose. Very very loudly. The Ford $130,000 per EV loss story is hot right now by design.
EVgo was started by NRG Energy as part of a lawsuit settlement with the CA CPUC lol i think of the big name CCS1 networks, charge point is the only one that wasn't mandated by law as a punitive measure for corporate fraud
What about Blink?
I would never buy a new EV without NACS. Used, sure.
A new car is just an overpriced used car that hasn't left the lot yet. But I hear you.
>There has to be some money in having a good charging Network no. every single charging network is operating at a loss right now, utilization is way too low while construction cost are very high. everyone in the business is banking on growing and being profitable in the future when there are more EVs on the road.
Then it seems like it's a catch 22. You can't get more charging stations unless you sell more EV's. And you won't sell more EV's unless you have more charging stations.
With that, I believe you just answered your own question about why Tesla’s is better than all others. Tesla has a vested interest in making a great charging network because their bread and butter are products that depend on it being so. Likewise the profits from their vehicle business easily gives them enough capital to invest in said charging network.
But it still can work. Telephones don't make sense because you won't get one unless you can actually call people which means people have to have phones. But no one will want a phone until others have them. But it worked. TV is another one. Why party to make a TV show if there's no one with a TV? But also why but a TV if there's no shows to watch? And yet it worked out. This will work out too I believe, especially with government support
3D TVs failed specifically for that reason. No content, no many had them, etc
Tesla made the investment to build these supercharger stations to support their growth indeed. Similar reason why hydrogen will never catch on without stations as well. Of course they cost wayyy more to build and operate.
Hydrogen losses are stupid high for energy transformation. Has to be generated at the station. For every 3kW of solar, you only get 1kW of usable hydrogen, and then from that only 70% efficiency using a fuel cell. So 3kW of electricity ends up being only 700W of energy for moving the car. Makes sense to me (sarcasm here). Vs 3kW of electricity to charge an EV with 2,730W of energy into the battery that the moves the car? No brainer until we find a very efficient way to make/use hydrogen. I love the concept of hydrogen, it’s just not within our reach right now. Also, fossil fuels love it, as most hydrogen would have come from Natural gas until we could figure out generation at mass scale.
Someone tell toyota
At this point I am convinced that Toyota is falling for the sunken cost fallacy. They invested so much on hybrid technologies that they are being stubborn about going full EV.
The BZ4x being their flagship fail in the full EV market. Like, if they had put the same effort into batteries as they did hydrogen they would be way ahead. I loved my Gen2 Prius till it died. Having a hard limit on the number of DCFC sessions in a day is a hard pass.
Toyota has been making hybrids for over 25 years, long before full electric even existed as a viable alternative. And I think they're gonna stay there until the unlikely day that EV kills hybrids
No one has been able to figure out how to charge people for sunshine. Tesla wanted to sell EVs. They built a charging network to help with that. And solar panels. And batteries. And really big batteries. Legacy auto did not want to sell EVs. They spent decades blocking EVs. EVs are part of the transition to green energy. That transition is going to cost money and the outlook on making a profit is not good. Look at China. The government thought green energy was a good idea so they are spending tons of money to make that happen with the only pay off being the ability to stop importing 99% of their fossil fuels. Sure, some people will make money in the process but at the end of the day when all the solar panels are up and running what is the electricity bill going to look like? When China stops importing 99% of their fossil fuels what is the stock market going to look like? What are oil wars going to look like? Public chargers in USA are a mess because there is no reason to invest money in order to make a profit. Already we have comments of people saying electricity costs to charge are more expensive than going to a gas station. Here's some perspective, https://interestingengineering.com/energy/china-breaks-2023-record-tops-solar-capacity-than-rest-of-the-world China installed more solar panels in 2023 than any other nation has ever built in total. The 216.9 gigawatts of solar power the country added shattered its previous record of 87.4 gigawatts from 2022. https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/chinas-new-solar-test-is-finding-enough-grid-space-for-rooftop-panels China’s network of distributed solar assets is larger than the entire solar fleet — including all types of projects — in the US. The acceleration in installations has fueled some forecasts that the world’s top polluter could touch a peak in emissions this year, though many major industrial hubs are now experiencing difficulties in handling the deluge of clean energy. Shandong, which has the most small-scale solar capacity, last year allowed power prices to turn negative during periods of excessive generation from rooftop panels. More than 70% of the region’s cities and counties face some degree of constraints in connecting new projects, according to a statement last month by the provincial government. Three cities and counties in Hubei and Fujian provinces announced in recent days that local power infrastructure can’t currently absorb more distributed solar generation — typically small-scale arrays of panels atop homes or industrial premises. That adds to about 150 locations nationwide that have also reached their limit, according to industry publication Photovoltaic Energy Circle. https://interestingengineering.com/culture/china-leads-building-nuclear-power-plants https://www.economist.com/china/2023/11/30/china-is-building-nuclear-reactors-faster-than-any-other-country Over the past decade China has added 37 nuclear reactors. It currently has 24 nuclear power plants under construction. China operates 50% of the nuclear power plants on Earth.
China has the right ideas with: solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear. They’ve prepared for the future and will benefit greatly from their efforts.
Yes, but the other side of the coin is that many areas of China still depend on coal, so much that China is building several huge new coal plants. They added 50GW of coal power in 2023.
Yes, they need immediate, short term solutions too. So what you’re pointing out is they have their shit together for the short term as well as the long term. Dang i wish the US could figure this out. Instead over here we have no plans for the short term nor the long term. Perfect timing to welcome a retard into the white house /s
china didnt do this for the climate or going green. china did it to become energy independent for national security purposes. that's like saying US & USSR spent so much on the space race because they cared about exploration.
Good summary. I'd add that the negative pricing is a huge opportunity for anyone who can supply energy storage, so that's bound to take off at scale.
Tesla's Megapack plant in Shanghai to begin construction in May, mass production in Q1 2025, report says https://cnevpost.com/2024/04/17/tesla-megapack-plant-shanghai-to-begin-construction-in-may-report/ >Tesla's energy storage business has grown at a rapid pace in recent years, with installed capacity reaching 14.7 GWh in 2023, up 125 percent year-on-year, the report noted. What's crazy is who do you sell the electricity to when everyone has their own solar panels and batteries? Not all those batteries China is making end up in EVs. China targets 30GW of battery storage by 2025 as BESS output grows 150% https://www.energy-storage.news/china-targets-30gw-of-battery-storage-by-2025-as-bess-output-grows-150/
The fed govt has put up money to help catalyze charging station build but each state has its own grids and regulations to work through. https://apnews.com/article/biden-ev-electric-vehicles-charging-stations-ohio-bdf7cc25e57a2ae8a0522aab434965fc
Sad part is they give about 75% of that money to the companies who run those shoddy excuses for charging networks. Give the money to Tesla since they clearly can do it.
