Will Tesla Buildup Superchargers to Accommodate Anticipated Demand from Ford, GM, Rivian, and whoever else, Adopting NACS circa 2024/2025?

[houstonian]

With the recent news of Ford, GM, Rivian - and presumably others - moving to adopt Tesla's NACS plug and therefore be able to use the SuperCharger network (that is presumably v3 SuperChargers) starting circa 2024/2025, what's your best guess as to what impacts, if any, this will have on Tesla drivers?

To state the obvious: opening up the Supercharger network to Ford, GM, Rivian, and others, leads one to suspect an increase in demand for Superchargers.

Thus Increasing demand of [x] without increasing supply of [x] by a similar amount suggest more competition for [x], all else being equal. (duh, right.)

But if we assume TSLA's got at least a year to buildout (i.e. install new locations and/or add more stalls to existing locations) the Supercharger network, one can reasonably speculate if the increase in raw supply will be enough to offset the presumed increase in raw demand - hence the poll attached to this thread.

There's also nuance factors a play as well. For example, depending upon how GM, Ford, Rivian, etc., integrate charging availability into their cars and 'supercharger mission control', dynamic supercharge load balancing may become possible and effective.

Said in english, if an EV driver with a NACS plug is doing a roadtrip and knows s/he'll need to charge at least once in about an hour or so driving in-between two major metros and has three potential superchargers to choose from, the nav system - regardless of manufacturer - would suggest the one anticipated to have the least demand on arrival.

The driver could of course still opt to charger wherever s/he wanted to, but the base suggestion would be balanced to take its best guess for anticipated future usage and whatever relevant data could be shared with the driver to assist him/her (e.g. there are currently 7 out of 20 free stalls. As of right now 12 other drivers are enroute to this charger and your anticipated wait time when you arrive in 1h10m is less than 5m, based on current data.)

Another nuance angle is dynamic pricing within a range - Superchargers known to generally be busy carry a cost premium compared to close by ones who do not.

The second 'nuanced' ideas are more in line with helping Tesla use what they've already got - and while I do think such things will prove useful - I do not think just these by themselves will be enough to manage/allocate increased demand to existing supercharger bays. My guess is Tesla will have to accelerate its SC network buildout as more base/raw supply will be needed even if advances can be (and should be!) made to optimize usage of current capacity.

Lastly there's the 3rd party angle - with other manufactures opting to buildout their own DC chargers (Rivian announced they'll be opening up their network to Tesla drivers) as well as EVgo, ChargePoint, etc. adding NACS to their offerings, there's an argument to be made this represents another avenue of supply reaching the market. Don't know enough one way or the other to do odds on this but should be noted

My guess is with more vehicles being placed into NACS service, TSLA can make a stronger case to allocate additional CapEx to beef up the Supercharger network. Again like with the 3rd party options coming online I don't know how to place odds on this but would speculate Tesla is (or has) drawn up plans for the anticipated pain/congestion points, the balance between supply and demand can remain reasonable...that is drivers are ideally not waiting at all...for their turn to charge.

Curious to hear what the collective wisdom of the community thinks - at least as of mid 2023.

Other relevant threads:

And Rivian falls (to adopt NACS from 2024)

Rivian follows Ford and GM

teslamotorsclub.com

EVgo Announces Plans to Expand NACS Deployments

EVgo Inc. (NASDAQ: EVGO) (“EVgo” or the “Company”), one of the nation’s largest public fast charging networks for electric vehicles (EVs), today announced that the company will be adding North American Charging Standard (NACS) connectors to its fast charging network across the country following...

teslamotorsclub.com

GM partners with Pilot to install chargers at up to 500 travel centers nationwide

General Motors Co. and Pilot Travel Centers LLC are collaborating to add 2,000 electric vehicle charging stalls at up to 500 Pilot and Flying J travel centers, the companies said Thursday. The DC fast charging coast-to-coast network will be installed, operated and maintained by EVgo, a charging...

teslamotorsclub.com

GM just adopted NACS 🤯🤯🤯

GM just adopted NACS!!! 🤯🤯🤯🤯 https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1OwxWwQOPlNxQ

teslamotorsclub.com

Now that the charging standard war has ended, can we focus on...

