Meeting Tesla HK Bus Development Mgr on May 13.......

[gubes]

Hi everyone,

I am meeting Tesla's business development manager - Mr Julian de Jonquieres for a group Lunch on May 13. Julian is responsible for building partnerships with government, companies and utilities that make the ownership of electric vehicles as convenient as possible for Tesla drivers. He has a particular focus on charging infrastructure.

Any feedback or suggestions from Tesla owners on this forum would be welcome before I meet him. Clearly, with the growing popularity of Tesla vehicles in HK, a lot of owners are growing in frustration at the limited availability of Supercharger slots and experiencing various difficulties in getting residential (as well as commercial & office) buildings to help adopt charging.

I look forward to proposing my idea of a Valet charging service. My guess is that at any given point in time probably half of the slots taken are by Tesla's which are already fully charged. A Valet service would effectively increase the utilization of the spots. You don't want to see a vehicle parked at a supercharger all day or beyond the time required to fully charge the vehicle. Also from a convenience perspective, if you are going to the mall and intend to be there for several hours, you can rest assured that your car would be fully charged when you get back even if all slots are occupied.

While superchargers outside of HK are typically used for long distance travel, chargers in HK are principally used because people cannot charge at home.

From Tesla's perspective, it may be more economic to invest in Valet service staff rather than increasing the number of superchargers by the same degree. Another option would be to charge Tesla owners who leave their car charging when the battery is fully charged beyond a certain point.

I suspect they will need to consider this because once the Tesla Model X and Model 3 start hitting the streets of HK, they would need to build A LOT more superchargers so introducing a Valet service would increase the utilization of existing charging stations substantially.

---

Anyway, interested to hear if you have any further suggestions. (I will also talk about the relatively poor build quality of many of the Tesla vehicle sold and the lack of staff and service centers they have to cater for these issues).

Cheers.

 

[markwj]

He's a good man. Been working with him for a while now.

Most of what you talk about has probably already been fed back to him. I suggest you concentrate on suggestions for what can be achieved given the constraints.

 

[gubes]

He's a good man. Been working with him for a while now.

Most of what you talk about has probably already been fed back to him. I suggest you concentrate on suggestions for what can be achieved given the constraints.

Yes I would be curious as to what the "constraints" would be. Vehicle car wash services in malls have been doing valet type service for years so I struggle to see what the issue would be. There would be more constraints in getting approval to build more supercharging parking spots at existing locations rather than adding Valet staff. I guess I will find out nevertheless.

 

[Optic]

Please ask him to investigate fair usage for SCs. How often is it occupied by commercial drivers? I believe making money from the SC ecosystem is going too far. Users should be limited to an amount of usage that is "reasonable" for a consumer. Perhaps go as far as pay per charge, so there is less queue and incentivze people to push their management to install charging spots.

 

[markwj]

Yes I would be curious as to what the "constraints" would be.

Here's an example:

Supercharging

Supercharging is free for the life of Model S.. Supercharging does not alter the new vehicle warranty... Customers are free to use the network as much as they like.

 

[ediot]

a few ideas below:

----- Legislation on home owner charger installation -----
Current supercharger overcrowding issues in HK is partly caused by the lack of home charging by an increasing number of owners, on top of those who aren't able to buy a tesla purely due to the impossibility/ prohibitive costs of installing chargers in high rise apartment buildings.

this is a long shot, but if there could be legislations prohibiting unresponsive building management offices from making apartment owners jump thru hoops to install chargers at home, or aid the installation of such in any way, it could both boost the sales of tesla/other EVs AND alleviate the supercharger crowding. since i have installed a charger at home, i have had no need to use any supercharger/ lower power chargers anywhere in hong kong whatsoever.

