OK: Moderators, I know that there's a NACS thread. But I'm posting the below since it seems to be corroborating evidence about the finances of the deal with GM and probably Ford.
On my dead-tree newspaper this morning there was an Associated Press article by a Mr. Tom Krisher about the GM deal. Mostly factual, the usual about, "Tesla owners may be upset about crowded SC stalls", on the left coast, anyway.
But the more interesting quote was as follows:
'Financial deals of the agreement between the two companies were not released Thursday, but GM spokesman Darryll Harrison said GM isn't paying Tesla.
"Tesla will get better utilization of their network and all the new charging revenue, which will help them expand the network further," Harrison said. "There are other opportunities both companies can take advantage of as a result of the agreement."'
All right, people! Let's see if I've got this straight.
- In a previous post I stated that Musk/Tesla had said that the SC network was not a "profit center". I stand corrected: It's designed to pull a 10% profit margin.
- With the gross revenues coming in, less the profit, Tesla currently:
- Pays for the electricity
- Pays for upkeep and repairs
- Pays for putting in new Superchargers.
In another previous post I had suggested that Ford and GM would probably prime the pump a bit by putting in some capital meant to step increase the number of Superchargers in North America. Based upon Mr. Harrison's statement, that appears to not be the case. It also appears that there won't be profit sharing between Tesla and GM/Ford. It's simply (I know, it's hard to get one's head around this) Tesla being altruistic, non money-grubbers, interested in moving the adoption of BEVs forward, for the Good of All.
Elon has said (and that's in the AP article, too) that he wants a level playing field. I take that as GM/Ford users
not paying an extra fee for Not Being A Tesla Owner.
Forget Betamax vs. VHS. For that matter, forget CD/DVDs: Were you all aware that Siemens and other parties get a cut of each CD/DVD made because they have patents on the
formats? Or the encoding formats?
There's probably some license fee being paid to somebody, somewhere. But it sure doesn't appear to be Tesla. This is astonishing: It's the first time I can think of where some money-grubber gatekeeper/troll in the patent/copyright/trademark space isn't collecting money. And it's all in the interests of speeding BEV adoption along.
My S.O. was thinking about it this morning. We have a Gen II wall connector in the garage. Gee: When we sell the house, we won't have to worry that the new owner won't be able to use it!
The CCS committee must be gnashing their teeth right now. Good riddance.
