What’s wild to me is that the legacy car companies watched tesla do this over a ten year period and basically did nothing except mock them during that time.
Even now the legacy companies are held up by few EV models, bad range, bad software, bad dealership experience, and bad charging networks.
Tesla may be overvalued, but I have little faith the existing companies will survive this transition.
It feels like they’re all RIM when the iPhone launched, mocking it and then suddenly talking about how the competition is getting a little heated.
If Apple also gets in its even more hopeless for legacy companies.
It’s also wild none of them took Tesla up on the offer to use their superchargers - I think it would have been worth nearly any price.
I don't know how it is outside Europe, but in Europe car manufacturers have to obey a CO2 per kilometre limit which is calculated over their whole range of cars on offer.
Only until recently, classic manufacturers didn't actually want to sell EVs. They only built them to get down their fleet-overall-CO2-value so they can also build another SUV (which are selling like hot cakes and have a huge margin of profit compared to EVs due to tried and tested technology) and still adhere to the limit.
Now the first "legacy" manufacturers slowly start to make "proper" EVs for somewhat normal prices. However, they rely on power companies to build (compatible) charging stations. And those power companies are very reluctant because they're waiting for more EV customers to hit the streets before building more charging points. Add to that different standards (CCS, CHAdeMO) and nobody feeling responsible to quickly repair broken stations and we have the current situation.
Something that shouldn't be forgotten: Tesla early on asked other car manufacturers if they wanted "in" on their charging network. But they all refused. (Might change slowly, though. [1])
It isn't just CCS vs. CHAdeMO vs. "normal plug" vs. CEE that is the problem.
The worst problem is actually paying for the juice. You cannot use credit or debit cards or even cash. No. You have to sign up with a charging network that sends you a charging card for something between 5 and 25 EUR/month. With that card you then have the privilege to get juice for somewhere between 30 (normal household price in .de) and 300 ct/kWh. But not everywhere, just on the charging outlets in the network. Your chance to have the right card is about 1 in 5 or so. Oh, and billing is unreliable, sometimes/often the card doesn't work because the charger has connectivity problems. And there are even chargers where there is no proper energy meter involved, so they just bill by the minute...
It's either Tesla or charging at home, the rest is nonviable in Germany.
Argh, that's been my experience too. (I've just rented electric cars). None of the charging stations take credit cards; they all have some byzantine payment method.
There are weird resellers abound - some have apps that work, some have crashy pieces of crap. Some have clear pricing models, others have weird "memberships" and surprise bills. The same charging station can cost wildly different amounts to different people.
It reminds me of the bad old days of American long-distance service. Really difficult to actually pick the right provider.
There are a lot of EV chargers in Germany but they're such a bizarre experience. And they're not cheap! It costs ~15eur to fully charge a car here in Berlin.
> Tesla early on asked other car manufacturers if they wanted "in" on their charging network...
This is the problem. Nobody asked _me_, the consumer.
In reality this should be strictly regulated. Just as there are no manufacturer-specific gas stations, there shouldn't be manufacturer specific chargers either.
If somebody builds a charger network, they should make it possible for anybody to charge there (of course, the prices can be different for each customer).
This is in essence what Ionity does in Europe. I'm surprised that the EU regulations have not caught up with this yet.
I also think they should adopt the gas station law of displaying the general price big and readable for passing cars. Currently often even customers in the network don't know what they will be charged because mostly nothing is displayed at all.
A big issue is also that power companies in much of Europe (don't know much about how things look in the US) do not have an infrastructure capable of handling the additional load if EV-charging starts replacing gas-stations. As such, many are not exactly enthusiastic about rolling out superchargers at an accelerated pace since this would only further strain their networks.
We could fairly easily offer electricity at spot price to as many charging stations as we could build with money from issuing bonds.
I.e., the charging stations would be credit-market-funded and just take e.g. a percentage of revenue to satisfy the investors. Well, sounds like it should instead be shares and just dividends payed out from any actual ROI, but that's not much of a difference.