----- "Octopus" or four arm charger with new priority algorithm -----
as for supercharger hogging when full etc, on top of the valet service (like such currently running in parts of US), wouldn't it be possible to develop an 'octopus' or a four armed charger? when positioned well, one charger can have four reasonably short cables to supply to 4 car parking spaces. The idea would be for the four parking spots to share the charge from one high power charger, so if one car is parked and taking charge, it charges at full speed. when a second/third/fourth car joins, it shares the charging power. This would just allow more cars be 'plugged in', and would require less 'good behaviours' from the drivers to come back and move the car once charged. We all know that as the number of tesla owners increase, more will require an INCENTIVE to move their car than on etiquette alone. hence my idea for this "4 armed" charger below:

issues such as priority in charging load can be software controlled (hence can be retroactively adjusted by tesla according to what they deem best), but the important point is that you can set it so a car loses priority once it reaches e.g. 50% charge. So your car battery is really low? a fast charge to 50% will give ample reasonable range for you to get to most places in hong kong, you get low charge priority so there's incentive to move your car once it gets to a certain charge level... wanna leave your car plugged in? that's fine, you still get good charge when the charger ports aren't full (hence not busy), but when lots of people are wanting charge, having a lower priority (maybe a charge at a level below type2 chargers?) would provide you an incentive to come back and move your car to a type 2 charger, which seem to always co-exist in places with tesla superchargers in the same car parks etc. so:

1. Wanna be lazy and you don't mind the final charge level after you plug your car in? go to a 4 arm charger, knowing that your car will be at least more than half full without you having to come back to move your car at all. (ideal for those that just need a safe range to get home to their own chargers)
2. you really need your car charged up as much as it can? plug in to the 4arm charger till it's 50%, then keep an eye on how busy the charging station is - busy? move your car to a type 2 for a faster top up. not busy? enjoy your supercharger speed charging
3. you want a higher charge without having to come back? maybe skip the 4arm charger, and consider going straight to a type 2 for slow and steady charge.
4. so you want to get your car charged as fast as it can, without you having to come back to check, and you may not even come back in time to move it once its charger? sorry that's the exact problem we're trying to deal with here - everybody wants that, and it's not happening unless every charge station is a supercharger.

with the idea above, i think it may provide different alternatives to users depending on what they can offer in return - you either come back to move your car at a certain charge level (option2), get a reasonbly range quickly then it tapers off (option1), or a slow and steady type 2 charge (option3). This has the additional benefit of preventing commercial tesla drivers from overhogging the chargers, since leaving their cars plugged in the whole time isn't the fastest way to charge their cars, unless the stations are not busy.

just throwing out some ideas i been contemplating

 

[gubes]

Thanks for your suggestions.

On what you mentioned regarding software, I think that should be fairly easy given that Tesla would have access to all of the data.

If they had a Valet type service, there could be information available on either your mobile app or on the car's central screen as to the expected waiting time of when your car could commence charging based on the amount of charge left for cars currently being charged and the cars waiting in line. This should be relatively straight forward.

I really think the Valet system is the way to go. I think you could dramatically increase the utilization of each spot by cutting down on wastage. Cyberport is a classic example. I see cars lining up with people inside them (whereas they could be out of their cars spending money!). I see plenty of cars still there charging with no-one in them. There is something wrong and immediately solvable about this picture.

Places like Lee Gardens only have 2 spots and chances are people that work in the building park at the spot all day!

On the home charging front, some buildings like Bel-Air are notoriously difficult and installing a charger there can cost up to HK100k (whereas it only cost me ~HK$20k at my old building). A lot of the spaces are also outdoor so the cost of installing them is much higher as you need to run lots of wiring and then have to somehow connect the meter to the owner's flat.

Then look at the economics again. So according to Tesla's accounts, it costs them US$250-300k to build a typical 6 bay supercharger. Remember that this is probably higher in place like the US given the fact that they are usually located on freeways where you would need to do a lot of infrastructure work, (many of them have solar panels on them), and you may need to purchase land. My guess is that in HK it may cost a little less. But I reckon you are looking at approximately US$35-40k per space or HK$270k per space. Hiring a Valet guys to run this thing 24/7 may cost (purely guessing here), say HK$40k per month (for 2 workers) = HK$480k or HK$80kpa per space (assuming 6 bays). In the overall scheme of things, if it means they need to roll out fewer superchargers while getting better utilization out of existing ones, I cannot see how it would not be a win-win for everyone involved: Customers, Tesla, Mall Operators, and some extra employment.

