-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
Blog A Look at Tesla's EV Competition in 2019
- Thread starter Ty_McMahan
- Start date
Do you have a source for that?
The cars have indeed always passed VIN's to the superchargers, which then promptly ignored it.
Supercharging is ENABLED via an in-car configuration setting. It's my understanding that the ACCOUNTING info is actually sent by the car itself, not the supercharger. Perhaps that's changed, so I'd be interested in any references you have on this.
If the earlier model still holds true, then I suspect a non-Tesla car may be able to spoof a supercharging session.
What nobody in the automotive press seems to get is that there are a lot of people out there who could afford a BMW or Mercedes but don't want one. A number of those people are buying Teslas because even though Teslas are priced in the same ballpark with expensive European cars, they are a different animal. Tesla has drawn some customers away from European luxury cars and some of those customers will probably go running back if they come out with a compelling EV, but a fairly large segment of the Tesla owners and want to be owners would never buy one of their cars unless they were very, very cheap.
If I was in the market for a car and Mercedes had a compelling car with the same features as a Tesla for $20K less, it would get my attention at least, but I doubt that's going to happen unless it's a bankruptcy liquidation.
I don't have any solid data for sure, but the supercharger checking the VIN was obviously put there for a reason, even if it initially wasn't used. I would think they would be using it now.
Charging availability for all these competitive vehicles is seldom, if ever mentioned. I drive my model s from Ohio to Florida and the ever growing network of supercharger takes all the worry out of long distance travel. Porsche is talking about 800 volt charging but never talks about 800 volt charging availability except at Porsche dealerships which don't exactly dot the landscape. If you're into long distance travel.
"Will Tesla Owners Stay Loyal?"
Answer: Yes. Truck or SUV is next for me.
But the Porsche looked pretty fast just sitting there, I have to admit. Nice lines there Germany. Glad to have you onboard contributing to Tesla's Production Line with Grohman. It takes a World.
Answer: Yes. Truck or SUV is next for me.
But the Porsche looked pretty fast just sitting there, I have to admit. Nice lines there Germany. Glad to have you onboard contributing to Tesla's Production Line with Grohman. It takes a World.
I think Tesla's moat in battery production is huge.
Every time I do an estimate, Tesla looks to be able to fit more battery power to EVs than the rest of the developed world's car industry combined.
Pretty much every EV on sale now has a significant order backlog. Tesla are the only manufacturer who do not seem to be significantly constrained by their battery supply.
I don't see the Supercharger network as as deep a moat.
CCS has about twice as many US locations as Supercharger. (And yes, I mean actual Level 3 DCFC locations)
In the EU, CCS has about twice as many chargers as Supercharger. (~4,700 CCS Chargers vs. ~2,400 Supercharger chargepoints)
Supercharger still has some advantages:
- you are likely to get a faster rate, (dependent on occupancy rate)
- chargers are more concentrated (an average of almost 8 per location)
- in the USA, there are about triple the chargepoints as CCS
- the Supercharger network connections from Coast to Coast, where CCS has a gap its West Coast network, and its network East of the Mississippi
- a smoother user experience
- more consistent pricing (as you only deal with one commercial entity - Tesla)
CCS has some advantages
- the fastest chargers deployed so far are on the CCS network
- underutilisation means the occupancy rate (and therefore contention) is low
- more chargers in the EU, more locations in the US
- at least 5 entities working on expanding the network significantly, in the USA alone, which means a faster-growing network
Last edited:
Nissan was in the battery cell and battery pack business. It's now out. It's still doing its own battery chemistry research work.
Mercedes was in the battery cell and battery pack business. Tried to get other manufacturers to come in on it. Have said both that they are giving up, *and* that they are opening up 4 new battery plants.
Jaguar are doing some of their own tech, and some LG Chem tech. The manufacture of the cells and the packs is at an LG Chem site.
Tesla partnered with a battery cell maker, and got the battery cell maker to fund a manufacturing plant. Even after Panasonic did all this, their reward initially was to sell batteries made in the Gigafactory to Tesla at a loss.
Tesla have played a masterful game in getting scale of supply, security of supply, and commercial terms of supply.
WannabeOwner
Well-Known Member
I just totalled the number of Stalls in Supercharger Info for Europe and got 3,563
No idea if that is Apples-with-Apples though ...
I'm not aware of a single 150 kW CCS in the UK,unless one has opened recently?