Using spot pricing could both include load-variable fees to the network operators, as well as paying for more expensive electricity sources when the supply is tight.
This additional profit from squeezed networks would fund both power plants and distribution infrastructure.
It could easily be combined with a futures market, where you e.g. let your car's navigation system search for a route to the destination with stops that fit within the car's range and suitable locations. You'd reserve a spot at the charger, along with buying futures for electricity at the expected time intervals. If you stop for longer than you would technically need, you could buy futures with delivery terms that only prescribe delivery during the period at a maximum instantaneous rate. If the market maker that sold you that variable-rate future delays the charging too much, they might end up having to pay high prices to fulfill their obligations to you.
But all that is what futures markets are made for: shifting uncertainty and volatility of only partially-predictable goods to financial investors that take some fee in the form of gains, in exchange for absorbing risk.
In the UK a company worked around that by having large batteries near their fast charging points. So the batteries are charged slowly to not put strain on the power grid and when you're fast charging your car, the juice is taken out of those batteries. IIRC they said about 6 cars could fast charge this way, the 7th would have to wait a bit.
It was on the Fully Charged YouTube Show, about 2 years ago or so.
To be fair, there's always been a lot of niche 'technologies' in vehicle propulsion - hydrogen, fuel cells, LPG, that may or may not have been the future. It's taken a leap in battery technology and worries about climate change at the same time to make EV's the 'right choice'.
It's very hard for large companies to change direction (car companies have a 100 years of momentum behind them). They tend to do so by buying niche players - small car and technology companies that have proven (or nearly proven) themselves.
I don't think Tesla is going to be bought up but I wouldn't discount the legacy car and oil companies from surviving.
If gas station companies start installing charging stations at every one of their stations the market may look very different.
Hydrogen fuel cells were a stupid option paraded out repeatedly (usually by legacy companies using it to say EVs were bad) and Tesla said as much at the time.
The predictions about battery tech improvements were reasonable ones and publicly made (arguably easy to accept).
Legacy companies could fix this in theory, but in practice they wasted ten years and aren’t making the moves necessary today. I’d bet against them.
> Hydrogen fuel cells were a stupid option paraded out repeatedly (usually by legacy companies using it to say EVs were bad) and Tesla said as much at the time.
Hydrogen fuel cells are not a stupid option.
Charging is here the stupid option. When 50000 houses need each 20KWh each night at almost the same time they will destroy the local power lines which were not designed for this.
> The predictions about battery tech improvements were reasonable ones and publicly made (arguably easy to accept).
Well battery improvements shall have come earlier (in 100 years there was almost no improvement). Even now the dream of having your battery to save your solar power is still mostly a dream.
> Legacy companies could fix this in theory, but in practice they wasted ten years and aren’t making the moves necessary today. I’d bet against them.
Legacy companies want profits which are rising, to please the stakeholders.
For legacy ICE car companies, there is an additional headwind with which they must battle: their dealer network is far less incentivized to sell electric vehicles due to the lower long-term revenues based on service and maintenance. Dealers have a say in what is promoted and sold. If they have two otherwise equivalent models, one ICE and one electric, they are far more incentivized to sell the ICE version to lock in those lucrative service plans at time of sale.
So, traditional auto manufactures not only have to catch up in charging infrastructure, they also have to figure out how to change the dealer incentive model to help move units.
Bad dealership experience? That is funny as Tesla is rated as one of the worst in dealership experience in all the lists I have seen in Scandinavia. In a list of 23 manufacturers Tesla is number 22 and 23 in dealership and repair in Denmark for example right below FIAT.
Yeah, definitely possible Europeans don’t understand the extent of the dealership problem in the US.
It’d be a longer comment, but there are really bad incentives and the dealership owners have a lot of local political power. There are a lot of bad laws they’ve put in place to help themselves.
In the end they harm legacy car manufacturers by blocking EV adoption and hurting the brand at the customer interaction level.