Also bear in mind, the cost of electricity which is swallowed by Tesla is quite high relative to the cost of hiring a valet guy. You can do the Maths - say HK$1.40/kwh * 80Kwh (per hour) * 24 hours * 365 days * 70% utilization (guess) = ~HK$650-700k per space or HK$4m per year per 6 bay lot (assuming they are paying no RENT to the mall operator).

 

[john392]

As someone had suggested, why not just partner with the Car Wash company to Valet at the Mall. Take Festival Walk for example, the Car wash company is located at the P2, where they have a corner to hold cars that are waiting in line. Relocate the SC at the front of the car wash and have our app let us know once our car is washed/charged. The Valet can moved the charged car to their space/other space outside of SC area. This would be most cost effective.

 

[markwj]

wouldn't it be possible to develop an 'octopus' or a four armed charger? when positioned well, one charger can have four reasonably short cables to supply to 4 car parking spaces. The idea would be for the four parking spots to share the charge from one high power charger, so if one car is parked and taking charge, it charges at full speed. when a second/third/fourth car joins, it shares the charging power. This would just allow more cars be 'plugged in', and would require less 'good behaviours' from the drivers to come back and move the car once charged. We all know that as the number of tesla owners increase, more will require an INCENTIVE to move their car than on etiquette alone. hence my idea for this "4 armed" charger below:

Each 'arm' will require its own relay, pilot signal, control logic, cable, etc. Basically an entire EVSE, so you are talking about 4x EVSE in one box.

Tesla actually already have what you are suggesting. The latest wall connector (EVSE) they are using in HK supports one master and up to three slave units. All units share the same power cable (up to 32A, 3 phase). When connected in a master-slave arrangement, a single feed power line will be shared amongst all the units. The issue is that it is Tesla-specific. Hopefully other manufacturers will come out with similar capabilities, as it provides a fantastic solution to leverage limited power supply.

 

[mattse]

Here's an example:

Supercharging

Imposing a fee would violate Tesla's commitment to free supercharging. But how about limiting the number of supercharging per day? Make it once per day or per two days will not affect any owner who are not using their car as a Uber. I frequently met hotel W's model S at supercharging station. One round trip from hotel W to HK airport is around 60 km (according to Google map), so I believe even hotel W won't need two supercharging per day unless they do more than 6 pick up from airport in any 24 hours.

It's good for the environment to see Tesla being used by commercial drivers and they can supercharge their cars when other owners are working in their office, making supercharger use even more efficient. Theoretically we can live in peace, but you also see the complaint from owner about the button war (started by alleged Uber drivers), and making money out of supercharging is in fact making Tesla (and thus all owners) to sponsor their business, we need to put a stop to this.

 

[markwj]

Imposing a fee would violate Tesla's commitment to free supercharging. But how about limiting the number of supercharging per day? Make it once per day or per two days will not affect any owner who are not using their car as a Uber.

Tesla said:

Customers are free to use the network as much as they like.

That would be hard to defend if they started limiting the number of supercharging per day.

They've backed themselves into a corner on this, for the life of the car.

 

[mattse]

Tesla said:
That would be hard to defend if they started limiting the number of supercharging per day.

They've backed themselves into a corner on this, for the life of the car.

Missed this one. But I guess it would be ok if most (let's say over 90%) of HK owners are willing to make a request to ask Tesla apply a limitation on the number of supercharging per day. Sort of voluntary (not initiated by Tesla) and local restriction with Tesla providing technical support only. That should strike a balance between free for life and "reasonable" usage. If it doesn't work, we should continue to search for a way that would stop Tesla (and us indirectly) from sponsoring others' business. I would rather see Tesla putting their money on R&D than providing free electricity to Uber drivers.