Yeah, it was a slog to get an EU-only Supercharger location figure, to compare with the EU-only CCS figures available. (I then multiplied that by average superchargers-per-US-location).
Of the big-four European nations for chargers, the UK is definitely lagging behind the Netherlands and Germany for 150kW+ chargers.
The first 350kW charger went live in NL last November (but initially operating at 175kW), and there is a Berlin to Munich 350kW corridor operating in Germany.
Originally, the first 150kW and 175kW stations were due in the UK in November 2018. I have a vague recollection of one that was going to be earlier, I haven't seen any go-live announcement yet. In the meantime, there are about 1,200 50kW chargers in the UK, compared to the 300 or so Superchargers (both are July 2018 figures)
Last edited:
Tesla has been better than anyone at siting supercharger locations in places where people need them. The CCS and CHAdeMO network is somewhat scattershot. At least in the US.
Tesla also makes supercharging a no brainer. I supercharged a couple of days after getting my car and it was no big deal. To charge with any of the third party providers involves setting up an account or getting a non-member rate or something like that. Once I figured out I probably would never need to use one, I quit bothering how to figure it out.
Using a supercharger is easier than using a gas pump, all the other chargers look more complicated.
I thought Mercedes was only building battery pack plants and were sourcing the cells elsewhere. Looking at the announcements of the investments, it doesn't look like their battery plants are that big. For example they did a lot of fanfare about investing $1 billion into a battery plant in Alabama. That's a pretty small investment to be making cells, though would be about right for large scale battery packs.
I'm sure Panasonic expected to run a loss for a short time at the Gigafactory. It's normal to have an initial loss with a new facility. At the end of July Panasonic announced they expected their operation at the Gigafactory to be profitable by October, which is very early in a production run.
Tesla/Panasonic are still the biggest battery maker in the world by a large margin and will likely remain the largest for some time to come. I agree with you that ultimately battery production is Tesla's deepest moat. Their over the air updates, superchargers, and overall tech are advantages now, but other car makers could overcome those in a year or so if they wanted to. Ultimately it takes battery production to mass produce EVs and Tesla is the only player with enough batteries to do it now and will be for a few years. As long as Tesla keeps expanding battery production as needed, they will stay ahead.
In heavy industry, capacity of key components is key. Legacy automakers kept the ICE tech in house because that's the key component for an ICE. For EVs it's batteries and at this point getting good quality cells as cheap as possible.
Heavy industry is also difficult to do. That's why there have been no new car makers in the developed world for a long time. The South Koreans were the most recent to break in before Tesla and they did it by selling to the developing world first and making all their mistakes there. Once they worked out the kinks on how to make reliable cars, they broke into the developed world. And even then their cars had a rep for bad quality at first.
In the aircraft business, there are only two companies making big airliners today. One is made up of a conglomerate of European companies with heavy government backing (Airbus) and the other is the last American airliner maker, having bought out their last American competitor in the 90s (Boeing). I worked 7 years there on the electronics side for airliners.
Boeing has been around for 102 years and their bureaucracy sometimes put governments to shame, but they have a vast well of institutional knowledge in how to make large airplanes.
The fact that Tesla has managed to climb the cliff to make cars at a profit in the first place is a major achievement. Now they are mass producing them at a profit. And their biggest market from the start has been one of the toughest in the world (North America) and the other most sophisticated market is Europe where they also sell well. That's an achievement nobody has ever really made in the history of the car industry. All of the established players in the car industry started in primitive markets first or started when the entire market was primitive. They all made their mistakes with people who were just happy to have a car, even if it did break down every other day.
Introducing a car into a sophisticated, well developed market, consumers expect perfection. Tesla stumbled and their cars have not been as perfect as the critics want to see, but they have dominated the classes the Model S and X fall into and the Model 3 is probably going to be one of the best selling cars in the US this year. It has the potential to dominate mid-sized the family sedan market, which is the biggest niche for non-SUVs in the US.
Some people in the rest of the car industry are taking Tesla seriously, but too many have been like Motorola and Blackberry in 2008 about the iPhone. The European companies are the first to move against Tesla, but they had incentives. The various governments in Europe have passed laws making ICE less viable and encouraging electric adoption as well as offered some help setting up charging networks. Most European automakers also saw their market share at the top go down as the Model S got established. They saw the existential threat from the Model 3 and moved to do something about it before anyone else. Lastly VW got caught cheating and they have been forced to accelerate their electrification to try and improve their corporate image.