...the quality of charging stations? I would gladly spend an extra 10cents per kwh for a quality, well-lit station, with pull-thru spots, with trash, windshield cleaners, 24hr clean bathrooms, and amenities. I mean real gas station type locations. Can we get some movement or investment for...

teslamotorsclub.com

Admin note: Imaged added for Blog Feed thumbnail
"Tesla Supercharger" by Open Grid Scheduler / Grid Engine is marked with CC0 1.0.

 

[RTPEV]

I think it's entirely natural to be worried about the increase load on the Supercharger network as the pool of potential users increases due to the recent announcements.

But as I have said repeatedly in the past: doesn't the same logic apply to Tesla themselves?

Their vehicle production output has grown significantly over the years through the addition of more mainstream vehicle models, as well as opening new Gigafactories. And guess what: they have likewise increased the Supercharger network to more or less match.

So why would we think that they wouldn't be able to continue to do so as the number of potential users again increases? And if you do have your doubts about whether or not they can do it, did you have similar doubts when Tesla introduced the Model 3? The Model Y? Opened Giga Shanghai? Berlin? Texas? if not, why not?

Tesla increased their annual vehicle production about 100X since the Supercharger network was born. They've increased over 10X in the 6 years since the Model 3 debuted. They've about doubled in the past 2 years alone, and somehow they've managed to keep pace.

There is probably no other company more suitably positioned to grow their network than Tesla. They have gotten the manufacturing, logistics, and installation down to an absolute science (I know because I closely monitor the buildout of the Supercharger network as well as other DC fastcharger networks and the smoothness of Tesla's process is very obvious compared to their competition). And there is only upside for Tesla to grow the network as fast as possible. It presents a wonderful revenue opportunity for them to milk extra funds to further expand the network.

And let's look at the numbers. The number of GM's, Fords, Rivians and others that will be added to the fleet in the next few years will continue to be dwarfed by the number of Model 3's, Y's, and Cybertrucks. So before you start worrying about all those 3rd party Supercharger users, you should probably be more worried about Tesla themselves! (which I am not)

 

[RayK]

I went with Optimistic with normal buildout. For the foreseeable future (i.e., 2026 or so), I think that Tesla vehicles will greatly outnumber those from F, GM and RIVN combined. If other companies join in in the next few years (Hyundai, Volvo, Porsche, VW, etc.) with adopting NACS, then maybe a "normal" buildout might not be enough. There still are some areas of the country which lack good Supercharger coverage, and by that I mean stations within 50 miles of each other on "secondary" highways (I'm looking at you Highway 101 on the South/Central coast of Oregon) but at least there are some CCS/CHAdeMO stations there.

I don't think that everybody who owns a NACS non-Tesla vehicle will be using the SC network but there certainly will be more customers looking to use a finite resource, especially on the major interstates. I saw an article the other day that shows how Tesla monitors the SC network across the country and keeps a real-time status on those stations, noting those that are more or less than 50% occupied, full sites and expected wait times and those that are out-of-order. If Tesla can fully staff repair crews to quickly fix broken chargers and increase stations where they've identified shortfalls, then maybe having a couple of hundred thousand more EVs on the road won't be too bad. Tesla vehicles may still have an upper hand when it comes to navigating to those stations since the car's nav system can identify known bottlenecks and routing the driver to a lesser-used station. I don't know if non-Tesla companies will have their own nav system hooked into Tesla's when looking for a charge. Not to seem cruel about it, but I hope they don't and Tesla keeps that feature to itself.

ref: Tesla Shows Off How They Monitor Their Supercharger Network

 

[bruce4000]

Hopefully Tesla will get some Federal and State money to help fund buildout if not the other car companies. It’s been said the other car companies are not paying Tesla anything but in the past Elon said others can use the Tesla network if they help pay for it. I’m sure the other OEM wouldn’t want to admit they are paying Tesla.

 

[pb2000]

Everybody is pearl clutching over this, when they really don't need to.
Point 1:
All CCS vehicles manufactured to this point and until the 2025 switch, will require an adapter to NACS, which will cost money, so not everybody is going to immediately jump on to the supercharger network, outside of the sites Tesla chooses to add magic dock.

