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Volkswagen, Porsche, and Audi say they will use Tesla's EV charging plug

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Re: Volkswagen, Porsche, and Audi say they will use Tesla's EV charging plug

#101

I think people are missing the big story here. This is Tesla winning the charging network battle (it wasn't close before this). Any EV car (which will eventually be all cars) will immediately be available for Tesla's supercharger network. This gives Tesla a massive revenue stream and scale to grow that network even bigger. Anyone who wants their superchargers has to also support all Teslas.

But it also takes away Tesla's biggest advantage, no? The charging network was a big reason to buy a tesla and now that's gone. So perhaps they will actually end up losing more revenue than gaining.

Yes and no. Tesla already has the #1 selling car (Model Y) and makes up more than half of EVs sold in the US. Eventually other networks were going to catch up. Now the other half will pay them too but they own the network. Long term it was the right choice.

Re: Volkswagen, Porsche, and Audi say they will use Tesla's EV charging plug

#102
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it also takes away Tesla's biggest advantage, no? The charging network was a big reason to buy a tesla and now that's gone. So perhaps they will actually end up losing more revenue than gaining.

I would expect that in the near future EVs become commodities based on a small handful of licensed platforms. Owning the charging network is a nice hedge against losing the battle to become one of the platforms.

Why would this be true for EVs when it's clearly not true for ICE vehicles?

Re: Volkswagen, Porsche, and Audi say they will use Tesla's EV charging plug

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it also takes away Tesla's biggest advantage, no? The charging network was a big reason to buy a tesla and now that's gone. So perhaps they will actually end up losing more revenue than gaining.

is it really gone? Tesla will still have a OEM advantage here in the software and internals. Alot of the "Technology" here is the software that does thermal management and the like. Tesla's still charge faster on a supercharger than a ford f-150 would, and i imagine some future where buying a Tesla gets you "Credits" to use at the chargers. Tesla has much different goals than the other car manufacturers. Although ene…

Tesla already charges more to charge a non-tesla.

Re: Volkswagen, Porsche, and Audi say they will use Tesla's EV charging plug

#104
post #84
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would expect that in the near future EVs become commodities based on a small handful of licensed platforms. Owning the charging network is a nice hedge against losing the battle to become one of the platforms.

I disagree. People like their car to look new/different, and volumes on cars are high enough that the advantages of a custom platform is worth the cost of designing it.

> People like their car to look new/different

That's true in my experience. Though it is interesting that cars look more and more similar over time rather than different.

Re: Volkswagen, Porsche, and Audi say they will use Tesla's EV charging plug

#105
post #90
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. People like their car to look new/different, and volumes on cars are high enough that the advantages of a custom platform is worth the cost of designing it.

The design of the car is only loosely related to the skateboard that contains the battery and the drivetrain.

Skateboard makes even less sense for EVs than for ICEs. in an ICE you have a large engine and various axels that have to be in specific places. With an EV you have more room to move the motors around where they makes sense. While you need a lot of batteries, each cell is small, so you want to put things like seats in the car first and then add cells anywhere there is extra room.

Re: Volkswagen, Porsche, and Audi say they will use Tesla's EV charging plug

#106
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, last thing Tesla wants is antitrust oversight for monopolistic practice.

Would be a bit ridiculous to penalise Tesla as a monopolist given they virtually pioneered the industry in America within the last generation.

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Re: Volkswagen, Porsche, and Audi say they will use Tesla's EV charging plug

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual gains are never discussed. It could be massive or much less than you expect.

https://electrek.co/2023/08/25/tesla-supercharger-network-bi... ("Tesla Supercharger network to become $10 to $20 billion a year business, says Wedbush") > With Tesla now having a fleet of millions of vehicles using the network and opening it up to EVs from other automakers, financial analysts are starting to see the Supercharger network has a massive business that is going to partly replace gas stations, and they wa…

Estimates aren't gains. Something in their financials report would be a much better and accurate representation of gains.

Re: Volkswagen, Porsche, and Audi say they will use Tesla's EV charging plug

#109
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real mistake was the standards group that looked at Tesla's connector in the US and CCS Combo 2 in Europe and decided the best connector for North America was CCS Combo 1 with an external latching mechanism to be backwards compatible with the handful of J-1772 low power chargers that existed at the time. In order to avoid separate ports for AC and DC charging, or a simple adapter that only needed to handle low po…

That plug was never proprietary.

Tesla did not actually provide real specs to use their plug or interoperate with their vehicles and chargers until Nov 2022.

The CEO made statements about anyone being able to use it, but that's not the same as actually offering it up as a standard in a way that others can use it.

It was officially published as an SAE standard this week (SAE J3400).

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