Mary Barra at GM takes Tesla seriously, but she's fighting a lot of the old guard who want to double down on ICE trucks. Ford's answer to competition is to largely abandon the car market in the US and concentrate on trucks and SUVs. Fiat-Chrysler is trying to milk that last bit of nostalgia out of the Boomers by reintroducing the muscle car before they become extinct. All of Tesla's US competition are slow off the mark and some may not survive the disruption.
Toyota has put too much into hydrogen, which is not going to be the future for cars. The infrastructure for hydrogen is too expensive and the losses in storage and transport are too high. Toyota is a huge company with a strong "fan base". I think they will eventually make it, but they may have to shrink the company to do it.
The pace things can change in the car industry is much slower than electronics. The smart phone dominated the cell phone market in only a few years, but it's a relatively simple and cheap device compared to a car. The cheapest and most basic car on the market today in developed countries is still much more complex than an iPhone X from a manufacturing perspective and has more electronics in it and it costs 15X when the iPhone does.
Because of their cost and the effort needed to change production, as well as the problems ramping up battery production, the pace of change in the car industry has to be slower than consumer electronics. Tesla is moving at a breakneck pace for the industry though.
I think this turned into a babble a while back so I'll quit...
tonybelding
Active Member
As it stands now, CCS in the USA is nearly useless. The stations are all clustered in big cities, but there's no way to cross the long distances from city to city. And if you aren't leaving your own city, then you probably are charging at home anyhow, and you don't need fast charging at all.
I hope this situation will change soon, but CCS has a lot of catching up to do.
WannabeOwner
Well-Known Member
Except that a 50kW charger doesn't compare to a Supercharger. Out of curiosity I planned a (400-ish mile) route to Scotland. Tesla needs a 33 minute refuelling stop, but using the current CCS network would need 1h53m
... so to be Comparable it would need the 150kW CCS to be rolled out. That network is years away.To be comparable they also need to be usable. I know 3rd party chargers will improve and because of the way government initially subsides them what we have in UK is a mess (sounds like its the same in USA though ...) , but typically they have been dreadful. Rubbish APPs (e.g. CYC map shows charger locations a mile away from actual location); slow connect times; frequently broken and not promptly repaired. Also having only a couple of stalls means the risk of having to wait - and of course the wait time at sites with only a couple of stalls is statistically much longer than when there are plenty of stalls. Tesla hasn't built a site smaller than 6 stalls in the UK since 2015 - that's 3 years ago!. I know its chicken-and-egg, but for early Rapid CCS users that will be part of the problem, the same as it was for early Tesla adopters.
At least you were smart enough to fine VW to get EA under way. In EU we just rolled over and said "Oh well"
This is not as generally true as it was, say, 30 months ago. In Florida, for instance, there are twice as many CCS locations as Superchargers, nicely spread out through the state. Generally speaking, you can run North to South on either coast, plus a few other places. But CCS is still useless for Coast-to-Coast trips.
But while I was writing my initial reply, I started to think of ways to measure this, specifically. I'm off to do some topology for a while.
Tesla had several years of a head-start, but the pair of them now seem to be rolling out at about the same speed in the USA. Generally speaking, CCS in the USA seems to be like the Supercharger network of two years ago. I think that rule of thumb seems set to continue for another 18 months to two years.
In the EU, Tesla had fewer years of a head start, and CCS is currently rolling out faster.
Except that a 50kW charger doesn't compare to a Supercharger. Out of curiosity I planned a (400-ish mile) route to Scotland. Tesla needs a 33 minute refuelling stop, but using the current CCS network would need 1h53m
To be comparable they also need to be usable. I know 3rd party chargers will improve and because of the way government initially subsides them what we have in UK is a mess (sounds like its the same in USA though ...) , but typically they have been dreadful. Rubbish APPs (e.g. CYC map shows charger locations a mile away from actual location); slow connect times; frequently broken and not promptly repaired. Also having only a couple of stalls means the risk of having to wait - and of course the wait time at sites with only a couple of stalls is statistically much longer than when there are plenty of stalls. Tesla hasn't built a site smaller than 6 stalls in the UK since 2015 - that's 3 years ago!. I know its chicken-and-egg, but for early Rapid CCS users that will be part of the problem, the same as it was for early Tesla adopters.
