I see it as inevitable that the Tesla standard will fade away. They had to persuade the wider industry to adopt their standard, and they failed at that. Now with the Bolt using a CCS Combo connector, and with all of the new upcoming EVs using CCS Combo, the game is over.
This is going to be a 100% US-centric post, but bear with me. I took a 360 mile trip (one way) last weekend in my S 70D--a somewhat reasonable stand-in for a Bolt in this scenario--and charged exclusively via CCS/CHAdeMO stations during the trip. Also keep in mind that I'm in California, so this should be like the best case for EV travel in the US, right? The trip caused me to realize that I've been entirely too charitable toward the non-Tesla DC charging infrastructure.
The entire existing CCS/CHAdeMO network is, essentially, fundamentally incompatible with reasonable long distance travel and any car released in the near-term that relies on said network is dead on arrival when it comes to long distance travel.
There. I said it.
While standards like CCS can support fairly high charge rates, even at the current 400V standard, nearly all of the stations being put in output 50kW or less on the DC side... even on "long distance charging corridors." Heck, some of the CCS stations installed along highway 101 (not the route I took) are only 24kW! For things to even start approaching the realm of reasonable, network operators need to toss everything they've installed along travel corridors and replace the stations with 100-150kW stations. That's step one. I lost about two hours here.
Step two involves filling out network to include
one of the most frequented travel corridors in the state, like Tesla did right from the beginning. Seriously, I lost an hour just to this. It's as though the network operators are simply extending their city-focused short range infrastructure to a few towns that happen to be along some highways that can be longer alternates to the main highway that people use for traveling between the LA area and the SF Bay Area. I understand why they would take this approach, though, since it would result in some revenue through local charging at the locations and that could be viewed as a necessary thing given the chicken-or-egg situation that the network builders are faced with right now.
Step three is increasing the number of plugs at each charging location (again, chicken-or-egg problem) and, more importantly in the short term,
actually performing the maintenance necessary to keep the stations working. At one of my charging stops, one of the cabinets was occupied by an i3 and the other cabinet was malfunctioning. I called customer support, who validated that the station was experiencing an error (gee, thanks) and then proceeded to keep me on the phone long enough for the i3 owner to arrive and inform me that the cabinet I was having trouble with almost never works and the network operator in question hasn't done anything about it. I lost about 20 minutes here.
Did I mention that the trip probably cost me about $46 in charging fees?
All in all, this little experiment of mine took what's normally about a 6 hour [free] trip via the Supercharger network (probably ~$13 with new vehicle Supercharger pricing, ignoring the free charging allocation granted) and turned it into a
9.25 hour trip that cost around $46.
Can all of this get better? Yes. Will all of this get better? Yes, but it's going to require someone to put up a lot of cash to make it happen. However, if Tesla makes good on their goal of doubling the number of Supercharger plugs in the US over the next year or so and they release the Model 3 with their proprietary connector, it's only going to make the chicken-or-egg problem that the independent network operators are dealing with worse. Also, with regard to the CHAdeMO adapter through the Tesla gear shop, the CHAdeMO adapter can be had through the service centers... but it's becoming increasingly irrelevant.