My favorite XKCD comic from when I worked in various international standards bodies... Describes the situation pretty well...
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Why is the CCS being adopted as the standard?
- Thread starter Whoze
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My favorite XKCD comic from when I worked in various international standards bodies... Describes the situation pretty well...
I got involved in some synchronization standards meetings a decade or more ago. It was... interesting.
- The 800 lbs gorrilas in the room were the telco guys. Y'know, those oldish people with scars upon their bodies from when Things Went Wrong. They take no $BS, period, from anybody. They are also associated with the crowds that have actual $$. And act like it. Not rude, really, but definitely a bunch of no-$BS types.
- At each meeting, there was at least one actor whose nifty, wonderful, pretty darn obviously patented, idea was going to Save The World. They tended to get funny looks, like the ones one reserves for one's mad uncle in the back room.
- Backwards compatibility was such a strong thing it was just amazing. The old codgers were cool with new technology, so long as it didn't disturb the embedded base of hardware. Definitely a case of, "Missouri - Show Me" all over the place. And a desire not to spend zillions when what they had was working.
- You guys may have heard about Packet Heads vs. Telco Heads. It's real. But so long as the Backwards Compatibility works, nobody cared. There was a breakout room full of younger-than-30 types with computers and (being synchronization) strange working hardware. Fun.
Yeah, with some of those guys, it rubbed off on their personalities in general. One time were were in Vegas at a standards conference, and we all went to a steakhouse... The telco guy actually called the chef to come out from the kitchen, then he harassed him and asked where he learned to cook, and asked him how his steak was cooked. (He was using much more colorful language than what I'm typing here...)
While he was harassing the chef, the rest of us were all thinking, "Dude, the chef is totally going to spit on your steak..."
But anyways, yeah, in those standards meetings, you quickly get a feel for which guys have products already implemented, and will yield at nothing to get their products to be able to get certified, as well as the guys that are standards purists that have no products, and will yield at nothing for the spec to not have any holes in it, as well as push for everything and the kitchen sink to get ratified.... Then you have the rest of the guys that try to get the other two the meet in the middle...
No argument with anything you said. But, for those of you out there that are reading all this with raised eyebrows, there's the general thought process of the larger crowd: The Wish To Make It Work Right.
Those guys I mentioned with Scars on Their Bodies? You can bet your bottom dollar that not only do they not wish to have to go through any of that again, they don't want that, whatever that was, to happen to their worst enemies. And, in particular, to the public at large.
We all kind of know that upper management tends to attract sociopaths. But doing actual engineering work and not faking it kind of flushes sociopaths out of the food chain, and it's typically the actual engineers who show up at the standards meetings. So, generally, people with morals and ethics. With the possible exception of your, "spit on steak" person. But even that guy would tear a new one to any idiot who showed up with a half-baked idea. How's it go? "Yeah, he's a $BSTRD. But he's our $BSTRD."
Academics tends to get fried at these meetings (not always, I think); they have fairy tale castle ideas of how it all hangs together. Thems that work in the trenches get a different opinion.
I've been through a few of those telco and some other standards processes and saw similar behavior. You did fail to mention those who came to the standards meeting intent on obstructing progress, probably because they had a competing system or did not have a product near ready. As someone once noticed, you could tell the intention of a company by whether they sent a team of lawyers (obstructing) or a team of engineers (supporting).
I, myself, was once with a company with a telecom business, where part of our company dominated a sector (I was in a new growth area FWIW, not that part). We were end run by a competitor so our approach (embarrassingly, IMHO), was to develop an incompatible competing standard that was no better, just different, then we used our incumbent muscle to start a tribal standards war by rallying our end customers against that competitor. In the end that whole technology was killed when a new technology completely obsoleted the whole idea. I had left the company shortly after that battle but eventually the company was split up and that business no longer exists. Many are accusing Tesla of this, however, the historical details show things differently.
The big difference with the CCS standards processes was that all of the incumbent ICE companies, dominated the process. While they usually sparred viciously with each other, they all agreed on 2 things:
1) they did not want an EV industry to disrupt their ICE business
2) they did not want an upstart (Tesla) to succeed in anything.
There were apparently, a few greenies and academics who, as you suggest, got fried along with Tesla.
The rest is history that brings us up to today: Tesla went it alone and is now frying all of them and their standard. Now they, and their customers are trying to smear Tesla by blaming them for heinous motive, while also begging pathetically, for Tesla to help them out. In Europe, they even cried to their nanny to pass a law in their favor.
I'm glad Tesla has CHAdeMO and CCS adapters and have both.
What will happen? Who knows. I just prefer a reasonable fight and I dislike the smear campaign that appears to be in progress and am disappointed by those who try to rewrite history to suit their selfish interests.
The memory chip industry had an interesting one several years ago in JEDEC. A company called Rambus suggested forward their protocol into the standards body and got it accepted and being used by all of the major memory manufacturers, but had somehow skated by on not releasing their patent rights to it. So it was like entrapment, and once all of the manufacturers were in it, building those products, then Rambus launched into several lawsuits against all of the memory industry for patent infringement.
