Tesla plans to open its charging network to other EVs later this year

Elon has a long history of just announcing things without details or a plan, so until this is fleshed out I wouldn&#x27;t get that excited.<p>Thanks to EU regulations, all the superchargers in europe have both the tesla and CCS combo connectors at each stall. Telsa can allow CCS cars to charge with nothing but software. They actually had a bug earlier this year that allowed non-tesla cars to charge for free for a weekend.<p>In north america superchargers only have the telsa connector, which would mean either Tesla will need to offer an adaptor (which would likely have charge rate limits like their Chademo -&gt; tesla adaptor) or add CCS to all their cabinets like they have done in europe (which will take a long time).<p>I suspect this is an offshoot of Norway standing firm on not offering tesla any grants or tax breaks to expand their charging network unless the chargers are publicly available. It wouldn&#x27;t surprise me this starts in norway and only expands as regulations force them to open up.

Just to put it on the record because so many people seem to be getting this wrong. Telsa&#x27;s connector was not first, but its power delivery capabilities were better at the time.<p>The Roadster (2008) used a different connector than the Model S (2012) and is completely incompatible. JS1772 (2009) was already being adopted as a standard by cars like the Nissan Leaf (2010) before Tesla&#x27;s current connector was being used.<p>Tesla&#x27;s Supercharger network at the launch of the Model S was a total of 6 chargers: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20121124081536&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.teslamotors.com&#x2F;supercharger" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20121124081536&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.teslam...</a> . So the initial infrastructure investment was not that significant.<p>Further reading into that article though you can see the Superchargers were capable of delivering 90kW. JS1772 cars were limited to ~20kW L2 charging at the time which is why Chademo (2010-ish) connectors were included for faster charging on earlier EVs. CCS (2013) would become the unifying replacement that added faster charging to JS1772.<p>More on topic, the rest of the industry and world has moved on and standardized to CCS. No one should start using Tesla&#x27;s connector on their cars now. But making an adapter to use Tesla chargers on a CCS car could make sense. But having yet another thing to lug around in the car won&#x27;t be ideal. The obvious logical choice is for Tesla to start retrofitting Superchargers with CCS now that it&#x27;s open and eventually ween Tesla owners into using adapters that Tesla already makes.

(In the US) Tesla uses a proprietary standard. Every other EV manufacturer uses CCS for high-speed charging. (Chademo was dropped.)<p>The Tesla Supercharger network is just like Betamax: Tesla has a good first mover advantage, just like Sony did. But once every EV sold has a CCS connector, it&#x27;s not going to make sense to buy a Tesla that can only charge at Tesla&#x27;s proprietary charging network.<p>Once VHS was on the scene, the Betamax format struggled. And just like Betamax, there will be people who argue until they&#x27;re blue in the face that Tesla&#x27;s charger is better than CCS.<p>(Betamax was, in practice worse than VHS. It was more expensive, and because the tapes were physically smaller, feature length films used slower tape speeds, and thus had lower picture quality. Even the supposed better picture quality of Betamax was too small to notice.)

Big potential source of income here. The supercharger network stands head and shoulders above every other charging network in the US.<p>Some key advantages include: reliability, convenience, ubiquity, and location. I&#x27;ve never been to a supercharger with more than one broken stall, they all &quot;just work&quot;. I&#x27;ve also tried other options, but I&#x27;ve actually never found one that was operational at the time.

Everyone should pitch in to have one system.<p>It will be the worst if 10 years from now every vehicle has a different ’usb’ port while your mileage count goes lower.<p>Tesla moved first, and that deserves some reward because anyone could have started for decades prior to Tesla.

Great news. Though the EV charging ecosystem is still a huge mess. Each country has 5 or 6 different networks that all require different apps, charge wildly different prices etc. A huge mess. Hopefully things will settle as adoption increases.

This is good news.<p>But, why don&#x27;t EVs have a standard to follow like gas cars have a standard fill port? It seems like there is a lot of proprietary tech going on in the EV market at the moment, like early 2000s cell phones that all had their own unique charging port.<p>Edit: Thank you for your replies! I&#x27;ll look into the CCS EV plug.

This is great news but it is already pretty crowded every time I use one of Tesla’s superchargers. I hope this means they will be adding a lot more superchargers.