 

[markwj]

Missed this one. But I guess it would be ok if most (let's say over 90%) of HK owners are willing to make a request to ask Tesla apply a limitation on the number of supercharging per day. Sort of voluntary (not initiated by Tesla) and local restriction with Tesla providing technical support only.

I don't think that would affect the legal situation. At the time of sale, Tesla promised this. Breaking that promise could land them in court.

I'm really hoping for a workaround, and have had many discussions with Tesla about it. Even if they could stop it for new owners (so new conditions would state not for commercial use or something like that), it would at least solve the problem in the long run. But, that goes against the corporate policy of unlimited, free for life.

 

[Optic]

I don't think that would affect the legal situation. At the time of sale, Tesla promised this. Breaking that promise could land them in court.

I'm really hoping for a workaround, and have had many discussions with Tesla about it. Even if they could stop it for new owners (so new conditions would state not for commercial use or something like that), it would at least solve the problem in the long run. But, that goes against the corporate policy of unlimited, free for life.

Don't over read that line. If you are allowed to charge once per month perpetually, that is still free for life. Or if they only let the Science park ones be free with no limits, that is still "free for life". It might open them up to legal dispute (which hopefully they have legal grounds on), but that should not stop them. As I have mentioned before, SC, though free, are useless if you have to queue 1 hour. Actually I can't even use the e-chargers in Elements because they are free, they are 90% filled. Free just doesn't work. Charging a mere $1 will change the situation and allocate resourced appropriately.

 

[markwj]

Don't over read that line. If you are allowed to charge once per month perpetually, that is still free for life. Or if they only let the Science park ones be free with no limits, that is still "free for life".

Here is what Tesla are saying:

Supercharging

Supercharging is free for the life of Model S.. Supercharging does not alter the new vehicle warranty... Customers are free to use the network as much as they like.

I think that they would have a tough time going back on that.

 

[SageBrush]

You could send messages to owners that another car is waiting to use the SC.

2. Make future SCs somewhat less convenient so that people stay at their cars to charge and then vacate, rather than park and spend hours in stores.

 

[Lerxt]

What I don't want to see are Tesla "fun police", the annoying security guards in HK, demanding to valet charge my car when I don't want them to ( and they are not insured to drive it). Tesla just need to monitor the commercial uber drivers and random d**kheads who abuse Superchargers, and block those from using it. Why don't we have a way to report Uber drivers to Tesla and let them deactivate their access?

As for the government, the thing is to not embarrass Hong Kong further, remove incomprehensible decisions like removing web access from the cars and crippling autopilot, and make it mandatory that all apartment complexes install at an approved cost, charging if requested. Take the decision out of the complex management hands.

 

[Jason90]

One problem is installing charging points in the *best* parking spots e.g. ground floor or near the mall entrance that all the drivers want. Then one has a fight between EVs and ICE's for these premium spots. Far better solution is to electrify the *worst* parking spots - then ICEs (and EVs that don't really need the charge) will not use them.
Ocean Terminal has seen the light. Initially they installed just three CLP Octopus-friendly chargers near the mall entrance. Initially they were often ICEd - but once the Model S arrived they were usually taken by Teslas, and there wasn't enough charging. Wharf - the landlord - simply installed ordinary 13A outlets on large numbers of pillars further down the lot in the less popular areas. Perfect - one can usually get a spot!
Most drivers don't need 400A - they need reliable access to 13A. I have a Roadster, and, apart from Hopewell Centre, there are no compatible fast chargers - so I charge whenever I can with 13A. I commute in it nearly every day, and have over 40,000km on the clock. Fortunately I have access to 13A charging at home - provided free of charge by the landlords - Sino - I live at the Gold Coast.
Sino tries to be green, and automatically discount parking fees for EVs - on registering one's Octopus - they want to see a copy of the car registration document. When I park in TST I'd prefer to use Sino's China Hong Kong City car park because of this discount instead of Wharf's more expensive Ocean Terminal - but China HK City car park has only one outlet - which is usually taken - so I don't even try going there anymore. The charger is a CLP Octopus system that could presumably support multiple 13A and 32A outlets.
I agree that Superchargers with multiple tentacles feeding 4+ vehicles seem like a good idea.
Valet supercharging would work without even remarking the cars if a single cable was long enough to reach to multiple cars parked around the charger. The valets would probably work for a low salary plus tips.
I see car wash companies struggling - aggressively promoting membership and some pulling out service points e.g. Challenger has gone from the JK Station car park (which has no EV charging). Offering valet EV charging bundled with their car wash service is an added service that may help them to attract and retain customers. When presented with a choice between charging and cleaning I usually opted or charging!

