First Ford and now GM. Who is next to make the switch?
Mike
GM CEO Mary Barra told CNBC’s Phil LeBeau on Thursday that, as a result of a deal, the automaker expects to save up to $400 million of a previously announced $750 million investment to build out EV charging.
The partnerships with now two leading Detroit automakers is a major win for Tesla and its charging technology. It is expected to add pressure on other automakers — as well as the U.S. government, which is investing billions in building out an EV charging network — to adopt Tesla’s technology.
That essentially means that the goal is that eventually all electric vehicles (light vehicles at least) in North America will use this standard for charging. And it is indeed a better solution than CCS or Chademo.
So far, going forward, GM, Ford, and Tesla will use it. I suspect that the rest of the manufacturers selling into North America will adopt it as well.
(I have one NACS car and one Chademo car, and NACS is far far better.)
GM and Ford account for about 30% of the market currently. Cars in the US switched from right, to left hand drive, because Fords were left hand drive, and held about 50% of the market.
A good move by Tesla to dominate the charging network system. Hopefully Tesla will continuing to rapidly expand the existing Tesla system otherwise current Tesla owners might become “cheesed off” if their charging is delayed by GM/Ford EV owners over running Tesla charging system. Just as some Tesla owners were “cheesed off” as they bought their Tesla prior to the price cuts.
I wonder if Tesla will charge a “premium” to the GM/Ford EV owner above what a Tesla owner has to pay to recharge their battery pack? That could assuage Tesla owners.
It won’t do anything for Tesla CAR owners, but it should make Tesla stock owners happy. In fact I’d say this is the knock-out punch to other systems (in the US at least). I’m sure Tesla is getting some kind of payment for the privilege, whether they get any ongoing revenue stream as a cut of charging fees isn’t detailed, but I would suspect this is one (semi-invisible) “subscription fee” that could produce significant revenue over time.
On top of that, I presume Tesla has patented their proprietary charging plug, interface, etc. so like Apple with it’s “lightning cable”, anybody who wants to make compatible equipment will have to pay Tesla for the privilege.
This is actually a terrific move for Tesla, IMO. It’s also good for the industry, as competing standards only serve to foster consumer confusion (See: Beta vs VHS, lightning port vs all the others, DVD vs VideoDisk, etc.) and helps speed up adoption of the entire industry by removing a significant road bump.
Yup. Another standards war, like VHS vs Beta, and MS-DOS vs TRS-80/Apple/anything else. There is one difference I see. The automakers are making a classic buy vs build decision. What it costs them to build out a proprietary system vs buying a system.
I missed an opportunity when I noticed the first thing out of the mouths of computer shoppers coming into the RS was “is it IBM compatible”? Are we on the cusp of EV shoppers first concern being “is it Tesla compatible”?
I don’t know about commas but Tesla is proving to be the pathfinder. I’ve decided to just forget about my $TSLA, it will grow.
I’ve just watched an interesting but boring as hell [weird mix!] video about ten humanoid robots. The presenter keeps comparing them all against the TeslaBot, not because Optimist better but because Tesla is the pathfinder.
10 BOTS Compared By Tesla Bot Expert [Who Will Win?] | Dr. Scott Walter
As noted before, I don’t like cults. But, collecting royalties on an ascendant industry standard is something that I can get my head around, because I have seen this movie before. F and GM, by their make vs buy decisions, have declared the Tesla charger the industry standard. Somewhat reminiscent of IBM, getting into PCs, but regarding them as a sideline, so buy everything out, rather than innovate in house, and losing control of the business, in favor of a guy in Seattle.
Only concern is whether the early adapter EV wave is already fading. I saw something recently about crashing used EV prices in the UK, but that could be a function of the UK being fouled up, rather than a fundamental problem with the EV market globally.
Most common explanation I’ve seen is that new EV prices have dropped dramatically - thousands of dollars in just a few weeks for many models. So the price of “used” has followed, because who wants to buy a used EV at anything close to the price of a new one?
A few hours after noticing a parallel between Microsoft licensing it’s OS to anyone, and Tesla licensing it’s charging architecture to other OEMs, I came across this on the wire.
There is less to the EV charging thing than most of you realize. Others can add all they want to the network of chargers.
Is Tesla IP free?
So, essentially, Tesla’s patents are only free to use if: you do not enforce any right against Tesla, you do not enforce any patent right against another party, you do not oppose Tesla’s patents or copy Tesla’s designs.May 15, 2020
Ayup. Ford and GM would have to open their patents to Tesla, for one. In the present case, being able to use Tesla charging stations will require an interface that, at some point, copies the Tesla design, so that the thing will plug in.
Besides that, seems that charging at a Tesla station is not free, but is becoming a significant revenue source for the company. The more people charging on the road, the more loot for Tesla. Seems that opening it’s chargers, qualifies Tesla for Billions in Federal subsidies.
I don’t think that is the case in the UK, where subsidies were removed last year. Rather it appears to be a combination of reduced interest and increased supply.
Electric cars represented just 1 per cent of all used transactions in 2022, according to the latest official figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. This primarily is because there are so few EVs hitting the second hand market to date, with the boom in registrations in recent years only just starting to spark a rise in models appearing at second-hand forecourts…
Experts at the sales platform say this is due to a huge 300% growth in stock year-on-year as many financed electric cars become available to used buyers…
AA Cars says it has tracked a decline in interest in EVs on its own website in recent weeks. In the last three months of 2022, electric cars accounted for only 4.8 per cent of searches made on its used car platform. This is down from 11.2 per cent over the same period in 2021, it said.
There are two reasons. One, as you mentioned, because new EV prices are dropping rapidly, so it stands to reason that used will also drop, certainly such that they aren’t priced as high as new! Two, because new EVs are now [more] generally available. In 2021, people were commonly paying nearly as much, or even more in some cases, for used EVs than for new EVs. That’s because used EVs could be purchased IMMEDIATELY while new EVs had a wait of a few months or longer. For example, in 2021 I waited for about 3 months for my new EV to arrive. But the used EV that I purchased from a large used car dealer was available in 2-3 days after it was shipped to their local facility.