Point 2: CCS stations exist and are actively being built. Multiple 3rd party charging manufactures have commited to adopting NACS and retrofiting old stations with the plug. Tesla's with the CCS charge port retrofit (or built with it from the get go) will be able to use 3rd party NACS. Competition is good.

Point 3: The number of Tesla's already on the road, compared to the most optimistic 5 year sales targets of manufactures joining NACS is somewhat of a drop in the bucket. The squeeze at the superchargers will be new Tesla owners.

 

[MP3Mike]

Point 1:
All CCS vehicles manufactured to this point and until the 2025 switch, will require an adapter to NACS, which will cost money, so not everybody is going to immediately jump on to the supercharger network, outside of the sites Tesla chooses to add magic dock.

Ford and Rivian have said that they will ship every customer one for free... I don't know GM's plan.

 

[E90alex]

I think it's entirely natural to be worried about the increase load on the Supercharger network as the pool of potential users increases due to the recent announcements.

But as I have said repeatedly in the past: doesn't the same logic apply to Tesla themselves?

Their vehicle production output has grown significantly over the years through the addition of more mainstream vehicle models, as well as opening new Gigafactories. And guess what: they have likewise increased the Supercharger network to more or less match.

So why would we think that they wouldn't be able to continue to do so as the number of potential users again increases? And if you do have your doubts about whether or not they can do it, did you have similar doubts when Tesla introduced the Model 3? The Model Y? Opened Giga Shanghai? Berlin? Texas? if not, why not?

Tesla increased their annual vehicle production about 100X since the Supercharger network was born. They've increased over 10X in the 6 years since the Model 3 debuted. They've about doubled in the past 2 years alone, and somehow they've managed to keep pace.

There is probably no other company more suitably positioned to grow their network than Tesla. They have gotten the manufacturing, logistics, and installation down to an absolute science (I know because I closely monitor the buildout of the Supercharger network as well as other DC fastcharger networks and the smoothness of Tesla's process is very obvious compared to their competition). And there is only upside for Tesla to grow the network as fast as possible. It presents a wonderful revenue opportunity for them to milk extra funds to further expand the network.

And let's look at the numbers. The number of GM's, Fords, Rivians and others that will be added to the fleet in the next few years will continue to be dwarfed by the number of Model 3's, Y's, and Cybertrucks. So before you start worrying about all those 3rd party Supercharger users, you should probably be more worried about Tesla themselves! (which I am not)

Very much this. So far Tesla is selling more cars per quarter than all other EVs combined. And all those new Teslas can use the superchargers right now, not 1-2 years from now.

We really need a massive expansion of Level 2 charging, especially for people that live in apartments or condos where they can’t install their own charger. That way all those people don’t need to rely on fast charging all the time and Tesla can focus on expanding interstate superchargers instead of building them all over a city like gas stations.

 

[Tam]

The Fed funding requires 1 station every 50 miles so there will be many more soon.

 

[stopcrazypp]

Hopefully Tesla will get some Federal and State money to help fund buildout if not the other car companies. It’s been said the other car companies are not paying Tesla anything but in the past Elon said others can use the Tesla network if they help pay for it. I’m sure the other OEM wouldn’t want to admit they are paying Tesla.

Who is saying they are paying Tesla nothing? Any links? That makes zero sense. At minimum they would need to pay Tesla to help integrate their API. And if following what Elon had claimed all along as the criteria for SC access, they also need to pay upfront to cover the increased demand on stations. No way Tesla is blind to the issue raised in this thread, given it was Elon who raised it initially.

A hint of the amount is GM said they are saving $400M on this move vs a network they said would cost $750 million if they were to build it on their own. That implies it would cost them a few hundred million.

GM CEO Mary Barra says Tesla charging deal will save the automaker up to $400 million

GM said in October 2021 it planned to spend $750 million on electric vehicle charging infrastructure in the U.S. and Canada.

www.google.com

 

[RTPEV]

Hopefully Tesla will get some Federal and State money to help fund buildout if not the other car companies. It’s been said the other car companies are not paying Tesla anything but in the past Elon said others can use the Tesla network if they help pay for it. I’m sure the other OEM wouldn’t want to admit they are paying Tesla.

