Tesla is prepping for giant Supercharger expansion before opening for other EVs

zepearl 2021-08-18 20:51:03 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Tesla making superchargers available as well to cars made by other manufacturers could become an interesting development, at least during the early days.

Having read during the past months/years that Tesla's chargers are very reliable (not buggy nor just "offline" for some weird reason - e.g. just this afternoon I wanted to charge my hybrid at a specific parking garage in Zurich/Switzerland but the whole floor where the chargers are located was closed), a lot of car owners might want to use them => Tesla owners might get angry seeing that "their" chargers are all busy by non-Tesla cars => advantage of owning a Tesla would suffer.

On the other hand Tesla might get more (stable) earnings through this and the company might play with the charging cost, e.g. increasing the charging/parking cost for non-Tesla owners or at least taking more into consideration involving the cost the charging rate of the non-Tesla-car being charged and/or the time during which the charging station was busy.

I guess that the worst/most-expensive combination would be "non-tesla" + "big empty battery" + "low charging throughput"?

powerbroker 2021-08-18 23:18:40 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Allowing non-Teslas to charge at the Tesla network is no different than Tesla opening a +1 factory (virtually, the influx of non-Teslas). Tesla, even now, has two completed factories producing Teslas, and two about to go into production in 6 months. Tesla operates the chargers at a profit (or should do so soon). Accordingly, the additional cars charging, will spur provision of additional charger sites.

As a user of the Tesla network since 2016, the availability of more charging options leads to, at least, the following network effects:

* reduced need to go 'out of your way' to find a charger;

* reduced likelihood that a car runs out of charge before reaching the next charger;

* better attention to the upkeep of the charger sites and the repair of the chargers (all chargers, not just Teslas' -- competition); and

* fewer chargers under-utilized or over-utilized -- as it becomes easier to 'right size' many discrete units, rather than just a few dozen.

drewg123 2021-08-18 22:43:03 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I'm of two minds about this. I think this is a great idea in general, as it will improve the adoption of EVs.

However, as a Tesla owner, I'm not looking forward to competing for charging with other types of EVs. And indeed, it may reduce brand loyalty, as one of the best things about Tesla is the charging network in North America. I've been curious about other EVs, but would not consider them because of how poor non-Tesla charging infrastructure is. Now that concern is going away.

All in all, I think this will help them with their stated goal of increasing EV adoption. But it may hurt their bottom line.

jdsully 2021-08-18 23:57:51 +0000 UTC [ - ]

A major factor why I chose a Tesla over the Mach-e was the charging network. I really hate the interiors of the Tesla, but being stuck without a charge is much worse.

clouddrover 2021-08-19 00:21:45 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> But it may hurt their bottom line

They're opening the charging network to get access to government subsidies for charging infrastructure. Governments aren't going to fund single brand chargers.

Tesla should also switch to CCS in North America but for the time being it looks like Tesla owners are going to be stuck with Telsa's proprietary charging port. That blocks Tesla owners from 4,577 North American CCS charging locations:

https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/electricity_locations.html

It'd be best if Telsa simply put CCS on the car like they do in Europe. But maybe Tesla's plan is to gouge customers by selling a CCS adapter.

spaceisballer 2021-08-18 23:36:57 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I’ve owned my M3 for over two years now and finally did a long trip that required supercharging. I’ve used them before but was pleasantly surprised how many there are around and that there was always available stalls. Maybe it’s different on the west coast but here on the east coast it’s been fine. We always have to stop on road trips, so taking a 15-20min stop and charging is no biggie.