and don't forget, that other manufacturers adopting NACS makes it the de factor US standard which will force the other charging competitors to add NACS to thier charging stations.
Discussed this before on other threads. But it seems pretty blame obvious.
- Tesla's DCFC network is reliable. They have NOCs, time to respond to faults, and a huge percentage of the time, it's up.
- Before all the agreements, the only US-wide standards was CCS1. And, despite some fooling around with magicdocks and the like, making Tesla switch over to CCS1 would have been very, very expensive for Tesla if CCS1 was the standard. In other words:
- Big financial hit to switch to CCS1
- NACS would have faded into obscurity over time.
- There have been reports that the fundamental physical design of the CCS1 connector was not up to par. (People having to stand there and shove to keep their cars charging.)
- From other car companies' perspective: The current CCS1 offerings by a plethora of charging companies are $BAD (pick your word). Further, Big Auto was not in charge of how the CCS1 providers ran their networks. What this meant: A competitive disadvantage in Tesla's favor, Not Good when Big Auto is either barely breaking even or actually losing money on cars sold. (Yes, they're getting better, but this is worse.)
- Tesla shows up on Big Auto's doorstep. Proposition:
- Switch to NACS. No cost.
- The API for the NACS network is used by Big Auto on Big Auto's apps, not Tesla's. (This was, apparently, after some negotiation.)
- Advantages to Tesla:
- NACS does not fade into the woodwork. No reason to go bat-crazy on CCS1.
- More users of the NACS. Tesla doesn't make a ton of money on their charging network; actually, quite the opposite. A bit of profit to handle growth and unexpected stuff, that's it. But, with more users, more money flowing in, funding more chargers and paying for maintenance on those chargers. The network doesn't go into irrelevancy.
- More money from the IRA as various states require NACS going forward. Given Tesla's propensity not to make money on NACS, this isn't that big a deal, but it does allow them to drop costs, and that moves the whole, "World going electric" stuff forward.
- Advantages for Big Auto:
- Instant (well, 1st Q of 2024-style-instant) access to the most reliable charging network on the planet. Out from under the thumbs of the greedheads at the various non-Tesla charging companies who, Wall Street Style, have to show ever-increasing profits every quarter or Else.
- Competitive disadvantage disappears. (And this is a big deal. Even now, there's once to thrice a week horror stories appearing on mainstream media about the Evils of Dead Chargers when trying to go a distance. And anybody who does some serious internet research finds out about this Really Fast.)
Effectively, without serious money changing hands here, it's a win-win for Tesla and Big Auto.
And another note: The vast majority of BEVs on the road are Teslas. Like, 85% to 90% or so. A 15% to 10% increase in the number of BEVs using Superchargers as the adapters from Big Auto come on line isn't going to really clog the Superchargers, especially as the number of Superchargers is roughly doubling every year. And that will
accelerate as other users show up with their cars and dollars and fund Even More Superchargers.
Oh, yeah: A recent finding over in the investment forums was that Maine had published the results of the IRA bids on DCFCs. This should be no surprise.. but Tesla's bid was 25% or 30% or so of competing vendors, for 'way more charging ports than what the other vendors were offering. So, from the various States' point of view, going with Tesla means a heck of a lot more charging stations, and the greedheads who were thinking, "Government Spending Trough!" are in trouble.
About the only question I still have open in my mind has to do with Operations. My understanding is that when there's a slew of Teslas going on long trips with Supercharger stops, the NoA software gets input from the Tesla Mothership as to which Supercharger to go to. Sometimes it's the One and Only spot on the trip that physically fits; but, often, the Mothership detects when a bunch of users are showing up in a particular area, and will shuffle those users to less-used SC's. (My spouse happens to be an Industrial Engineer. Operations Research, which is one of the subspecialties in that field, handles problems like this for, say, Airlines, Trucking Companies, and Distribution Networks.) So, when other cars join the Tesla NACS fun, will their travel data get integrated into the Big Software Package, so we don't end up with overcrowded Superchargers? Stay tuned.