 

[ediot]

I agree that Superchargers with multiple tentacles feeding 4+ vehicles seem like a good idea.
Valet supercharging would work without even remarking the cars if a single cable was long enough to reach to multiple cars parked around the charger. The valets would probably work for a low salary plus tips.
I see car wash companies struggling - aggressively promoting membership and some pulling out service points e.g. Challenger has gone from the JK Station car park (which has no EV charging). Offering valet EV charging bundled with their car wash service is an added service that may help them to attract and retain customers. When presented with a choice between charging and cleaning I usually opted or charging!

Just being the devils advocate here, purely for discussion purpose:

------ 4 armed charger idea -----
1. As mentioned above, the 4armed- charger may become cost prohibitively expensive due to needing individual logic gates etc for each arm. If there is a way to make the 4 arm charger solution cheap enough, it'd require less maintainence/ hiring staff at each charging station. Personally i think Tesla would consider the valet arrangement as a temporary work-around (with an indefinite timeline) instead of an actual long term solution. the 4 arm solution i proposed probably isn't the best way forward either, but i see it having more potentials than the valet service for the long term.

----- valet service -----
2. valet people that can accept tips would open another can of worms, since that'd (potentially) provide incentives for the valets to work in your favour. who knows if you've lost a place in a queue because somebody gave a big tip? thing is, it can't be proven either way but these questions will constantly appear at busy charging places. Prohibiting tipping may make sense, but that requires Tesla paying the valet staff enough that the valet would rather refuse tips in all circumstances, and that could be costly. it is probably the quickest way to solve the problem we're already having in hong kong at the moment tho.
(this is a another personal thing, me and my gf really dislike having a person smelling of cigarettes sit in our car, but past experience tells me that a job as a valet would give you a lot of time to smoke when there's nothing going on. and to be honest you can't realistically "just employ non-smoker for the job" i don't think.) - of course, i can work around this by not queuing my car to charge when it's busy, and always come back to move my car when charging is almost done. I just think we can do better than that.

----- car washing valet arrangement -----
3. if charging and car washing by Challenger etc are mutually exclusive (i.e. no car washing when charging for safety reasons etc) then yeah, most would probably want the car charged first. Most would probably find it a good package to "drop you car, get in charged and washed when you come back" but in terms of business arrangement its probably more of a nightmare:
A) if i'm NOT washing my car, and i've put my car in a spot to charge... its not like i'd leave my key behind and let the carwasher move my car AT ALL, unless it is explicitly stated that i must leave my key with them, regardless of using their carwashing service or not. So basically the carwasher are the endorsed partner of the chargers so to speak, are they willing to share costs of installation? electricity and maintaince? how many carwashers will Tesla have to separately negotiate with, in hong kong alone?
B) When the carwasher has full valet access to the charging spots, who's to say they're not giving charging priority to their own customers? the carwasher has the business incentive to do so. again, its hard to prove whether it happens or not, but the argument will always happen like the valet tipping issue above.
C) to avoid the many negotiations necessary for A), you could just have the carwasher a reasonably close distance from the charging spots, and let them queue their customer cars the usual way of First In First Gets Charged, but then again it doesn't solve the charger overcrowding issue at all. because they can't move the cars that aren't there to get washed as well. so if all the spots are taken, the car wash can't even function as a valet service at all.
D) what if the car washer doesn't move some of the charged cars but use them to hog a spot, so they have a space to charge a carwashing customer's car when it turns up, hence ensuring business for themselves?
E) "Partnership" with Tesla doesn't mean much to the car washer if they don't have full access to at least one charging spot (i.e. anyone who charges in that spot must leave their key, regardless of using the carwashing service or not). The carwasher can then rotate cars to charge in that one spot - but where's the incentive for the carwasher to do that? it's got issue D) written all over it. The effectiveness of the valet service also depends on the ratio of charging spots that're given full access to the carwasher to valet. to me, this sounds like a balance between two shitty ends to come up with a middle ground of one less as bad as either. (i'm more than happy to be shown how i'm wrong)
E.+) to be fair, if you're going to a car park with a car washer AND chargers, you could already ask them to get the car charged anyway, i'm sure they're happy to drive it to the charging spot for you as a customer regardless of partnership arrangement with Tesla.