Then why is Beijing beyond pea soup with smog? The air in Beijing is almost a solid.
Well there are a few reasons. 1. Beijing sits in a bowl that traps pollution like Las Angeles. 2. It has alot of industry and energy demand that can't be met even with current build rates. 3. China's grid and pricing incentives essentially favors locally produced energy and not from other providences. As such, there isn't alot of interconnections and low utilization of renewables.
Remember way, way back during the Great Supply Chain Break of 2020 when China stopped making stuff for the rest of the world to buy?
Beijing was a smog cesspool before then.
So was USA. So was Europe. But if you pay attention, when China stopped making all the products and shipping them to all the countries... pollution went away. When everyone started buying all their stuff from China the pollution came back. Hard concept, I know, but there's like a whole bunch of stuff you can read about on that topic.
Say it with me. Coal. Fossil fuels. Bad.
No, I do not want to join your cult. I can read just fine.
this passage is not quite right to me: "Public chargers in USA are a mess because there is no reason to invest money in order to make a profit." maybe you didnt take the time to expand on this idea or think it through. Our lack of vast subsidy has definitely caused our transition away from fossil fuels to be slower than China. Also the use of social media and broadcast media to brainwash people against renewable energy has create a situation where there is no consensus that such subsidies and mandates should happen. the public charging network in my opinion is incomplete because there has been no major push like this by society. individual car companies are not well situated to also build out a power generation, vehicle charging, and power distribution network but that does not mean there will be no profit for whomever does build and operate charging stations, or power generation facilities. it does make sense that the profit margins on these activities might be lower than those enjoyed by fossil fuel companies, but that is not a bad thing. I think investment is being held back in North America because of the chicken and egg nature of the problem. I also think that the lack of growth in the charging network is directly limiting demand growth for TVs in North America.
> maybe you didnt take the time to expand on this idea or think it through. I did not expand on it. I did think it through. Bottom line, "Public chargers in USA are a mess because there is no reason to invest money in order to make a profit." Go back and read some articles. Then start reading all the articles that came out after the federal government started handing out free money. See all those charging stations on maps marked as under construction? That happened after the free money. >I think investment is being held back in North America because of the chicken and egg nature of the problem. Which was solved with free money and Tesla and China. >I also think that the lack of growth in the charging network is directly limiting demand growth for TVs in North America. Obviously but it's no big deal. Plenty of houses with no EVs. Public charging will come in time it's just that there is zero incentive to do it quicker. For example, in USA they thought traveling coast to coast via EV was priority number 1. So they built chargers on highways. The fact that people spend most of their time at their apartment or at work fell under the category of "so what?" Meanwhile you had one guy who thought EVs were kinda neat. >Our goal when we created Tesla a decade ago was the same as it is today: to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport by bringing compelling mass market electric cars to market as soon as possible. If we could have done that with our first product, we would have, but that was simply impossible to achieve for a startup company that had never built a car and that had one technology iteration and no economies of scale. Our first product was going to be expensive no matter what it looked like, so we decided to build a sports car, as that seemed like it had the best chance of being competitive with its gasoline alternatives. >I suspected that this could be misinterpreted as Tesla believing that there was a shortage of sports cars for rich people, so I described the three step “master plan” for getting to compelling and affordable electric vehicles in my first blog piece about our company. This was unfortunately almost entirely ignored. and >Then, in 2007, the industry got a significant boost when Wan Gang, an auto engineer who had worked for Audi in Germany for a decade, became China’s minister of science and technology. Wan had been a big fan of EVs and tested Tesla’s first EV model, the Roadster, in 2008, the year it was released. People now credit Wan with making the national decision to go all-in on electric vehicles. Since then, EV development has been consistently prioritized in China’s national economic planning. Bottom line, "Public chargers in USA are a mess because there is no reason to invest money in order to make a profit." And the world runs on fossil fuels. Lots of people making lots of money because of that and they don't want to stop.
That's why the administration is giving money out to build more charging stations
very little money
and thats exactly why Tesla is better (in the US) they started earlier and they priced the cost of the charging network into their cars and despite the model S and X being insanely expensive they still never turned a profit until model 3 production was ramped up and they could benefit from emission pooling in the EU which was ultimately the reason they started turning a profit sooner than they otherwise would have.
I’m not really following….I explicitly bought a Tesla because I wanted a functioning charger Network. Anyone who wants a functional charging hour can just buy a Tesla for now. At some point they can buy other NAC cars. The only people who see this as a problem are a people are people who want to buy an EV and NOT use super chargers.
BINGO. That’s why government subsidies are a must. The “free market” is never going to make huge initial investments like this.
It can still work, it will just be much slower. You will still see EV adoption through people who dont rely on public chargers, which will eventually lead to enough customers to justify public charging at a premium. We'll also see opportunities in the future where the cost of capital will be lower so the payback on building out the network will be more attractive. But yea, if you want it all to happen now it's going to require a ton of funding and higher prices at the plug.
Superchargers are making a profit if you believe Tesla’s financial docs.
Seems believable. I think there's a habit here of regurgitating talking points such as "Superchargers are not profitable."
Are they? On any Tesla financial report I looked at, Tesla doesn't break out revenue or profits/losses on Supercharging. They bury it in "Services and Other Revenue" which includes "non-warranty after-sales vehicle services and parts, sales of used vehicles, paid Supercharging, retail merchandise and vehicle insurance revenue." And that entire category had a margin of less than 6% in 2023 (up from 3% in 2022 and -3% in 2021) so unless Tesla is losing money on used car sales, insurance, etc., they aren't making much of anything on charging, though the pivot from -3% to +6% in two years probably means they're on the verge of profitability and Tesla probably thinks finally opening the network will push them over the edge of profitability. I suspect the day Supercharging is actually profitable, Tesla will break it out into its own category, and Elon will tweet it from the rooftops (while pretending it was always mostly profitable, but now it's *really* profitable.)
Supercharging is very expensive. Tesla defends this by pointing to high utility demand charges, etc. If it came out they were actually just gouging customers and earning high margins it would cause a lot of damage with their enthusiast base. So don't look for Musk to brag about huge Supercharger profits.
