Supercharging Nightmare Begins

[jboy210]

"the elimination of the costs"? Umm. They'd have to produce twice as many charger cables, and produce more complicated, presumably more expensive charge ports for every car. There might have been some savings in not developing the hardware and the software by going with an existing standard - except that Tesla invested that money before CCS existed. There's no savings for Tesla there now.

There's no expansion to their network, either. It gives the cars compatibility with other networks being built by other people, true - but that's not at all the same thing, and as of now those networks are 2x to 5x as expesnive to charge on, so no one is likely to want to unless they hit a long, long delay on Tesla's network - an event made more likely by the switch, since it'd take resources Tesla could use to expand the network and expend them retrofitting existing sites.

It'd also mean that the Supercharger plugs fit most other brands of cars, so even if Tesla doesn't open the network to other folks, you'd see delays from all the confused people trying to charge - and if they do open the network, you'd have a bunch of other brands of cars that charge slower choking things up.

Tesla gains nothing from doing it, but it has the potential to cost them a bunch.

Why would this change require more charging cables. That is what they have to do now. One set for North America, one set for EU.

And expansion of the charging network would be real to Tesla owner. Tesla could update their Supercharging billing infrastructure to interface with Electrify America and provide charging on EA at discounted or free rates to the Tesla owner. This subsidized sharing would be cheaper for Tesla than build more dedicated locations since there are no additional land acquisition, building, and on-going maintenance costs. It would be similar to the way MVNO wireless carrier (Cricket, Boost, Republic, Straight Talk, Easy Go, Consumer Cellular) do not build their own infrastructure (towers, back hauls, etc), but rather use the infrastructure of existing carriers (AT&T, Verizon, Spring, T-Mobile).

 

[LLElectric]

The lines are ad hoc. Usually everyone just lines up single file at one end of the superchargers. First in, first to charge. If the line gets long enough that it blocks entrances and exit to the lot, gaps are left for cars entering and exiting.

Since you are in the Bay Area, if you want to try it sometime go to any of the Superchargers in the Target lots, or Mountain View or Dublin after 8 AM and before 8 PM.

I have not had any issue in Bay Area supercharging but planning a trip to Vancouver, BC.

 

[Saghost]

Why would this change require more charging cables. That is what they have to do now. One set for North America, one set for EU.

And expansion of the charging network would be real to Tesla owner. Tesla could update their Supercharging billing infrastructure to interface with Electrify America and provide charging on EA at discounted or free rates to the Tesla owner. This subsidized sharing would be cheaper for Tesla than build more dedicated locations since there are no additional land acquisition, building, and on-going maintenance costs. It would be similar to the way MVNO wireless carrier (Cricket, Boost, Republic, Straight Talk, Easy Go, Consumer Cellular) do not build their own infrastructure (towers, back hauls, etc), but rather use the infrastructure of existing carriers (AT&T, Verizon, Spring, T-Mobile).

As you stated at the beginning, the way Tesla is doing it in Europe which you were suggesting as a model was to replace the existing single cable with two cables at every charging stall, one for CCS and one for Tesla's legacy standard. That means all ~5500 stall in North America would have to get a second cable added, and they'd need two cables for every stall going forward.

I seriously doubt that Tesla could buy time on the EA network for less than it costs them to deliver time on their own network; Tesla is the expert at making DCFC systems and does a number of things to make them cheaper and better than the competition, including using mass produced liquid cooled charger modules in parallel and sharing the charger between stalls.

Also, it's unlikely that the places EA has chargers with spare capacity are the places Tesla needs help. EA is just starting to build cross country coverage. Tesla did that a few years ago, and is now concentrating on the areas of higher density.

 

[bonaire]

What about all-inclusive? Europe S/X now looks like the middle.

 

[FlatSix911]

What about all-inclusive? Europe S/X now looks like the middle.

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Here is the lastest information from Electrek... Tesla switches Model 3 production to European version, first Chinese Model 3 spotted

Tesla is expected to concentrate most of its Model 3 production for European and Asian markets this month and those markets require some modifications over the North American version.We are primarily talking about the charge port. In Europe, Tesla announced that it is adopting the CCS standard with the Model 3 and it is using dual charge connectors on the vehicle.

We reported earlier this month on Tesla starting to install new dual connectors with a CCS plug at Supercharger stations in preparation for the arrival of the Model 3.In China, the Model 3 is going to use both Tesla’s standard and the Chinese national standard. Some Model 3’s have been imported from the US before, but now the first Model 3 with the appropriate connectors has been spotted in China:

 

[Sandiegodoug]

When we bought our x almost 2 years ago the sales person kept telling us how much money we would save because free supercharger use for life, didn’t need to pay for electricity at home, and we needed to buy ASAP because this benefit going away.