But it turns out their livelihood does depend on them understanding it.
Should be interesting to see what happens - I’ll never buy from a dealership again (and today there’s no non-tesla option for anything that’s not a strict city car).
I’m curious what Apple might do. The other companies seem hopeless.
Legacy companies, like GM and Ford, were and are playing the ZEV/Carbon Credit game. As in, produce enough to grab some headlines but only produce what you need to offset your emissions; hence even Ford plays this game with a 50k limit on Mach E production.
They were quite will to wait for government to build out the charging network or have others do so. Heck I am still surprised Tesla's system hasn't been forced open. Both New York and California have had politicians float that idea before by different means; one requiring all stations to accept credit cards and the other jacking up electricity rates for stations not support all brands.
Still think it may be in Tesla's best interest to eventually sell off their charging network. As a Tesla owner it really getting to the point state side that buying one may be a negative as the only connector they offer is their own; they really should put one on both sides of each type or offer that.
> As a Tesla owner it really getting to the point state side that buying one may be a negative as the only connector they offer is their own
It comes with an adapter, this isn’t an issue for owners.
I’ve said elsewhere in this thread, but forcing them to open their system would really bother me. They built this out in spite of everything while legacy did nothing.
If legacy wants compatibility they should have to pay for it.
BMW salesman tried to talk my boss out of a EV, stating they had "none" available to test drive and those were not the future anyway. They use their own inability to supply a good charging infrastructure as argument against EVs here. ("Reichweitenangst")
They are to tangled in their supplier systems, to many jobs life and die with legacy vehicles. The truth is, they can build a EV, but they cant sell EVs, supply and maintain their company structure while doing so. Which boils down to- they cant.
Because frankly it shouldn't be a car manufacturers job to build charging networks and stations.
We should have ONE standard for ALL cars. Can you imagine going to Shell only with your Buick? Your next car is a Hyundai... sorry mate... this one only gets gas from bp. How about a Mercedes... oh that one only gets gas at dealerships. But if you have a BMW Chevron will be the place to fill you up!
It's preposterous and I hate Tesla for establishing this mess by building their own (technically advanced!) charging network.
Tesla fought against the legacy companies mocking them and most of the press lying about them for ten years. They pulled off a miracle and succeeded in spite of all that and now legacy companies that did nothing want to legislate their own mistake away? Fuck that.
If legacy car companies want to use the network tesla built they can pay them for the privilege.
The irony is I think tesla did offer them access under better terms and they refused (either out of spite or stupidity, I’m not sure).
There’s no way we would have the EV transition we have now (this early) without Tesla. I think there’s no way a government standard would have worked for building this up (one did exist, and I’d argue it didn’t work).
> Even now the legacy companies are held up by few EV models, bad range, bad software, bad dealership experience, and bad charging networks.
I’m not so sure. At least from a European perspective it looks like traditional car makers have caught up and even overtaken Tesla in the low price segment (VW eUp)
Yeah I think you're right - I haven't read the book, but I understand the thesis and this seems like a good example of it.
Some companies can still see the writing on the wall and adapt though. When the iPhone launched Google immediately scrapped their blackberry like phone design and went all in on their v2 screen based UI. At the same time Ballmer laughed at Apple and the Palm CEO was saying even dumber stuff.
I suppose it's frustrating to see it in the comments here too. I think people are just generally bad at seeing this kind of thing even when it's right in front of them, even when in theory they're the best type of person to notice.
Even now the legacy companies are held up by few EV models, bad range, bad software, bad dealership experience, and bad charging networks.
Tesla may be overvalued, but I have little faith the existing companies will survive this transition.
It feels like they’re all RIM when the iPhone launched, mocking it and then suddenly talking about how the competition is getting a little heated.
If Apple also gets in its even more hopeless for legacy companies.
It’s also wild none of them took Tesla up on the offer to use their superchargers - I think it would have been worth nearly any price.