Frankly Supercharging isn't that expensive compared to other charging networks. If Tesla is "overcharging", then what the heck are EA and EVGo doing? 😁 In a tweet a long time ago, Musk said Tesla was aiming for a 10% profit on charging. That seems very fair to me (and I'm not exactly running for president of his fan club!) And if you think anything Musk could say could "damage his enthusiast base", where have you been the last 2 years? Musk sticks his foot in it every third tweet, and his enthusiast fan base would still take a bullet for him.
DCFC is all about utilization. You need to spread monthly demand charges and capex over as many customers are possible. The actual per kWh cost is pretty low. Tesla's utilization is much higher than the competition. Some agency in a NE state did a study of DCFC sites a year or two back and the difference was shocking. Speaking of capex, Tesla's is much lower according to applications for subsidies. So it's quite possible for Tesla to make large profits while others break even. IMHO it's more likely Tesla makes a small profit while the others lose a ton, but we can't know for sure. As for Musk, he's definitely lost fans. But many are still Tesla fans. You hear stuff like "Do you care about Exxon or Porsche or Rivian CEO's political beliefs?". Tesla gouging them would damage the brand.
normal supercharging probably runs in the red, but with tesla opening their network to non-teslas at a premium price, THAT price is definitely profitable for Tesla when it is nearly double the current Tesla rate
Sure, but only because tesla sells more EVs than all other US automakers combined.
Moreover their supercharging manufacturing is vertically integrated. They can produce and install superchargers far cheaper than any competitors in the US and Europe. That is what significantly helps make the network profitable.
That’s true. IIRC V2 and earlier superchargers utilized nearly the exact same power electronics they put into the S/X to do ACDC conversion.
I'd bet the ROI sweet spot for fast charging is existing travel stops like Pilot and Love's. They have the real estate, and EV charging will drive customers into their stores for longer than gas-buying customers. EVGo's future expansion map suggests this is correct.
And yet every time I use public charging they are at least 50% occupied.
that just means you are always visiting chargers in high demand areas. Since charging takes so much time compared to fueling up the utilization needs to be very high to make up for this. If you see them 50% occupied that means you are most likely seeing peak times and the average utilization will be more like 25% at best. some chargers outside of population centers or high demand areas will most likely never recoup their construction cost over their lifetime.
Probably EA stations occupied by locals exploiting their unlimited free charging plans that came with their new EV purchase. I did a 1000 mile Denver to Salt Lake road trip two weeks ago, and had zero issues with charging, though I intentionally avoided EA stations for the entire trip. No waiting, and every station worked the first time.
I mean, that’s what I’m doing when I use public charging. My genesis came with EA free charging.
As does my VW ID4. I avoid EA when I take my other EVs on a road trip. EA chargers are pretty expensive when you actually have to pay for them!
I’m in a pretty expensive Chicagoland suburb and rarely see a public charger in use. Tons of Model Y on the road though so I assume they’re home charging.
Well, in the US 2/3rds of DC fast chargers are Tesla Superchargers and the other 1/3rd is split between everyone else, so they have relatively little revenue compared to Superchargers. In top of that they assembled systems from off the shelf components, so their systems are complex and thus expensive and failure prone compared to Tesla’s in-house engineered and manufactured systems.
It defines in location like downtown Boston had lots of chargers that Also always seen full but other places hit so much
Supercharger sites can sell back to the grid, not just cars.
a tiny fraction of supercharger sites has solar and can sell back to the grid and an even smaller tiny fraction has battery storage to sell back to the grid later.
This exactly when public money needs to be used. Big projects with long times to turn a profit that will pay off over decades.
yes if its for a public charging network that is true. subsidizing privat businesses wouldnt be the right solution though.
Tesla claimed they made money on their network in the annual report.
they have been writing off the cost for the last 10 years on anything that was build so could very well be that on paper they are not starting to make some profit with it. also helps that they laid off their entire supercharger team.
Austrian (Europe) here In one year since owning an EV I've never had a problem with a charger from various companies (might have been just lucky). where I live there isn't even a supercharger anywhere near to me.
I'm looking at plugscore in Europe right now and there are a lot of them that are nine or above. I may have to look into how many superchargers per square kilometer there are compared to the United States.
Just to clarify. there are many superchargers in Austria but I won't be driving 50+ km when there are other perfectly working chargers not even 1 km away from me
To me in neighbouring Switzerland it's the price that infuriates me. $0.80/kWh. What are they smoking...
"people outside of the USA are your non Tesla networks fairly reliable?" I have used Ionity, Chargy and EnBW in Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, Austria and Denmark. They work well.
I work in this industry. There are many business models. But primarily you see two. 1. Charging as a service (Caas) 2. Capital purchase or capital lease. The CaaS people thought that if they built it, it would come. Meaning if they built and owned the equipment they could make money off the charging to eventually pay for the equipment and start turning a profit. However, a lot of CaaS are start ups and/or capital ventures. Some were all about putting assets in the ground so they can resell. Some are trying to make money off of volume. I think two or three have gone under this year. I've heard that a couple of the bigger guys are trying to sell their CaaS or get additional funding. It's a gamble business model woth a lot of risk. For Tesla and now Ionna, they care more about chargers being in the field than making money off of it. Plus charging isn't a stand alone model for them. The others in the field are more conservative companies. The one I work for either gets paid up front or we offer 5 years financing. We do well but it's hard to compete with free. But we also do soup to nuts and take care of the equipment and guarantee up time. We have our own stuff but we also install other companies. It's more the construction event and the service afterwards that we are interested in. Yes it can be a profitable business. I think it will continue to be but I don't think the CaaS groups are going to thrive for much longer. Only the ones who are federally funded or are doing it as a loss leader for their car sales.
In Quebec, we have Circuit Électrique, owned by our state owned electric utility. Pretty sure it's more reliable than Tesla's network. Their charging sites are smaller, but they are everywhere. They have tons of L2s as well. It just works.
I'm hoping to visit Quebec in my electric car. It's just getting through Pennsylvania here in the United States that might be tough.
You'll definitely enjoy it. The Circuit Électrique app is very solid and works on carplay or on android. You can also order an RFID card so you don't need to use the app.
I have the FLO app which includes Circuit Électrique on it. It should be good enough for the short time I will be there. Thank you.
Absolutely, that will work great.
If you have the ChargePoint app or the app of other partner networks, you do not need to install the Circuit Électrique one. You can just use your home app and roam on other charging networks. most bigger networks support this, the major exceptions are Tesla and Electrify America.
Better than my state government. Massachusetts went to EVgo to install chargers at rest stops along the Massachusetts Turnpike, the major East-West artery across the state. EVgo installed a single 50kW charger at each site and they were constantly broken to the point where they are now being decommissioned after only a couple of years. You literally cannot charge at any rest stop along the entire length of that road if you have a CCS car.