and please do not take this as an attempt to 'shoot down' anything, i'm just as eager to help work out an ideal solution - i just hope we can polish some of the ideas enough to get them running. thanks!

 

[ediot]

Each 'arm' will require its own relay, pilot signal, control logic, cable, etc. Basically an entire EVSE, so you are talking about 4x EVSE in one box.

Tesla actually already have what you are suggesting. The latest wall connector (EVSE) they are using in HK supports one master and up to three slave units. All units share the same power cable (up to 32A, 3 phase). When connected in a master-slave arrangement, a single feed power line will be shared amongst all the units. The issue is that it is Tesla-specific. Hopefully other manufacturers will come out with similar capabilities, as it provides a fantastic solution to leverage limited power supply.

thanks for your info, i've had another think about this and would like to run it past the more technically well-informed amongst you guys:

The current Superchargers are already in pairs, each station (one single white box thing with one charging arm) is COUPLED with a second one working in parallel already, and while it's capable of supplying up to 120kw/h, it slows down when another car parks next to you and get charge. They share the 120kw/h between the two chargers, and apparantly there's already priority issues noted on this very forum. so this is already an arrangement of 2x EVSE, in two boxes (i.e. one EVSE per white standalone thing). AND they have logic gates in them to handle the charge sharing/ priority selecting etc. All that the 4 armed charger idea is, is to make this into a 4 charging cable setup per 120kw of available power source, and to physically relocate the positioning of the box to cover more car parking space (by putting one bigger box in the middle of four parking spaces) - this can obviously be changed yet the idea is the same, and is already used by tesla in a way.

some five year old maths for cost calculations (the numbers aren't correct, just to illustrate my idea)
assuming currently each 120kw/h power source costs 800k, and it's split between two superchargers (since they're set up in parallel to share the 120kw/h), and each box installation costs 100k (its jsut the EVSE). a two charging spot comes to 800k + 100k + 100k = 1 mil, hence 500k per spot.
now with the 4 armed example, you still pay 800k for the 120kw/h power source, and 4x100k for 4 EVSEs for a total of 1mil200k, hence 400k per spot, each with the same potential high charge that current superchargers provide when it's not fully busy.

So the proposal, really, is just to have more parking space coverage without each being supercharger speed because of costs, but yet provide supercharger-like speeds of charge to less cars when it's less busy. i'll reiterate the potential advantages of this compared to the current 1xEVSE per box supercharger setup:

1. more car parking spaces with charger, which is the MOST important of all. drivers can leave and do other stuff when the car is plugged in even if the charge is slower than supercharger speed. (But not as slow as type2 speed as i find most would rather queue for supercharger now even with type2's right next to them, but that's almost another thing to discuss)
2. if all four spots are occupied and one car has just been charged to full (or to a set amount), the other three cars will now get more charge regardless of whether the first car's owner comes back to move it
3. less marginal cost per car parking spot with this facility, at least in terms of lining a powerline capable of 120kw/h from whereever to the charging spots, other costs (e.g. for each EVSE) are at least similar.

there are limitations of course, but i haven't thought of one that would post enough of an issue as to invalidate this idea so far.

thank you for reading!