The thing to keep in mind that those past comments from Elon were made in the context of an era where Supercharging was "free", effectively paid for up front, so in that context it would have made sense for any payments to be in the form of an upfront fee paid by the automaker. For context, here are Elon's original comments from 2015:

“Our Supercharger network is not intended to be a walled garden,” said Musk. “It’s intended to be available to other manufacturers if they’d like to use it. The only requirements are that the cars must be able to take the power output of our Superchargers, and then just pay whatever their proportion their usage is of the system. We’re actually in talks with some manufacturers about doing just that, and it will be exciting to share that news.”

Source: Charged EVs article

Of course time passes, and business models and strategies change, so it's not necessarily accurate to hold Tesla (Elon) to this exact wording in 2023, particularly with a new pay-as-you-go model that is now the status quo, and a compensation for usage could very easily be paid for by the end customers in the form of fees for charging which would fall right in line with Elon's remarks back in the day (and who knew those talks would drag on for 8 years! )

That said, however, in today's context, the Supercharger network, in comparison to other North American networks, has clearly shown itself to have value in terms of reliability, availability, density, power--just about any metric you choose. That value could be (and probably is) monetized in the form of a general access fee paid for the automakers.

You are correct when you say the other OEM's wouldn't want to admit they are paying Tesla (they probably barely want to admit they are parting ways with the CCS standard that they helped "invent"). That's why the headlines all say that the other OEMs have "signed an agreement" with Tesla to provide access to the Supercharger network for their customers. "Sign an agreement" is code for "money traded hands", even if it's not explicitly stated.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

The problem isn't directly charging demand. The problem is that V3 doesn't support the Detroit charge port position.

To support different charge port positions, they need V4, so if they don't retrofit to V4 or expand rapidly there could be some mess.

 

[Earl]

there certainly will be more customers looking to use a finite resource

Why would you think charging stations are a finite resource like it was something like oil that takes millions of years to form? They are technically only limited by land and power availability. Certainly, in urban areas, land can be expensive but it is available.
Although this applies directly to L2 charging: If nothing else, every car is always sitting somewhere when it isn't driving so run a wire to it.
The good new about these NACS deals is that they take the uncertainty out of charging infrastructure planning. Instead of worrying about whether to install Tesla or CCS, all anyone needs to do is build out NACS and make them attractive enough for folks to pay to use them.

 

[RayK]

Why would you think charging stations are a finite resource like it was something like oil that takes millions of years to form? They are technically only limited by land and power availability. Certainly, in urban areas, land can be expensive but it is available.
Although this applies directly to L2 charging: If nothing else, every car is always sitting somewhere when it isn't driving so run a wire to it.
The good new about these NACS deals is that they take the uncertainty out of charging infrastructure planning. Instead of worrying about whether to install Tesla or CCS, all anyone needs to do is build out NACS and make them attractive enough for folks to pay to use them.

Sorry if I wasn't clear about that statement. I simply meant that at any given point in time, there's a finite number of charging stations, NACS or CCS (and especially CHAdeMO) for drivers to access, just like gas stations. Since this discussion is essentially about Superchargers (i.e., Level 3 or DCFC charging) I was ignoring L1/L2 charging. I also think that gas stations are a finite resource because it also takes land, permits and construction to put one in place; basically the same things as an EVSE but without the added problem of having the electrical infrastructure to support the simultaneous power draw of several Superchargers. I doubt that your Chevron / Mobil / Sinclair / Shell / ARCO / Sunoco / Exxon / Wawa requires the same amount of power as a V3 Supercharger installation. In fact, now that I think about it, gas stations are more finite resources since there's a mobile Supercharging trailer that can be wheeled in to supply temporary power in emergencies. I don't think that a gas tanker can fuel a car.

Oil is a finite resource. Once the last drop is pumped out of the ground, there won't be any more for the millions of years you quoted. My Morbid Thought Of The Day: Maybe in a few million years when humankind has destroyed itself, the remains of people will be the basis of new petroleum fields. We will become the dinosaurs of future lifeforms, assuming that they develop the same type of technology that we did.