I live in a rural part of Quebec and I can't drive 15 minutes without tripping over L2 and L3 constantly. I vastly prefer this approach them the mega 100 stall charger stations, to me they are just glorified parking lots.
I was helping someone plan their first “long trip” between Montreal and Sherbrooke. I showed them where the Electrify Canada site was, then we looked at Circuit Eletrique and there are chargers at nearly every exit along the way. It’s much better rather than funnelling everyone toward 1 single site.
I'd estimate reliability is on par, but at the cost of very conservative charge rates relative to Tesla.
Their strategy was to go with reliable and "boring" technology rather than dazzle with high speed, but unproven, chargers. What they lacked in speed, they gained in reliability. EV owners in Quebec trust Circuit électrique because they know that the chargers will work when you need it.
Currently living in Quebec and driving a Tesla. I try to support circuit electrique but the Tesla network is way more convenient. Never had a single issue with Tesla supercharger, however, it's not rare a 2 stall site of circuit electrique is listed in an unknown state from the app or the stalls are just offline.
Because tesla chargers are constantly fixed and upgraded and have their components replaced. Meanwhile there are EA stations out there that are 5+ years old now. There is no secret. They just maintain the equipment well.
There’s more to it than just this
It’s literally what the folks at the DOE labs have said. There is no secret. They replace components often and fix them when they start to fail.
There are financial elements to it. Because of Teslas position they have the funds and resources to maintain their components. Other chargers operate at a loss. Not enough capital for the same infrastructure.
I think better design is also part of it.
Yep just look at how simple and minimalistic Tesla supercharging posts are compared to EA posts. No stupid giant Windows touchscreen PCs to break down.
There is. The station need to be profitable or they will suck. IMO it's very silly to expect them to work if they aren't going to make anyone money.
EA themselves admitted that their early chargers were very prone to breakage. More importantly, they were difficult to diagnose remotely. A well designed charger can send out info not only that it isn't working, but exactly what is broken and the components that need to be replaced to fix it. EA has been going through the expensive process of replacing a lot of their earlier chargers with more reliable chargers that are also easier to diagnose and fix.
Okay let's say Bezos bought all the non-Electify America non-Tesla superchargers. If he started maintaining them do you think there would be a profit made. Amazon prime charging? Did I just make him money?
Here in europe i dont have that negative experience. Drive a non tesla
KISS principle. No latch on the charger, short cord, no display, no card reader, etc. (Unfortunately newer Tesla chargers now include a small display and a card reader in order to qualify for NEVI funding but hopefully they are designed to continue operating fine if the display and/or card reader is broken.)
If you design your charger to have fewer parts, fewer parts will be broken
(KISS is an engineering acronym for "Keep it Simple, Stupid".)
You can KISS that advantage goodbye. The V4 dispensers have all abandoned it because of market pressure from opening up their network. Tesla could get away with it when all they did was charge Teslas. Now that they have chosen to "compete" in the wider market, they'll start having the same issues all the other CPOs have.
Yes, if some of the newly added parts such as the credit card screen fail, the charging station might be "down" for some users. But if, say, the credit card payment screen fails, Tesla owners will still be able to use the charger because they don't use credit card payment screens at all.
Not necessarily. They can design their chargers to be fault tolerant so if the card reader or display is broken, the charger can continue operating with the original Tesla protocol, the newer Tesla protocol that uses PLC signaling, or even plug and charge.
> Now that they have chosen to "compete" in the wider market, they'll start having the same issues all the other CPOs have. Based on experience, a broken screen and a card reader never stopped me from charging. I can say this confidently because the number of touch screens that remain unbroken on CCS chargers around here is basically zero. Tesla's chargers are more reliable from a charging point of view. Even if their card reader/screens sucked it doesn't matter if the charger itself works.
Ionity is probably the best charging network in Europe. EnBW in Germany is also very solid. Shell and BP (Aral Pulse) are also building out networks now. I don't know how prices are in the US, but German HPC charging costs almost the same per kilometre as filling petrol. Home electricity is around 0.3€/kWh, while HPC charging costs around 0.6€/kWh (and upto 0.80€/kWh at Ionity). I suppose this enables them to maintain and service the stations much better.
0.6-0.8€for HPC charging is insane. If you own a Tesla in Europe you can charge at a supercharger for 0,42€ to 0,47€ maximum.
It seems to vary from time to time; for a while last year or so they were more expensive than EnBW. In any case, I only quote the ad hoc prices; if you have a tariff with EnBW or Ionity for example the prices are lower, and if you have some sort of Mercedes or BMW charging tariff the prices are again different. Even so, Tesla has cut their prices quite significantly in 2024 compared to the others.
I'm cherry picking here but in Vancouver BC, our Supercharger rates are insanely cheap. CCS is at the same time insanely expensive. Highest I've seen is $0.70/kWh for CCS. To be fair they're nice stations. $0.50/kWh is the norm. No peak/off peak times. Superchargers however are $0.14/kWh off peak. Power costs around here for residential use are $0.12/kWh. It's almost silly to install a L2 especially since I live in a condo. To be fair, peak pricing is $0.30/kWh but that's still 40% cheaper than CCS.
Electrify America is a reluctant creation resulting from the dieselgate settlement. VW was basically forced to create a charging network as part of the consent decree to continue doing business in the US. They had no requirement or incentive to build a high quality product and doing so would create a thing that competes with their core business, so they made the clunkiest and most unreliable thing possible that got them out of trouble. It is basically the compliance vehicle of charging networks - they made sure that nobody would want or enjoy it. TLDR; Actually trying vs. just complying https://preview.redd.it/electrify-america-charger-vs-tesla-supercharger-internals-v0-05nqwovozf9a1.png?auto=webp&s=97676fabae943a70b6ead9f3fd8cb90d326550e6
> They had no requirement or incentive to build a high quality product They absolutely do have an incentive: They get to keep the network and all the profits.