This is good news. The Tesla superchargers seem to be overall the best charging solution. Making them available for everyone will boost electric cars for sure. The only question is: why is Tesla seemingly giving up this &quot;moat&quot;? As the Tesla management probably isn&#x27;t stupid, they must have a plan behind this change of policy. Will be interesting to see. Perhaps they are at a point where they can scale up the supercharger infrastructure quickly enough and actually make a profit by providing the charging infrastructure.

Just this past weekend I parked my hybrid at a rest stop and glanced enviously at the unused strip of Tesla superchargers, wishing I could hook up to one.

Some coffee shop franchise needs to get into EV charging. For the half-hour spent charging, provide a space to lounge&#x2F;work and of course buy food.

My take on this is that Tesla is doing this to kneecap competitors like Ionity who like to offer very non-competitive rates for charging. If your vehicle is from outside of Ionity &quot;old boys network&quot; you must pay 0.79 €&#x2F;kWh. Tesla SuC rate is 0.37 €&#x2F;kWh in Germany currently.<p>More importantly though, the other competitors offer has been rather pathetic, one, maybe two charging stalls, where Tesla builds proper spots with 12-18 stalls. Tesla will show the other brands (drivers of which, honestly, might have no idea what they are missing out on) how it&#x27;s done.<p>With the pricing of charging conundrum, I feel currently the goals of car makers and charging providers like Ionity, Fastned or EnBW (and metric ton of bit-players) were misaligned. I hope this move from Tesla will drive some consolidation, and make other car-makers realize that charging and car sales need to go hand-in hand, be totally aligned.

How annoyed will the &quot;S&quot; owners be if they can&#x27;t charge because all the Supercharger slots are filled up with LEAFs, etc?

As a non-Tesla electric vehicle owner, all of the charging stations that i&#x27;ve used have given me nothing but anxiety. Equipment isn&#x27;t always working, all kinds of different payment systems, etc... As a non-Tesla owner I would be happy to use Tesla&#x27;s network. I would imagine if I was a Tesla owner, I would be unhappy to hear that now the networks is going to be busier.

I think we also need to realize this is just something Elon said on Twitter with no other information. We k ow nothing about what they actually are doing yet we’re acting like they’re going to suddenly be switching to ccs.<p>My guess is they’re just developing an adapter.<p>But also… Elon time is real. Chances it happens this year pretty low.

Tesla&#x27;s overall mindset will likely keep their charging technology and approach ahead of other networks. Faster charging rates, more charge stations, better maintenance. Complying with a third party standard means they will not be able to lead.<p>In my view, they&#x27;ve always seen charge stations as a profit center and opening to other makes improves the return on that investment. As long as Tesla is selling all the cars they can build, this would be a net positive to revenue. It&#x27;s also consistent with Musk&#x27;s overall goal of hastening the transition to renewable energy.

I&#x27;m assuming the goal is to slow the deployment of competing networks, while arranging some big benefit (besides branding): revenue, Tesla&#x27;s charge faster, Tesla&#x27;s get preference, etc.

Important they build new stations to meet demand increases. Being able to actually charge is a key reason to go Tesla right now.

On the supercharger network:<p>Just finished a road trip from Phoenix to Northern Minnesota and back. There are enough superchargers that you <i>do</i> have to plan your route around them...but that just means staying nearish the freeways (mostly). There seems to be a supercharger about every 150 miles even through the more remote parts of the midwest.

So, why do they do that? Do they have&#x2F;project to have excess capacity and is this defensive, or is this offensive, and do they want to grow their network by being compatible with others, and offer Tesla drivers faster charging at more locations?<p>Whatever it is, they must think going alone won’t cut it anymore.

I&#x27;m excited for this change, but only if they make more chargers available. I had a quick road trip from NC to VA and at the supercharger station, there was a line of cars waiting to charge - I can&#x27;t imagine what that line would look like if it&#x27;s open to everyone else.

Question: I live in Europe, I thinkI might end up buying to EVs in the next years. If, say, I buy a Tesla and a Kia, or a Tesla and a Seat, or a Kia and a Volkswagen, will I be able to charge all of them at home with a single charger? Is this &quot;CCS&quot;?

Really awesome news.<p>The vast majority of chargers in my area sit unused.

Just like they opened their patents?<p>I&#x27;m not holding my breath, company lost my Trust a few years ago.