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Rivian embraces Tesla's charging standard for EVs

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141–150 of 761 posts

Re: Rivian embraces Tesla's charging standard for EVs

#141

I wonder if Tesla is repositioning from being a Ford to being an Exxon

I don't think the business case for that closes. EVs are still overwhelmingly charged overnight at home. As they percolate to lower price points, that will change somewhat, but ultimately the total spend on charging stations is just too low to be much more than a distraction for a company the size of Tesla. The reason they built the supercharger network was that it was needed to sell cars, and now that they have it t…

> EVs are still overwhelmingly charged overnight at home

And Tesla would like to be in that business too, with PowerWall batteries and "solar roof" panels.

If they're succeeding well here is another matter though.

Re: Rivian embraces Tesla's charging standard for EVs

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all Tesla's can speak CCS. Older Teslas need a $400 retrofit to be able to use the Tesla CCS1 adapter. https://shop.tesla.com/en_ca/product/ccs-combo-1-adapter

Not much of a practical problem until some other charging network builds out enough NACS chargers that a Tesla driver would try using anything other than a Supercharger. Looks like the cutoff for this is vehicles before May 1, 2019.

It’s more like may 2020. I don’t know anyone who got a car delivered in 2019 ( mine included) that has support for ccs

Re: Rivian embraces Tesla's charging standard for EVs

#143

Would love to hear fast how charging stations will scale in a way that beats the current price and speed of filling up a car with gasoline. I mean, even in a small town with, say, three gas stations, there are peak times when all the spots are taken. Average fueling time is probably a few minutes. How to switch that to an all-electric system? + build a significantly higher number of fast electric charges than there a…

I’m with you on this. I think the only way to build out a network at this point is with EV manufacturers or governments subsidizing the costs. You can’t turn a profit selling the electricity because the gross margins are so much lower and the real estate costs are so much higher than petroleum-based products. The amount of profit earned per parked minute is going to be exponentially lower.

And the grid connections are not a trivial problem to scale. At some point you exceed the capacity of normal grid connections and you start to require higher voltage feeds and bigger transformers, and that cost is massive. And as the network grows, you’ll need to scale the number or size of substations, which is also not trivial.

Re: Rivian embraces Tesla's charging standard for EVs

#144

I wonder if Tesla is repositioning from being a Ford to being an Exxon

I don't think the business case for that closes. EVs are still overwhelmingly charged overnight at home. As they percolate to lower price points, that will change somewhat, but ultimately the total spend on charging stations is just too low to be much more than a distraction for a company the size of Tesla. The reason they built the supercharger network was that it was needed to sell cars, and now that they have it t…

You hinted at this, but a significant % of the population lives in either rented or multi-family housing, so home charging may not be feasible (at least in the short-to-medium term).

While I own my home, I don't own my parking space (community property, assigned to me via HOA rules). While we're allowed to install a chargers, it's only possible for homes with assigned spaces directly in front of the home (albeit pricey, as it involves concrete work to run cables under community sidewalks). Some homes have spaces offset by a fair distance, or across community street, so installing a home charger is either extremely expensive or impossible.

Re: Rivian embraces Tesla's charging standard for EVs

#145
post #112

I’m glad there finally seems to be a push to a better standard in North America. I’m really curious how this affects Teslas market share though going forward. Their supercharger network is why we continue with them despite countless other issues. It’s their biggest moat as far as I’m concerned. Now I have significantly more options, and my next car will not be a Tesla. I’m sure I’m not alone in that. Is the brand nam…

> I’m sure I’m not alone in that.

Definitely not alone. I'm on my second Tesla, and from what I can see of Tesla's plans for the future, I think it is likely I will not buy another for my next car. I'm very happy that everyone else is jumping on board with NACS.

Re: Rivian embraces Tesla's charging standard for EVs

#146
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CCS current spec/design can deliver up to 350kW (although few if any cars can take advantage of that today). NACS claims it can provide up to 1MW (1000A @ 1000V). I think it will be a while before we see cars able to charge anywhere near this, but there is a trend right now of big EV pickups with massive batteries. Higher power chargers means faster charge times. The only downside I see with NACS is you can’t level 2…

CCS1 already doesn't support 3-phase power, so it's not like switching from CCS1 to NACS in the US is losing anything there. It wouldn't work as-is for Europe because of that, but they're so far into CCS2 adoption that they wouldn't consider it regardless.

To clarify:

3-phase power is irrelevant when it comes to CCS. The point of the Combined Charging System is the "combined". It is the signalling pins in the upper part of the Mennekes or J1772 connector and the large DC connectors in the bottom part.

For slow charging, 3-phase power is relevant (the IEC Type 2 / Mennekes connector in this case).

Re: Rivian embraces Tesla's charging standard for EVs

#147

Offtopic: could people that write news titles please learn how to capitalize words? Or can we make sure that at AI will know it, when most of news are written by it? Took me 3 tries to parse the title. "Rivian Joins Forces" - is that name of an organization? - "with Tesla"... nope, that doesn't make sense. "Rivan Joins forces" (somebody to do something), syntax error got "with". "Rivan joins forces with Tesla" - yay!…

This is entirely a personal problem. The title is correctly written.

Re: Rivian embraces Tesla's charging standard for EVs

#148
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a little confused by fast charging standards, to be honest. 1MW is 20x the maximum draw of a standard house, and 800x the average draw of a US house. The hydro plant down the road generates 5MW. It just sounds crazy to plan to pull that much power charging a car at a time.

> It just sounds crazy to plan to pull that much power charging a car at a time. For comparison, a normal gas station pump is like about 4MW of power (fuel).

Electric cars are almost 4X as efficient as a gas car, so 1MW of electricy and 4MW of gasoline are roughly equivalent in miles added per minute.

OTOH the only batteries that can absorb 1MW of electricity are those in some Class 8 trucks, and Class 8 diesel trucks are usually filled with pumps a lot faster than a standard gas station pump.

Re: Rivian embraces Tesla's charging standard for EVs

#149
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a little confused by fast charging standards, to be honest. 1MW is 20x the maximum draw of a standard house, and 800x the average draw of a US house. The hydro plant down the road generates 5MW. It just sounds crazy to plan to pull that much power charging a car at a time.

> It just sounds crazy to plan to pull that much power charging a car at a time. For comparison, a normal gas station pump is like about 4MW of power (fuel).

[deleted]

Re: Rivian embraces Tesla's charging standard for EVs

#150
post #112

I’m glad there finally seems to be a push to a better standard in North America. I’m really curious how this affects Teslas market share though going forward. Their supercharger network is why we continue with them despite countless other issues. It’s their biggest moat as far as I’m concerned. Now I have significantly more options, and my next car will not be a Tesla. I’m sure I’m not alone in that. Is the brand nam…

The long term future of Tesla is a battery manufacturer and a charging network. Those are the two things they are good at. The cars themselves are quickly being beaten out by the larger players.
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