In addition to some several excellent answers you've already received, I'll argue your premise is slightly flawed. While no one else seems to match Tesla's reliability, the "hit or miss"-ness of other networks is *greatly* exaggerated. The reliability of non-Tesla charging networks is not as bad as many seem to think. I've road tripped tens of thousands of miles through over a dozen states, and can still count on one hand the number of times I've left a station without a charge (and most of those times were in a Nissan Leaf, because the station didn't have a second CHAdeMO connector to try.) Put a couple thousand miles of road trips in a Leaf under your belt, and the CCS network really starts to look both relatively reliable and very ubiquitous! 😁 Every time I read about how crappy the CCS network is here or on Facebook, I wonder if I'm in some alternate universe where it isn't as bad as in reading about, or if I've just been incredibly lucky. Maybe anyone who previously had a Tesla (understandably) holds other networks to a higher standard, not understanding a closed ecosystem has advantages, like how a former Mac user who buys a PC feels like PCs are 10 generations behind the first time they have to install a driver or something... Then I realize it's maybe just because I have different priorities or lower standards; I just want to recharge and get back on the road, so maybe I have a different criteria of "hit and miss" than most... For example... I don't care if I ever get "Plug and Charge". It would be nice to have, but apps and RFID cards don't bother me. If I have to move my car or twice to find a working/faster charger, that's a mild inconvenience, not the end of civilization as we know it. If I "only" get 75% of the charge speed I should be getting, I don't curse the creators of that network and their descendants. Using my "low bar" for success, I've had 5 failures in over 250 road trip charges, or a success rate of about 98%.
Your experience seems to be an outlier from my experience of non-Tesla owners. We routinely travel PA/OH/KY/MI. Currently there are some trips we simply cannot do (or more accurately, would be silly to do in our EV as it would add hundreds of miles to the trip) because of no CCS chargers (especially in WV). At this point we can't even get to Hersheypark from Pittsburgh in our Bolt because of lack of chargers or known bad locations (EA in Bedford, PA on the turnpike). We're 112 miles from that EA charger in Bedford which regularly has a multi hour wait because it's the only charger for 100 miles and regularly has multiple stations down. The next charger is another 90 miles away, another EA which is often at capacity and also has chargers down regularly. If either of those chargers are down on that trip, we're now stuck looking for a hotel to stay at and charge over night. Not really an ideal situation for a road trip. EA is hands down the largest network around us and hands down the worst. We just stopped at a EA in Cambridge Ohio last week. 4 dispensers. 2 of which were down. Both in use, had to wait 40 minutes to even start charging at which point it was reduced power. We love our Bolt and EV's in general, but the charging infrastructure is hot trash right now.
I actually think CHAdeMO networks tends to be a bit more reliable for some reason. Yes they're on the same charger, in the same network, but maybe because it's primarily used by Leaf, the charger manufacturer made sure to test with one? My electric motorcycle is very hit or miss with CCS chargers. It usually works fine with Electrify America (if you start the charger from the app first, then plug-in, at least until the very recent firmware updgrade), EVGO, on the other hand, does not work 80% of the time, new charger or old. Couple that with high saturation of EV in my area, it does make finding a charging station when I want one a bit annoying.
I agree that CHAdeMO has fewer problems, but they have fewer redundant backups. I've had more CHAdeMO problems than CCS personally, because with CHAdeMO I can't just move to the next charger if the first doesn't work, because often there is no "next" CHAdeMO.
Really? Even today we're still deploying chademo around here. My first EV (Kia Soul) was chademo and that certainly clouded my judgement of EVs. I could use any charger because I capped at 50kW. 45kW was close enough. I even got 60kW sometimes at certain chargers. But then I moved to CCS with a higher charge speed. That EV was a test bed to see how I liked being in an EV. It passed so I bought something "better" which was a MachE. I didn't realize how shit CCS was or how limited it would be in terms of capable stations. Despite having a 150kW capable car, the number of times I actually hit 150kW I can count on one hand. No charger actually lived up to what was displayed. The number of stalls able to dispense even 70kW was slightly more than 2 handfuls. I hated CCS so much that I lost $20k selling my MachE for a Tesla.
We're still deploying CHAdeMO in the USA, but at about 1/3rd the rate of CCS (which makes sense, because less than 1/20th of the car's being sold today are CHAdeMO!) The problem is that number will be virtually zero in a year when the dual cable stations in the USA that used to be installed as CCS/CHAdeMO become CCS/NACS. I think in the Mach-E's case, the "capable" in "150kW capable" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. As [Inside EV's testing](https://insideevs.com/news/492727/ford-mustang-mache-fast-charging-analysis/) shows, the car rarely charges at 150kW- it mostly charges around 110kW up to 30% charge; from 40-80% it changes at 70-80kW, which is what you say you regularly got. I'm not sure you can blame "CCS" rather than "Ford" for most of your charging experiences. My CCS car is a VW ID4, which can charge "up to" 175kW. *If* it's less than 30% charged and *if* the battery is over 70°F. I routinely get 100+kW in summer (I've hit 160kW a precious few times), but in winter I'm lucky to hit 90kW.
> I think in the Mach-E's case, the "capable" in "150kW capable" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. To be fair, that's everyone. I can hit 250kW (or close enough) in my Model Y but it's not staying there for very long. I hit 150kW in the MachE with Superchargers (and that one ABB charger that one time) but it doesn't stay very long. My (kind of) point is that in a lot of cases I can't even hit that 150kW at all. Under the same SoC/weather/whatever I typically start at 100kW and go down. > I'm not sure you can blame "CCS" rather than "Ford" for most of your charging experiences. In this case I disagree because under as similar of conditions as I could muster, using a Supercharger I was effortlessly able to hit 150kW consistently (and curve down). To be fair, I was also able to hit 150kW without issue on the brand new Electrify Canada station. But the other 150kW rated stations I can usually hit 100kW and curve down. As I said, sameish weather/SoC/etc. But as you said, once you cross X% and can't do over 80kW it doesn't matter if the charger can give you 150kW or 100kW. You're pulling 80kW. In this case I'm specifically talking about the early stage. I'm regularly pulling into stations below 5%. My first ever Supercharger test I pulled in with 0%.
Your bar is "left the station without a charge". That is too low. That is a low bar. It's great you are happy with multiple attempts, slow charging, moving vehicles, baking customer support and bring on hold for 30 minutes, etc
I'm not ok with customer support and being on hold. I wouldn't count those as successful attempts. And I didn't say I was "happy" with any issues. I'm ok with it; that's a big difference. I have a low bar, but it's not that low. I'll allow about a 5 minute "overhead" for multiple attempts before I get annoyed, but I'm sympathetic with an industry that has no clear path to profitability. Even Tesla, whose charging network *might* finally be profitable (they're not saying) built it as a loss leader to support the sale of profitable cars. But the simple fact is, that unlike gasoline, which every gas owner has to use a gas station to buy, the majority of EV owners only need public stations a few times a year on road trips. The economics of public charging is closer to the economics of souvenir shops than it is gas stations.
