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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

#501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO that would be better solved by mandating tap and pay payment at EV charging spots. Integrating payments into the charging standard feels like a wild overcomplication by comparison.

Not only that, how do you even propose to do it? If you just send the payment info via the charging plug, now you have to worry about the payment info being stored in the car and potentially stolen if the car has any security vulnerabilities, including in the charging port. If you use some kind of tokenization or similar then you're inserting third party payment processors into the system and they'll be wanting a cut…

All the car needs to store is some private key corresponding to yourself, to prove it's that car. On modern hardware you can make these really hard to steal, short of taking the entire chip with you.

Worse case, if someone steals that key (or the hardware that stores it), they can steal electricity with it. Which also means they'll be caught approximately tomorrow.

If you have that level of access/capability, there's better things to do than using it to get 50 dollars worth of electricity and probably being picked up by police as you siphon it.

Besides, there's easier and stealthier ways to get free electricity.

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

#502
post #459
post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to echo this. When contactless is ubiquitous there are pretty much no problems.

I don’t know if I agree. It’s exceedingly rare now to find a place which doesn’t accept contactless in America, but we have these problems still. Besides dumb inconsistent terminals, the main thing holding it back is (A) customers don’t use it because they either don’t know it’s much faster than our garbage chip readers, or they have been burned by hunting for the right spot to tap. And (B) even the clerks don’t use…

Sometimes I try to use the tap-to-pay. When I try, more often than not, I cannot get it to work, and then I use the chip anyway.

So usually, I just use the chip to save time.

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

#503
post #485
post #195

I am the founder of Starlight Charging[1]. We are working on crazy-low-cost L2 chargers for multifamily apartments. Plug-and-charge is a sine-qua-non for us. One still major unsolved problem is the lack of agreement on a standard for payment/powerline communication from the EVSE to the vehicle. OCPP 2.0.1 and ISO 15118 is supposed to bring "Plug and Charge" capabilities -- this, in theory, would allow drivers to simp…

How are you still in business when everyone will use Teslas standard chargers?

Tesla only defines the plug (the interface). Different companies can still manufacture their own plugs and other equipment. Focusing on frictionless payment seems like a good business idea.

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

#504
post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain why you feel plug-and-charge is so important? I have used chargers with and without it and while it is slightly more convenient to just plug in and go, it doesn't feel like such a huge improvement that I absolutely need it. I agree that having a different app for every brand of charging station would be annoying, but what about just accepting a credit card the way we do with gas stations now?

Have you done any road tripping in an EV? my experience of the app-based charging landscape has been complete horror; apps don’t work, chargers don’t start, payments don’t through.. Just last month was a new app at McDonalds in Sweden, that one asks me to, in the freezing cold, scan a dirty QR code sticker, which takes me to a website I’ve never heard of that wants me to manually enter credit card info, like a phishi…

That is entirely the fault of that charging network for implementing a user-unfriendly and unfamiliar interface. How is grandma, who can't even manage a QR code, expected to switch to EVs like that. That company should fail because their business is bad.

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

#505
post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain why you feel plug-and-charge is so important? I have used chargers with and without it and while it is slightly more convenient to just plug in and go, it doesn't feel like such a huge improvement that I absolutely need it. I agree that having a different app for every brand of charging station would be annoying, but what about just accepting a credit card the way we do with gas stations now?

Recharging electric vehicles is not like refilling gas-powered cars. You will intentionally drive a gas vehicle down to 20%, even 10% tank left before going out of your way to a gas station, maybe once a week on average. But with electric cars, you should intentionally be plugging in to recharge as frequently as possible, at least once a day, as you are penalized (with longer recharge times) the longer you go between…

With EVs I have the opposite habit, I try to recharge at 5-10% on road trips because it recharges faster. (At least with Teslas, I would not want to do a road trip with anything else.)

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

#506
post #224
post #195

I am the founder of Starlight Charging[1]. We are working on crazy-low-cost L2 chargers for multifamily apartments. Plug-and-charge is a sine-qua-non for us. One still major unsolved problem is the lack of agreement on a standard for payment/powerline communication from the EVSE to the vehicle. OCPP 2.0.1 and ISO 15118 is supposed to bring "Plug and Charge" capabilities -- this, in theory, would allow drivers to simp…

Can you explain why you feel plug-and-charge is so important? I have used chargers with and without it and while it is slightly more convenient to just plug in and go, it doesn't feel like such a huge improvement that I absolutely need it. I agree that having a different app for every brand of charging station would be annoying, but what about just accepting a credit card the way we do with gas stations now?

Lol, why would one want more friction on a particular activity?

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

#507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People also made the argument that the exclusivity of the Tesla supercharger network was a positive for Tesla. It's hard for both to be true. I think the reality is that uncertainty about charging away from home pushed a lot of people towards Tesla who might otherwise have considered a different make/model. With that gone, a moat vanished. That being said, competition in the US EV market is still weak. Maybe the adde…

Yeah, I was holding out on buying Ionic5 because of the lack of good charging network, even though I will only use it for occasional roadtrip. I will be charging at home for everyday use. Now that everybody is in Tesla supercharger, Teslas are losing its appeal to me now. I just need to wait until 2025 when everybody actually uses NACS. lol.

You don't need to hold out on buying a car you like because of the shape of the charge port. Passive adapters will be available since the actual communication protocol is the same. Since you roadtrip occasionally it won't make much difference in convenience.

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

#508

I understand the ridicule that the EU gets sometimes, and especially so when trying to regulate stuff like AI where it seems the EU wants to regulate more than to create start ups etc... But this is one thing the EU just nailed the hammer into the wood immediatly, and rightly so. I can't even remember the time it was. Maybe 2013? 2014? They just set a standard and everyone, even Tesla, adopted it. Every single EV can…

And Europe even did it better than China. Connectors are also standardized in China but AC and DC use completely different connectors. And the AC connector had enough pins for 3-phase power but two were unused.

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

#509

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.

There is no such big story here. The estimates are somewhere around 10B $ of revenue (not profit !) per year by 2030, and that's an optimistic scenario. Base case scenarios are much worse. And even that hypothetical 10B$ is hardly a 'massive' revenue stream for a company projecting to sell 10 million cars by that time (I would put their chances of achieving that goal at 0.01%). As usual with Tesla - it's all about pr…

> by 2030

> a company projecting to sell 10 million cars by that time

At their latest investment day they very clearly said their goal is 20 million cars a year by 2030.

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

#510
post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In states where they are registered as an energy provider? A lot. A 10-80% charge will net Tesla $20. Comparatively a gas station that refills a midsize car with a 20 gallon tank will only net $6.

In Tesla's most recent quarter, their revenue for "Services & Other," which is where Supercharging lives, was $2,166M, while the cost of revenue for Services & Other was $2,037M. So, a gross profit of $129M on revenue of $2,166M or ~6% gross margin. This is in line with their previous statements that they run the Supercharging network at breakeven - although they don't seem to publicly break out SC-specific numbers f…

Sure, that's supercharging Tesla vehicles. They are of course going to charge more for non-Teslas.
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