I was supercharging at South Mimms yesterday evening and guy drives into the Supercharging area in a Volvo, gets his blue cable out and after manoeuvring a bit hooks up to the cable from a stand with an adaptor. I told him that I thought it wouldn't work but he was pretty confident that it would. I didn't go back to check if he was charging but he was still hooked up when I left. Has any one else experienced this?
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Non Teslas using Superchargers
- Thread starter Pablodog
- Start date
rohan_aus
Member
Flat out would not work. Supercharger communicates with the car to authenticate then starts charging.
I've seen it hinted that perhaps the vehicle self reports charging usage to be billed, rather than the supercharger, so in theory if you had a magic box that pretended to be a Tesla and did all the right kinds of protocol conversion, you could steal power for free.
This is a bad design method and I hope it is not true, but it is possible.
The device being plugged in should never be trusted. Instead, the supercharger station should be the one to authenticate the vehicle and only proceed when funding secured
This is a bad design method and I hope it is not true, but it is possible.
The device being plugged in should never be trusted. Instead, the supercharger station should be the one to authenticate the vehicle and only proceed when funding secured
I've seen it hinted that perhaps the vehicle self reports charging usage to be billed, rather than the supercharger, so in theory if you had a magic box that pretended to be a Tesla and did all the right kinds of protocol conversion, you could steal power for free.
This is a bad design method and I hope it is not true, but it is possible.
The device being plugged in should never be trusted. Instead, the supercharger station should be the one to authenticate the vehicle and only proceed when funding secured
Your theory is correct: It is theoretically possible to build a blackbox that fakes it's a Tesla to the supercharger, and send the power along to another car. However, Superchargers are DCFC (DC-current Fast Chargers), correct me if I'm wrong, but Volvo PHEV's don't support DCFC.
So this will never work for a PHEV even if you have such a magic box. It could in theory work for other cars, such as the iPace. But as far as I know such a device hasn't been build yet.
Correct! It's technically possible, but a Volvo PHEV wouldn't have been able to do it.
mrElbe
Active Member
Merrill
Merrill
Never say never. If we've already accepted a hypothetical SC stealing black box, why can't the black box also be an appropriately sized inverter to provide AC current to the PHEV from DC?
Clearly, we're getting into very unrealistic / nontrivial territory, but not impossible to do.
I came across an individual with a 'box' like this at supercharger with a non-Tesla car. He claimed to have built to see if it could be done as it was VERY expensive to make and in no way was finically worth doing.
If you're going to imagine that he can make a black box to steal SC energy, you might as well imagine that he can modify the wiring inside the car and tap directly into his battery pack too.
Hopefully the EU will crack down on these proprietary charging networks and require all future ones to be open to all drivers.
There are only so many locations, only so many watts available from the grid in a given location, and we don't want to end up with every manufacturer hogging what they can as a sales tactic. Fortunately so far only Tesla has gone that route with everyone else being open.
The switch to CCS for superchargers was a golden opportunity to force Tesla to do the right thing. I suppose they could probably do it with a software update if required, but would need to install some payment infrastructure of course. The other important requirement is to accept debit/credit cards, no subscription or special card/app nonsense.
There are only so many locations, only so many watts available from the grid in a given location, and we don't want to end up with every manufacturer hogging what they can as a sales tactic. Fortunately so far only Tesla has gone that route with everyone else being open.
The switch to CCS for superchargers was a golden opportunity to force Tesla to do the right thing. I suppose they could probably do it with a software update if required, but would need to install some payment infrastructure of course. The other important requirement is to accept debit/credit cards, no subscription or special card/app nonsense.
I disagree with all of your arguments
- "Watts available from the grid in a given location" is somewhat true, but that would mean that more locations (from multiple vendors) would be better than 1 charging location for all cars as it would spread the watts per square meter. Also, atleast in Europe you will notice that IONITY shares quite a few of locations with Tesla's superchargers. So this is not really an issue.
- Tesla's switch to CCS is not to open the system to other cars. The CCS cables are _way_ too short. They really only fit Tesla cars. The placement of the stalls also doesn't fit other brands (like Audi which has the charge front on the left front fender). Kia for example has the charge port in the front, but too low. All Tesla's have them on the left rear panel.
- Fleet owners don't want creditcards. They want single invoice billing. Creditcard fees are also way to expensive and they don't work when there is no network connection (and the system used today do, they support extensive card whitelists in case the stall's network is down). So in terms of reliability what you call 'card nonsense' is by far the superior system.
- Tesla's system is by far the biggest network and by far the best network. Both in terms of speed (especially with v3), but also in terms of reliability, ease-of-use and ease of billing. Tesla's supercharger network is the primary reason to choose Tesla over any other EV car for many. Opening it up would be bad for Tesla's business.
- Tesla is a company that is churning out cars in a rate that by far exceeds the Supercharger stall growth. They really cannot handle other car brands, as their Supercharger network is seeing increased use. Some locations are already way too busy. No other company in the world is producing as many EVs as Tesla does.
- Tesla's Supercharger are mostly on private property (hotel parkings, private parkings). What a property owner does with their parking place is at their discretion. If they want to sell parking spots to Tesla, why would that be bad? It benefits both Tesla and the facility (additional income from people waiting for a charge).
Doesn't it seem a bit immoral that Tesla is happy to leech off other charging networks, but keeps its own one private?
WATTS-UP
Member
It is important to note that once the range of electrics reach 400 mile per charge the need for supercharging will diminish. What will be needed is over night charging at hotels. The destination chargers should also go to 80 amps up from 40. At 60 miles per hour you will have 6 hours of drive time, add to that breakfast, lunch or dinner and you have a full days of driving.
There is some talk about 800 and 1,000 KW chargers. Should that come on board the time at superchargers will be cut in half, in essence it would be like doubling the number of superchargers.
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There is some talk about 800 and 1,000 KW chargers. Should that come on board the time at superchargers will be cut in half, in essence it would be like doubling the number of superchargers.
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jelloslug
Active Member
Tesla has said time and time again that any other company is welcome to use the Supercharging network just as long as they help pay for it.
Except that would have also meant fitting a proprietary Tesla charge port to the car too, until the EU forced them to fit CCS.
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