So that was bad dishonest behavior, but it's also a failure of the standards body to do their job, where they should have made sure there was a patent licensing agreement before accepting the standard.
So that was bad dishonest behavior, but it's also a failure of the standards body to do their job, where they should have made sure there was a patent licensing agreement before accepting the standard.
That's why in a lot of the standards bodies I was in, the member's agreement in the by-laws had provisions for automatic IP submission into the patent pool for anything that is contributed by said company into the specifications.. Others had provisions for automatic Reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing terms (Rand), or RandZ/Royalty Free. One time there was an argument over a company that submitted a bunch of stuff into the spec, and later said they didn't want to agree to the licensing provision in the bylaws. The steering committee informed them of the agreement they signed, and said their only option if they wanted to sue, is that they need to remove themselves as members of the org. It was also pointed out, that if they remove themselves as members, they would no longer have the benefit of the patent pool, and could be open for litigation from other member companies. After a few days of cooling off, they got off their high horse, and everything returned to normal.
I believe this IP control was the issue with the pop-culture favorite standards battle: VHS -vs- BetaMax.
henderrj
Active Member
Umm, did you actually read this thread? Maybe watch that early video interview of a Tesla design guy? If so you might have learned there's a bit more to it than just that.
Nubo
Test Mule
Good points. For an older example, consider the shape of a double-edge razor blade. There really aren't any razors that match the shape of that central cutout. It's the result of a blending and accomodation of multiple proprietary standards prevalant in the early 20th century. The makers wanted people to only use their proprietary blades. The consumer did not want that. They won.
Nubo
Test Mule
The consumer, since the funky shape of the eventual design accomodated most of the popular standards. The consumer could now buy blades from anyone who made them with the combined standard, and anyone making blades that way could sell to the entire market. Blade choice was no longer tethered to ones brand of razor.
It was already established that the Tesla connector came out before CCS.
I am not disputing that.
If you are stuck with CCS, then I must assume you bought an EV from a company that crushed their 1st generation of EVs and where most of the major decision makers in the company still hate EVs.
They also did not invest anything in charging infrastructure (with 1 teutonic exception that had the choice of that or paying huge fines and probably doing jail time), rather, choosing to leave that up to a bunch of idiots taking government or penal money and spending it on poor quality equipment.
Had they listened to and worked with Tesla (or anyone else intelligent) and/or invested in charging infrastructure, you would have the same high quality charging network that Tesla drivers have.
You assume wrong.
Automakers are traditionally in the business of making automobiles, not running refueling infrastructure.
You don't see General Motors gas station, Ford gas station, or Chrysler gas station.
Gas stations are run by separate entities.
Automakers saw charging stations the same way.
henderrj
Active Member
The problem is exactly that - tradition. In the early days they simply didn't have money to do it at all, so they had to let other people in on the deal. This, electrification, is not the traditional approach. They need to change.
Agreed that Tesla is a major problem, as far as top-down control of everything. But even that will necessarily be modified. It's change with the times, or die. That's why the manufacturers are now doing what they're doing, they know they have no choice. Electrification of vehicles is simply better. It works better, and it's better in the long term for the environment.
To clarify, by better I mean less maintenance, easier and more enjoyable use, and even less expensive in the long term. I've owned a lot of cars in my more than 50 years of driving, I prefer every electric to everything else I've had (3 brands, and charging systems, so far.) Although I did love that chevy super sport that I had back in the '70s! First nice car though, so that's not really fair.
If there were public 150 kW chargers every 50 miles along the interstate and busy state highway, would Tesla build the Supercharger?
Hell no!
Tesla has to build the Supercharger because there was no public infrastructure at the time.
That doesn't mean that every other automaker should copy Tesla and all have their own exclusive charging networks.
If every automaker has its own exclusive charging network, it would be a disaster.
This is why the government is subsidizing public charging stations.
This is not exactly a brilliant observation, however, if you look at what works, the traditional approach clearly does not work.
I will note that General Electric, Edison, and Westinghouse did make infrastructure as well as consumer devices, as did the Bell Telephone Company.
If these guys want to be a part of an EV future, they're going to have to do things differently - or go the way of Nokia, Kodak, Blockbuster, etc. Suggesting Tesla is wrong for doing the right thing and being successful and expecting them to do stupid things that don't work is just plain ludicrous.
As one of Tesla's 1st customer (since 2006), we would not have invested what we did in them, had they done the same thing as the traditional automakers. We had already learned our lesson by giving GM a chance to do EVs and leasing an EV1 back in 1999. That was and epic fail that taught us big lessons. After losing that great car, we looked earnestly for a replacement. Clearly, the traditional automakers were not going to be a source and nobody else looked like they'd have a solution until Tesla came along doing things differently.
. . . and here we are today. I have easily driven our Tesla across the USA in 3 days (Leaving Virginia Tidewater area and arriving in time for a 5:00 pm meeting near LAX), proving it is almost on parity with ICE, because of Superchargers. CCS cars are stuck with the lousy charging infrastructure from the failed approach of the CCS community (charging service providers, auto manufacturers, government officials/agencies, and drivers)
Now, why would anyone suggest the CCS approach is the right one?
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