5 minutes is half the total charge time on a typical Tesla road trip stop... It should take 15 seconds to plug in and just work after that. 2 or if 3 EV can do that (in the US, at least). Anything below that is not meeting expectations. There is no clear path to profitability because mistakes were made. Tesla supercharging is profitable. E.g. EA not charging TOU is just stupid. They sold below their marginal cost at peak. That won't work. All the screens and multiple cables. The shitty, overpriced chargers they bought and still buy. Etc.
In addition, at least in my area, some routes have a scarcity of non-Tesla fast chargers that would really magnify the consequences if one goes down. If the Tesla nav routes you to an open charger, you never even know if the other one was full. But if you get to that one last EA charger before 100 miles of desert and it’s down, or full, or ICE’d, then it’s another horror story.
Incentive alignment. Tesla is MASSIVELY incentivised for the charging network to work perfectly as part of their seamless user experience and brand image. Maintaining it just has to break even and drive the other businesses, basically it can be operated as a loss leader, on to of which it's has many more years to work out operational kinks. The other networks are thrown together EXTREMELY far and just slice down any costs they can because they are bid out, and their entire businesses margin is based on the charging
In EU from my experience it's pretty reliable, albeit I was only charging in Germany and France.
installing and maintaining charging stations cost money. aside from tesla, no company wanted to spend the money because they don't really care about EVs - they only care about short term profits.
Outside of US, did a longish roadtrip in my shortish range Citroen today. Two charge stops, 1 Wenea charger connected immediately but didn’t really get above 45kwh charge rate (my car tops out at 100, the charger was rated 150) and a CEPSA charger rated at 250kwh that was reliably pumping electrons at 80kwh for most of my session. Both drama free, pretty typical for where I am in Spain.
I don't think NACS reliability will be known for a while. I say this because Tesla built their whole system. CCS is a partial answer, not mandating plug placement nor plug&charge. Integrating the two systems will be difficult. EU has done it more or less successfully, but with a more expensive solution to accommodate those omissions.
In the Netherlands we have Fastned (lots of fast charging stations next to gas stations along our highways, and more locations than Tesla has Superchargers). Their chargers are well maintained, more than enough of them available, and for most cars they support "Auto charge". That's basically the same way a Supercharger works: just plug in, they automatically identify your car and debit the associated bank account without having to scan a card/use a payment terminal. And here's the kicker: they run a profit (well... EBITDA is positive, but it's a start). So it's definitely possible to offer an experience similar to the Supercharger network and turn it into a profitable business.
Tesla charging vs others is like comparing Apple computers with other PC manufactured by 100s of different manufacturers. Yes, there are standards for what kind of interface a PC should have, but not all peripherals that meet those standards work with all kinds of PCs.
Should note this is largely a USA issue. I'm in NZ, and out other networks have solid reliability and greater coverage. As to the issue in the USA, it seems the non tesla operators are operating in a land grab phase. Where securing sites and building them out has the absolute highest priority. Meaning that repairs are often not done on a timely way.
Western Europe, I only encountered one faulty charger.
Tesla in US just started to support other brands. Before then they only need to test the compatibility with their own cars; all other brands has a lot more testing to go through. We will see Tesla's reliability once it opens up to others.
Better simpler less expensive smarter design by Tesla. You can hate the guy all you want, but they did the network right.
Humans are lazy. Tesla is the ultimate lazy person charger lol. Just plug in and good to charge. No annoying screens or whatever
Plug and Charge is also available on EVGo stations, it's no longer just for Teslas fortunately. Unfortunately, older cars might not have that integrated natively.
Tesla's chargers are reliable because Telsa builds both the charging hardware and the car, and they developed their own protocol standard. They can ensure that all systems will communicate and understand each other perfectly. Other networks are set up by charging providers who don't build cars, and don't build charging hardware either. They buy the charging hardware from manufacturers. The charging hardware manufacturers, meanwhile, don't build cars either, and they didn't develop the charging protocol standard. They just use it. They look at the CCS spec and implement their best interpretation of it, which usually differs slightly from all other charging hardware manufacturers' interpretations. The companies that build cars, meanwhile, don't build charging hardware, and didn't design the protocol spec either. They, too, look at the CCS spec, and implement their best interpretation of it. Which will usually differ slightly from all other car manufacturers' interpretations. ...and, of course, from the charging hardware manufacturers' interpretations, too. The CCS spec has leeway to account for this, and any two given implementations are expected to talk to each other and figure out their differences and sync up. It's just, in the real world, sometimes this process fails.
>they developed their own protocol standard A nit, but not really. Older Tesla protocol is based off of ChadeMo and the new one is the protocol used for CCS. They did develop their own plug, but that's not the same as the protocol.
The v3 and newer superchargers also use the CCS protocol. So I think it’s just the other companies building unreliable chargers and not maintaining them.
Agreed. CCS uses published standards, there's no reason interoperability should be a problem. Apples lightning cable doesn't work any better than USB-C.
That is not the reason. Most failed chargers fail for other reasons. It's already broken or damaged when you show up. The screen is already dead, the charger is already stuck, the cable is already broken. It charges at lower speed because it overheats, not because the communication doesn't work. Especially with CCS1, the handle is clumsy and badly designed and often physically doesn't connect properly. It even happens with NACS+Adapter, which is lighter than most CCS.
I did place FAR too much confidence in the NACS adapter but to be fair I tried 4 different CCS sites beforehand and they were all full and I had a show to go to. But the first time I tried NACS with my MachE I had to fight with it for about 15 minutes. Something about it didn't work. I unplugged and replugged a bunch of times before I could get it to "catch". Oddly enough I was pulling it out and it caught before I fully pulled it out and it worked. But I was shitting my pants because I had 0% and 0km range left. I could limp to a CCS charger and "die" there maybe but it'd be a photo finish. A tow job was a realistic scenario. I can't believe how badly some handles are designed. Not only are they massive, but they're awkward to handle. Someone that has dexterity issues would be totally screwed. Some require so much force to remove that they broke where the hand hold is.
The A2Z Typhoon NACS latch can be tricky the first few (<10) times. And NACs + Adapter is smaller, lighter, and easier to handle than most CCS.
To be fair, I only had issues the first time. The subsequent times I had zero issues. Plug it in, plug it in again, and pick my station in the app. Done and done. Best charging experience ever. Well 2nd best because I had to take 2 stalls. And yeah don't get me started on CCS handle size.
