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Volvo Cars Adopts Tesla's NACS Port in the United States, Canada and Mexico

media.volvocars.com

111–120 of 168 posts

Re: Volvo Cars Adopts Tesla's NACS Port in the United States, Canada and Mexico

#111
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of innovation in payment technologies is a huge barrier. It should be entirely feasible to "set up a payment card" within a secure computing system like a car's computer (perhaps using an inexpensive commodity secure enclave processor), and then securely pay for charging services over an arbitrary wire protocol like NACS/CCS without the need to make an account for each provider . Apple and Google each manage…

I would settle for the basics before insisting on actual innovation. I also want chargers to allow using a credit card (or Apple Pay or whatever) as an alternative to whatever is programmed into the car.

Sure. What I'm describing is essentially Apple Pay, just not limited to mobile phones and an NFC interface. If the payment card industry had looked a decade forward and developed something like Apple Pay for IoT devices, then you could enter a credit card to your car and it would make the payment directly over the charging cable. They didn't do this, and as a result we have to use NFC, magstripes, proprietary wire protocols, or else live in Europe. It's a bummer.

Re: Volvo Cars Adopts Tesla's NACS Port in the United States, Canada and Mexico

#112
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"pretty shocking that all the charge networks are getting rug pulled because they couldn't figure out how to accept payment reliably." Is there a reference for this somewhere? I didn't know this was a problem.

It’s not. I drive a CCS car. The reason EA and EVGo are getting demolished is due to the comically limited number of chargers they install per station (four commonly vs dozens at Tesla stations) and the unreliability of the chargers themselves. I’ve never had a problem with payment.

This is the big one for me, too. I've driven non-Tesla and Tesla EVs for years, and the big draw of the supercharger stations is that there's so many stalls that there's always one open. When I roadtrip with the CCS car, I get lucky when there's one of the four stalls available.

Re: Volvo Cars Adopts Tesla's NACS Port in the United States, Canada and Mexico

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why wouldn't someone (really, anyone ) be just as equipped to build out NACS stations? Each new manufacturer switching over to NACS means the really big companies (bp, Shell) who already have tons of physical land and infrastructure, will be more incentivized to serve NACS, doesn't it?

Don’t know about BP or Shell but local power companies seem prime to take over that space. Tesla relies on them for power. I don’t see why the local power companies won’t cut out the middle man that’s Tesla and service customers directly.

> local power companies seem prime to take over that space

Theoretically yes, but in action they are hemmed by their regulators as they are quasi-public owned and operated.

Re: Volvo Cars Adopts Tesla's NACS Port in the United States, Canada and Mexico

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My Canadian town of 70,000...It's already there so why are they switching? It's estimated America will need around 2mm EV chargers by 2030; it currently has about 160k [1]. Every charger currently deployed is less than a tenth of what we need in seven years. That's not quite tabula rasa , but it's close. CCS lost because it prioritized backward compatibility in an environment where most of what's needed must be bui…

Most of those 2M EV chargers only need to be Level 2. It makes MUCH more sense to use J1772 by default in those 2M chargers, since every EV other than Tesla currently uses that standard, and Tesla can easily use an adapter. So CCS hasn't "lost". In fact, it's likely to remain a standard. In fact, there are some 5,200 CCS charging station locations in the US, compared to only about 1,800 Supercharger stations. [1] A s…

> 5,200 CCS charging station locations in the US, compared to only about 1,800

Sure, but in the smaller print on that diagram it mentions that there are twice as many superchargers. CCS stations are typically small, superchargers typically large.

Re: Volvo Cars Adopts Tesla's NACS Port in the United States, Canada and Mexico

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My Canadian town of 70,000...It's already there so why are they switching? It's estimated America will need around 2mm EV chargers by 2030; it currently has about 160k [1]. Every charger currently deployed is less than a tenth of what we need in seven years. That's not quite tabula rasa , but it's close. CCS lost because it prioritized backward compatibility in an environment where most of what's needed must be bui…

Most of those 2M EV chargers only need to be Level 2. It makes MUCH more sense to use J1772 by default in those 2M chargers, since every EV other than Tesla currently uses that standard, and Tesla can easily use an adapter. So CCS hasn't "lost". In fact, it's likely to remain a standard. In fact, there are some 5,200 CCS charging station locations in the US, compared to only about 1,800 Supercharger stations. [1] A s…

SAE (the Society of Automotive Engineers) just formally adopted NACS as preferred standard [1], so CCS1 may have indeed "lost".

Conversion of existing CCS1 chargers was one of the things SAE supposedly considered in making the decision. NACS "speaks CCS software over Tesla-designed hardware" so it's mostly just a hardware change at one end of the cable. (Tesla made some smart decisions when they decided to standards track NACS.)

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/27/23775208/tesla-nacs-elect...

Re: Volvo Cars Adopts Tesla's NACS Port in the United States, Canada and Mexico

#116
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a choice between continuing to compete in one market, or competing in the same market while also absolutely dominating another.

Which market is the one they will dominate? Supporting NACS is not a hurdle, and there are already quite a lot of non-Tesla DC fast chargers in existence. Some of them have already announced they'll add NACS plugs themselves. There's no magic to building another charging station, and if everyone supports plug-and-charge (or hell, just reliable credit card processing), it'll be a super competitive market with tight ma…

All well and good to say, but every other company that has tried to charge EVs has utterly failed, and it's been over a decade now. Once customers can move freely between all the networks, the ones with bad reliability will disappear. Right now that's every network not Tesla. Like you said, the margins are tight. EA can't just lower their prices. And even if they could, who's gonna take a chance on a shitty network during a family road trip to save a couple bucks? Not me.

Re: Volvo Cars Adopts Tesla's NACS Port in the United States, Canada and Mexico

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why wouldn't someone (really, anyone ) be just as equipped to build out NACS stations? Each new manufacturer switching over to NACS means the really big companies (bp, Shell) who already have tons of physical land and infrastructure, will be more incentivized to serve NACS, doesn't it?

Don’t know about BP or Shell but local power companies seem prime to take over that space. Tesla relies on them for power. I don’t see why the local power companies won’t cut out the middle man that’s Tesla and service customers directly.

In theory, they could do this, but local power companies are so regulated and bureaucratic that they'd never be able to take on building and maintaining charging stations for cars. At least that's how it is where I live (I have family that works at my local power company)

Re: Volvo Cars Adopts Tesla's NACS Port in the United States, Canada and Mexico

#118
post #2

Good. Great. As long as there's just one, I don't care which.

My only concern with one is that we're giving one private company a monopoly on it. Is that good, I'm not sure but in general it's usually not good for consumers.

Are we giving them a monopoly? The standard was published, and as someone else mentioned SAE is in the process of formalizing it. I also doubt very much that Ford, GM, et al actually negotiated their contracts without some stipulation that there couldn't be a rug pull.

Re: Volvo Cars Adopts Tesla's NACS Port in the United States, Canada and Mexico

#119
post #21

NACS won slowly, and then suddenly (at least in the public eye)

It was a de facto standard by any measure. The sudden part is whenever SAE blesses it to the de jure charging standard.

Which is indeed in process: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/27/23775208/tesla-nacs-elect...

Re: Volvo Cars Adopts Tesla's NACS Port in the United States, Canada and Mexico

#120
post #32
post #2

Good. Great. As long as there's just one, I don't care which.

There was already just one standard plus Tesla.

There are several standards for EV charging, even if you limit yourself to only counting SAE.
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