For your L2 charging example, it's not always possible to "run a wire to it" for the people that are living in condos / apartments / rental units because of the fact that they don't own the property where their vehicles are parked and are reliant upon the HOAs and/or landlords to get permission to add EV charging. And even if permission is granted, adding a charging station can be very expensive in some of those locations. Public DCFC stations can offer those EV owners the needed resource for keeping their car charged. I'm an example of that but more so because of financial reasons and not any other. I could install the Gen2 WC that I bought before I even got my car. I have room in my electrical panel to add the required breaker and could probably support a 50A circuit (40A charging). I choose not to do that because I still have access to $0.19/kW power from a local ChargePoint station, cheaper than any rate that I can currently get from PG&E. So, I don't want to spend the hundreds of dollars for putting the WC on the wall, and because I've already spent $500 for my CHAdeMO adapter, I want to get the most use out of it before it goes the way of Betamax, HD DVD and Windows 3.1.

I'm cautiously optimistic that having all major EV manufacturers adopt the NACS plug will mean that the buildout of Superchargers across the nation will increase such that they seem (nearly) as ubiquitous as having a gas station on every corner. This will probably require upgrades to the national power infrastructure, as well as development of clean, green energy generation. From a quick look online, I find that there's more than 145000 gas stations while the number of Supercharger stalls is around 17000. Even if we assume that there's an average of 2 gas pumps per station (low estimate), that's 290,000 pumps compared to 17,000, an almost 20:1 ratio.

 

[jboy210]

Telsa can build out fast, but there are a lot of moving parts to get a Supercharger on line. In some of the places by me the issue of the Electric utilities and local approval authorities being able to keep up. We have about 7-8 Superchargers sites within 10 miles of my house and within 15 miles 14 or more. So, Tesla can build them pretty quick. However, of those within 10 miles of my home at least one has been done for over 6 months, but still is not operation because of power company has not installed the transformer. The stalls are nicely lined out there and cleaned up, and the charging stands are installed and covered with padlocked canvas bags. The Tesla V3 Transformer is on site, but not the green power company transformer.

 

[jboy210]

The problem isn't directly charging demand. The problem is that V3 doesn't support the Detroit charge port position.

To support different charge port positions, they need V4, so if they don't retrofit to V4 or expand rapidly there could be some mess.

I wonder if Ford, GM and the others will move their charge ports to support left-rear or front-right by 2025 when they say they will have NACS ports. The short charging cables of the Superchargers are one of the best features. No cables laying all over and getting run over.

 

[Tam]

I wonder if Ford, GM and the others will move their charge ports to support left-rear or front-right by 2025 when they say they will have NACS ports. The short charging cables of the Superchargers are one of the best features. No cables laying all over and getting run over.

Longer cord on v4 in Europe seems to reach either side of a car.

When Tesla gets the Fed funding, it should be easy to retrofit or just build new stations.

 

[Tom_JS]

Telsa can build out fast, but there are a lot of moving parts to get a Supercharger on line. In some of the places by me the issue of the Electric utilities and local approval authorities being able to keep up. We have about 7-8 Superchargers sites within 10 miles of my house and within 15 miles 14 or more. So, Tesla can build them pretty quick. However, of those within 10 miles of my home at least one has been done for over 6 months, but still is not operation because of power company has not installed the transformer. The stalls are nicely lined out there and cleaned up, and the charging stands are installed and covered with padlocked canvas bags. The Tesla V3 Transformer is on site, but not the green power company transformer.

Wow! You are in Supercharger utopia. Here in Orange County NY we have exactly 3 total and only 1 within 15 Miles.

 

[jboy210]

Longer cord on v4 in Europe seems to reach either side of a car.

When Tesla gets the Fed funding, it should be easy to retrofit or just build new stations.

I wonder if Tesla is concerned about running over the cable damaging the cable, or its ability to water cool.

 

[Tam]

I wonder if Tesla is concerned about running over the cable damaging the cable, or its ability to water cool.

It's a possibility.

In a manufacturing process, they should test how much abuse the cable could endure.

 

[jboy210]

Wow! You are in Supercharger utopia. Here in Orange County NY we have exactly 3 total and only 1 within 15 Miles.

Ouch. We live within 15 miles of the Fremont factory, so Tesla vehicles and Superchargers have been here for a long time. It is not unusual to see 10 cars at a stoplight and 7 will be Teslas.