At least you were smart enough to fine VW to get EA under way. In EU we just rolled over and said "Oh well"
Except that a 50kW charger doesn't compare to a Supercharger. Out of curiosity I planned a (400-ish mile) route to Scotland. Tesla needs a 33 minute refuelling stop, but using the current CCS network would need 1h53m
To be comparable they also need to be usable. I know 3rd party chargers will improve and because of the way government initially subsides them what we have in UK is a mess (sounds like its the same in USA though ...) , but typically they have been dreadful. Rubbish APPs (e.g. CYC map shows charger locations a mile away from actual location); slow connect times; frequently broken and not promptly repaired. Also having only a couple of stalls means the risk of having to wait - and of course the wait time at sites with only a couple of stalls is statistically much longer than when there are plenty of stalls. Tesla hasn't built a site smaller than 6 stalls in the UK since 2015 - that's 3 years ago!. I know its chicken-and-egg, but for early Rapid CCS users that will be part of the problem, the same as it was for early Tesla adopters.
At least you were smart enough to fine VW to get EA under way. In EU we just rolled over and said "Oh well"
Yes, locations in the UK should should use what3words rather than postcodes, imo. I suspect what3words would be a useful improvement in the USA too.
The other option, if an app is rubbish - use a different, better, app.
The repair time definitely varies from network to network, and in the UK repair time is definitely worst at chargers fitted by local government using an installation grant - the grant does not supply any funding for ongoing maintenance. But, over time, those chargers become a smaller and smaller proportion of the installed base.
The largest installed network in the UK, now owned and operated by BP, has real-time fault-reporting, short mean-time to repair, etc.
When I survey CCS chargers, I've been much more likely find them cobwebbed than queued out.
For long trips in the UK, 4 times as many motorway services have CCS as compared to Supercharger. It's contention ratio and utilisation rate that matter, statistically speaking. It's all very well clumping many chargers together in one location, but if you have many fewer locations, and many fewer chargers, and many times more users, then it's those ratios that really matter. The really smart thing that Tesla do, imo, is attach two chargepoints to every charger, and simply give a fraction of the charger's capacity split between two users, any time the location is busy. I also think that it's better to install one more charger than you expect to have used, so that the capacity is there as you experience growth, rather than after.
Given that Jag owners are pretty much the only long-distance CCS vehicle on the UK market atm, and at the end of June there were about 400 CCS chargers per I-Pace, it shouldn't be too much of a problem for a while. 400 miles in an I-Pace using 50kW is 1h18 of charging. Not great, but 1h 53 is 45% worse. There are plenty of use-cases where that's fine. It'll be better once it's down to 36 minutes using the 100kW chargers.
By the time there are significant numbers of cars able to use >50kW CCS, there will be a load more of the >50kW CCS chargers around.
tonybelding
Active Member
I live deep in the heart of Texas. It's a simple matter to call up a Plugshare map of Texas and filter for only CCS stations. And… I'm seeing three in Austin and one each at Dallas, Amarillo, New Braunfels and Kerrville. And that's it for the whole state. There doesn't even appear to be a CCS station anywhere near Houston (fourth largest city in the USA!) or El Paso.
We're better off than Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Mississippi, which appear to have no CCS stations at all.
Then I switch the filter to Tesla Supercharger stations, and suddenly there's a nice pattern of them across the state. There are some areas where they are sparse, particularly in the far west and along the Rio Grande (west of Laredo and south of I-10), but you can travel the interstates without much difficulty.
I tend to check out the CCS spread on a state by state basis. I was looking at New York state today. The stations are mainly at "Travel Plaza"s along I87, between Albany and New York, and most of the rest are at state highway junctions.
I'm assuming that Interstate Travel Plazas are the equivalent of the UK's motorway service stations.
tonybelding
Active Member
This just out…
Tesla has ‘no credible competition,’ analyst says
» Tesla Inc. faces no competition at present, and when it does it will be able to hold its own, analysts at Bernstein said in a note Monday.
Go read the whole article, it's good stuff.
Tesla has ‘no credible competition,’ analyst says
» Tesla Inc. faces no competition at present, and when it does it will be able to hold its own, analysts at Bernstein said in a note Monday.
Go read the whole article, it's good stuff.
Wow an analyst who doesn't have their head stuck in a place that would normally be a physical impossibility! Great analysis.
Similar threads