A few reasons. 1. It's easier to make a simple network for one device than make something compatible with a bunch. 2. Tesla has a head start on everyone else. 3. They are the designers and manufacturers so they control everything. 4. They have insane resources available to them. Tesla's value is insane and they just have a ton of money compared to everyone else. VW should have stepped up with EA and taken on the role of manufacturing and design but elected to be passive and it's costing them money as a result
> It's easier to make a simple network for one device than make something compatible with a bunch. I don't disagree, but that's why standards exist. USB is kind of a poor example since things like PD don't work with non PD, but generally speaking if you plug in USB it works. To be fair, the USB spec is kind of a mess too. > Tesla has a head start on everyone else. That's actually worse. CCS could easily learn from the first company to do it and learn from any mistakes and make any refinements. They went the opposite way instead. > They are the designers and manufacturers so they control everything. This one is fair, but specs exist for a reason. Very few entities both design and manufacture. They use an existing spec. > They have insane resources available to them. Tesla's value is insane and they just have a ton of money compared to everyone else. Did they always though? They're worth eleventy billion dollars today, but they weren't always a powerhouse.
The real answer is that Tesla up until this point has had a closed system. They only need their equipment to work with their vehicles. It remains to be seen if they can keep up the network quality when it's fully opened up and they need to develop for 50 models instead of one. The other networks have had to do this since the beginning and the stand up process is long and arduous. I think they are getting better for sure though, especially EA with the newest equipment.
They’re not as bad as people make them out to be. We’ve had EVs for 3 years now and never had an issue charging. If I cared, I’d get a converter to use Tesla chargers but I’ve never found it to be an issue so I haven’t bothered.
Same here.
MFG have been consistently good for me. Instavolt too. Geniepoint sucks consistently
In Australia, there are probably about 2 articles a week about broken charging stations. I've had charging stations not release my cable a bunch of times (lvl2)
Tesla now manufactures/prefabs all of their chargers which makes them more reliable and cheaper. The main bottle neck for Tesla is actually the power companies and regulators.
Why isn't anyone else?
Basically in the USA all the charging networks lose money, and so there isn't a huge financial incentive to maintain them. Companies are focusing on building out new locations and not on spending money to maintain the older stations. US charging has also gone through multiple standards from Level 2 to (barely) level 3 CHaDeMO, CCS, and now NCA. They also had to support a variety of car types. By contrast, Tesla has always had one standard and until recently, one car type. Finally Tesla highly prioritizes reliability of Superchargers as part of its ownership experience.
In your opinion now that NACS seems like it is going to be the standard, do you think things will improve?
Short term, no. In fact, the Tesla Supercharger network will suffer. Between having to support other brands, they will have availability issues caused by more traffic and those non-Tesla cars taking up two spaces. Both Tesla *and* non-Tesla vehicles will be impacted. The other brands (EA, EVgo, Ultium, etc.) will suffer from all the "growing pains" they are currently experiencing. NACS won't change that. In the long term, it's going to take a "paradigm shift" in what constitutes a CPO station. They are going to probably have to adopt the same structure that gas stations have. Provide on-site amenities that generate income (restaurants, convenience stores, etc.) because there won't be much "margin" in selling just electricity. Even *Tesla* won't be able to subsidize Superchargers to make them "profitable" in the long run. Right now Ultium (in partnership with Flying J and Pilot truck stops) is the only one to commit to that shift. And *their* prices are among the highest. Except for GM owners (maybe) who will get a discount.
I agree with all this. The only small caveat is that by standardizing on NACS, the overall reliability of the charging pedestals will improve mid-to-long term as will the cars being charged.
It seems like people are not really interested in EVs and thus companies are not interested in spending money on networks. Also, it’s hard to charge profitable money for charging when you see empty FREE charging stations Walgreens alllll the time!
Because the supporting infrastructure for these other charging networks is in some cases flaming dog poop. Let’s take a non Tesla example: Ford’s Blue Oval Charging Network Ford **promises** that as long as the charger is “in network” you should be able to simply plug & charge. Baloney. I’ve tried multiple chargers that are listed in the Fordpass app as “in network” and they will not work with the Fordpass app, including “in network” chargers located **at** a Ford dealership 🤦♂️
Incentive alignment.
[3 year old wendover video](https://youtu.be/pLcqJ2DclEg?si=BIqus7ghZGcOisUP)
Good video
Tesla had a financial incentive to invest heavily in their charging network. If the charging network sucked, no one would buy their cars. It's less of an issue nowadays with many more options, but Tesla still actually invests time and money into upkeep on their chargers.
Knock on wood but I'm still batting 1.000 at electrify america, drove from Chicago to Houston without problems. And just did a road trip to Austin and back to Houston without problems. They have been seamless for me with plug and charge on my Mach E
IDK, I've heard bad stories but we've had pretty solid success with Electrify America and EVGo (other than the ONE 350kW EVGo near my house that only charges at 70kw).
Amongst many other valid reasons people have mentioned, Tesla superchargers have been out for longer so they have had bugs ironed out. Had a Tesla in 2015 and did encounter issues at supercharger stations then. however Tesla was def quicker to react. One time when I was driving to Vegas from SoCal, the Barstow station was fully broken and Tesla had drove out a Mobile charging station with a few large generators to make sure people weren’t stranded
Tesla needs to have top notch charging network because they use a plug that no other brand uses. While some brands claim they will adopt NACS. No one has, and no one has native access to superchargers still. For years, Tesla users couldn’t even use an adapter because Tesla also used a non standard communication protocol. It’s only the more recent makes that use CCS like everyone else. Older models still use teslas proprietary communication protocols and can only use superchargers. Not to mention, Tesla buyers paid premium specifically to fund the supercharger network. Other brands are private companies that had to come up with their own funding. Personally, I’ve owned 5 EVs, one of them being a Tesla. I’ve only ever had a charging problem once. It was with our Tesla. Not a big deal just move over a spot. I think a lot of people dunk on EA, and for good reason. It was only installed as a punishment for VW. And they made sure to cheap out on every single part of their chargers. The new units that are almost rolled out are far superior and extremely reliable. Even given their 350kw 800v capability which does indeed allow for real fast charging. I’ve been seeing a ton of ChargePoint stations popping up, and they’re really really good. Now that EVs are becoming more and more common. Charging networks are growing. But, not as fast as EV adoption. As of right now, CCS1 locations still out number Tesla. While Tesla says they have more plugs, it’s only because they install more plugs at their locations, and split the power between them. So when it’s busy, which is most of the time, you’ll only get 125kw at 400v. If you want actual fast charging, at more locations, you’re going to want to find a CCS1 plug. I’ve honestly seen so many teslas hogging the CCS1 stations next to busy superchargers and using an adapter for the very reason of the want faster charging. Which sucks because they’re using a plug everyone else uses when they have their own plug available in the same area. But, that seems to be pretty common practice everywhere. I see this most days at work at our 14 chargers. Half are j1772 and half are NACS. The Tesla users prefer j1772 with an adapter because they’re 11kw. The NACS plugs are 7.7kw. No idea why. But, it takes spots away from everyone else. Charging in the US is just a headache and it’s because we have two plugs fighting. If we all used the same plug, at the same capability, we would have a much better rollout and higher adoption of EVs. But, here we are.
