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GM electric vehicles can now access Tesla Superchargers

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Re: GM electric vehicles can now access Tesla Superchargers

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had some visitors to California from out of state recently, and the rental car place gave them an electric car (not Tesla), without basically any education about how to deal with them. I'm a huge fan of electric cars, and will probably never buy anything except EVs in the future, but man are you right that the non-Tesla experience is bleak. Charging was incredibly stressful. Few CCS chargers, each with a tiny numb…

> Traditional US car manufacturers are absolutely incompetent and will not survive competition with Chinese manufacturers unless they clean house on everything software related. Legacy American car companies have been fully non-competitive with foreign brands for decades. Their continued existence is completely due to tariffs, and it’s not close. I see no reason to think congress would suddenly allow them to be threa…

For those who aren't aware it's a 25% tarrif, so most manufacturers don't bother even trying to sell in the US. That's why almost all European/Japanese brand cars are 30+ years old over there.

I find it entertaining when my US colleague come visit and are amazed at all the options. I drive a new Toyota Hilux, and they weren't even aware they made them anymore. For a country that once prided itself on being the land of the free market capitalist, it's a shame the decision makers are so scared now of competition.

Re: GM electric vehicles can now access Tesla Superchargers

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source showing they are charging higher prices for non Teslas?

This is common knowledge. I don't have a link to send you, but I've just looked up the closest supercharger on the Tesla website and it charges 0.55$ / kWh for NACS vehicles, while in my Tesla app the same supercharger shows 0.42$ / kWh.

Seems strange, in Europe where Tesla chargers are open to all CCS2 vehicles, the prices are the same for everyone. On most chargers you can just tap your payment card to start the charge, although I think you can get cheaper rates as a member too.

Re: GM electric vehicles can now access Tesla Superchargers

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla chargers are CCS. It's just that in the US they use a different plug, in Europe Tesla chargers uses CCS-2 connectors.

> Tesla chargers are CCS. This is misleading and not entirely true. Older Tesla chargers did not use CCS to communicate. My 2019 Model 3 doesn't support CCS at all. When I plug into a Supercharger, it's not using CCS to communicate with the charger, it's using Tesla's proprietary CAN bus protocol. Teslas made before 2021 need an ECU retrofit to support CCS.

Pretty much all the old Teslas in Norway have been retrofitted to allow them to connect to CCS only chargers as far as I can tell. Had mine (2015 S 70D) done years ago when it became clear that future Tesla chargers would be CCS only.

Re: GM electric vehicles can now access Tesla Superchargers

#164

I tried the reverse recently, charging my Model 3 at third party CCS chargers with adapter (and CCS compatibility retrofit). It is bleak out there. The chargers are few and far between, half of them are broken, and even the ones that aren't broken have compatibility issues so they may not work anyway. The required apps are unreliable and annoying. I remember 5+ years ago Superchargers were a lot less common and also…

This situation sounds like Europe (& the UK) two or three years ago. Plentiful well maintained, fast and convenient chargers have sprung up since from a wide variety of operators (electricity companies, oil companies, startups, plus Tesla). We standardised on CCS a while ago. Many chargers are even faster than Tesla Superchargers whilst supporting the plug-and-charge standard ISO 15118. They are often surprisingly ch…

I was surprised just how good charger provision is in Europe. On a recent 1600 mile road trip we never had a problem finding 350kW chargers. There were always plenty of spaces free and I saw one broken charger the whole time - it maxed out at ~70kW instead of 230kW - but I just moved to the next charger in the row.

Re: GM electric vehicles can now access Tesla Superchargers

#165

I tried the reverse recently, charging my Model 3 at third party CCS chargers with adapter (and CCS compatibility retrofit). It is bleak out there. The chargers are few and far between, half of them are broken, and even the ones that aren't broken have compatibility issues so they may not work anyway. The required apps are unreliable and annoying. I remember 5+ years ago Superchargers were a lot less common and also…

We had some visitors to California from out of state recently, and the rental car place gave them an electric car (not Tesla), without basically any education about how to deal with them. I'm a huge fan of electric cars, and will probably never buy anything except EVs in the future, but man are you right that the non-Tesla experience is bleak. Charging was incredibly stressful. Few CCS chargers, each with a tiny numb…

Hertz walked back their big bet on EVs. They don’t make good rental cars. For day to day use where you can charge at home or go to places you know they are great.

For long trips to unfamiliar places, not so much.

Re: GM electric vehicles can now access Tesla Superchargers

#166
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most places it's not like gas stations where there's 3 on the same block and they all have exactly the same price all the time, people are going to stop at whatever charger is located where they need it and pay whatever the price is as long as it's within reason.

A quick search suggests there's around 145,000 gas stations. This article mentions Tesla has 17,800 supercharger stations. I didn't care enough to look up the station counts for the other EV charging companies. But that Tesla figure is around 12% of the gas station total, so let's say the total number of EV charging stations is somewhere between 15% and 20% of the gas station total. I could easily see EV charging sta…

Is that gas pumps or gas stations?

If there are an average of 4 to 6 pumps per station, EV has a lot longer to go.

Re: GM electric vehicles can now access Tesla Superchargers

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had some visitors to California from out of state recently, and the rental car place gave them an electric car (not Tesla), without basically any education about how to deal with them. I'm a huge fan of electric cars, and will probably never buy anything except EVs in the future, but man are you right that the non-Tesla experience is bleak. Charging was incredibly stressful. Few CCS chargers, each with a tiny numb…

It’s shocking. I’ve had a non-Tesla electric car for about 5 years and the public chargers have always been garbage. The new ones are garbage too. If they do finally work, they charge at 1/4 the quoted speed. I had free charging for a while and even that was not enough of an incentive to use it.

Interestingly it is a very different situation in Germany and other surrounding countries.

I've been driving electric since 2022 (non-tesla) and I have never charged with a tesla Supercharger. They have been either more expensive than my contract or in locations far way from the highway or gas stations.

The situation in Germany right now is extremely good, almost every gas station by the Autobahns has 150KW+ chargers available (and most of them non-Tesla). No need to plan stops anymore. And at the moment Plug-and-Charge is also working in Ionity and other stations. My BMW is able to store several contracts and I can choose beforehand which ones to use without having to resort to any app or RFID cards.

Charging is now as easy as with Tesla, but with full market competition and many extra locations.

Re: GM electric vehicles can now access Tesla Superchargers

#169
post #147

I tried the reverse recently, charging my Model 3 at third party CCS chargers with adapter (and CCS compatibility retrofit). It is bleak out there. The chargers are few and far between, half of them are broken, and even the ones that aren't broken have compatibility issues so they may not work anyway. The required apps are unreliable and annoying. I remember 5+ years ago Superchargers were a lot less common and also…

> Crazy how no one else could figure this out. Tesla obviously didn't figure out how to do it with third parties either. It's about cooperation and politics, not so much about the technical implementation.

They are talking about the user experience. Charging from a Tesla supercharger is completely frictionless. From a non-Tesla charger... have you ever tried it?

Re: GM electric vehicles can now access Tesla Superchargers

#170

Was the limitation of superchargers to specific brands a US thing? In Europe there is always cars of all makes and models charging at the Tesla chargers?

In the EU, it is required to use a specific type of plug at chargers and in electric cars. This made everything compatible.

So it not working wasn't a US thing. It working was an EU thing.

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