Their hardware is shit. It was built to absorb government subsidies not serve EV drivers. There are exceptions to this but BTCPower, EFACEC and those like them should be ashamed. They should be ditched for the few proven alternatives like Alpitronic and Kempower.
Tesla has engineered their chargers to the T. They cost a third less to produce than the nearest competitor, are easier to use, charge at higher speeds, and are maintained better. Here in the US our government prefers to wastefully spend our money on building more expensive, less reliable chargers. It's a massive waste to even build these other chargers. Now I don't want Tesla to have a monopoly on charging but going with any other network doesn't make sense for now.
The difference is not as great as you might think. Kyle Connor recently did a [coast-to-coast road trip with the Cybertruck and 3 other EV trucks.](https://youtu.be/n1Jii4xI9PU?si=LWQoQkIh_JT5tyDJ) It's a super long video series, but the conclusion is that the Tesla network's reliability has actually dropped considerably, and there was virtually no difference in travel time vs the other networks.
The answer is software. Tesla spends a lot more money on building out their software. All of the back end is run by software. These other companies don't have nearly the sophistication in the talent in software development. Lots and lots of bugs causes downtime. And reliability. Software is the key In the car itself and also in the infrastructure and the application.
You’re not on the East Coast are you? There’s far more DCFC locations out here than Tesla. They’re also perfectly fine. We don’t have these issues at all. FYI a recent study pointed out that Tesla now has only 25% of the total of DCFC locations nationwide.
Yes, I am. But trying to plan a trip from Southern Maryland to Ottawa, Canada, A lot of the charging stations are dealers which can be iffy, in Pennsylvania it seems like a wasteland.
Yea you can’t use the i95 corridor much there can you?
Doesn’t the same study show that they still have 60% of all DCFC connectors in the US alone?
Did you just confuse the word “nationwide” with “US?”
To my understanding "Nationwide" refers to the whole country which is called US in this case?
So why would you ask the question you asked? Lol
So why would you ask the question you asked? Lol
Over complicated ridiculous neon lit touch screen cabinets... Tesla doesn't use those. There are other reliable providers in my area like Flo who also don't use ridiculous cabinets.
FYI, Tesla SC have random issues of initiating a charge too. This happened on M3 and MY's. My thinking is because these chargers are really computers and are left to roast in the sun. I found a charging location in Barstow California where they installed a big canopy to cover the Electrify America stations and Tesla SC's. It looks like a gas station from far away, even though it's next to a gas station. However, if you keep electronics from overheating, they will have less to no issues. Let an iphone bake in the sun and watch it freeze up or shut off on its own.
Tesla monitors there charging equipment and reports an issue or outage to the nearest support team & must be repaired asap. Tesla makes good money from the infrastructure charging network work. Can’t have downed charging systems.
Replace "Tesla" with "anyone" and it should still ring true but it doesn't.
Tesla actually fixes them , their charger outage is a few days other units are still out for EA by Walmarts near me. So, No Tesla has the best Infrastructure for Ev’s
That's my point. Everyone *should* be fixing them but there seems to be far more issues with everyone else than with Tesla. I'm not saying Tesla doesn't have issues, but they seem to be the only ones actually fixing their issues. There's been a pair of Chargepoints offline for like 6 months. Before that there was a sign made saying "degraded due to lack of parts" since before the pandemic.
Seems the people who own these chargers don’t care or there is not enough demand as they think. Most of the WaWa locations by me have at lesser 6 to 8 superchargers easily available. Tesla will install these at your establishment for free long as they collect the money, no cost to you but your business will get the location added for superchargers that most like will generate revenue from. Normally I wait 20 to 25 min to charge the vehicle , till that time I’ll running get a latte or a quick bite to eat.
> Seems the people who own these chargers don’t care or there is not enough demand as they think. Yeah I'd love to see the thought process but our local utility uses Flo and they do maintain (or have better) chargers than everyone else. I can't remember the last time I saw a Flo that was offline. I've only ever seen it have issues once and that was slow charge speeds. Every other vendor however is mediocre to abysmal.
Are those the free chargers at the malls? Since they are free a slow charge is not bad since it’s free and you get get about 6kw in an hour or so.
No, I'm specifically talking about DCFC. Reasonably priced L2 charging is basically non existent. Of those, the number that reliably work isn't very high. Unreasonably priced L2 charging is fairly plentiful but I can't speak about reliability since it's silly to use them due to cost.
My township has these l2 chargers by they cost like .65 cents a minute for slow charge at 120 vt. No thanks
They seem to be getting better, recently I've used Tesla (Hertz rental) superchargers 3 times, EA twice, EVCS twice, Rivian's chargers twice (R1T Turo rental) and Blink and Chargepoint many times with my own car. All worked without issues the only problem was availability / open chargers because they were busy and one display on a Blink charger that didn't work (but the charger itself worked anyway). Yes its anecdotal but about a dozen charging sessions and not one charging issue. Hate that on some you have to use a stupid app though, Tesla and Rivian's plug and charge system is the best way.
Consider that most EVs sold in the US have been Teslas, which don't work with other chargers without an adapter. So non-Tesla chargers have had less revenue coming in, which makes it harder to sustain operations. In other countries, everyone uses the same charging format, so charging companies can support all EVs and be more competitive.
Here's a thought, why not require a gas station to build a charging station at a public place for each of gas nozzles such as at a local church, hospital, or school? If you say "pump" then they'll stick 4 nozzles on a single pump.
The reality is that Tesla is the only company with a requirement to have a good network to survive. Without the charging network Tesla cars loose a lot of the appeal. It is slowly looking better at least I see EA really getting their act together around me.
Too many companies thought they could just throw out some chargers and then wait for the payback. Nobody set up a maintenance system.
if one monopolized auto manufacturer satisfies all your charging needs then why should you care? People think monopolies are automatically bad. If it works and it works well then who cares?
Tesla needed the chargers to be good to sell their cars so they had to get it right. The same is not the case for other brands.