Tesla to allow non Tesla EVs to use their Superchargers

[ajdelange]

Sounds like they're really working around some limitations:

We are thinking about a real simple thin where you just download the Tesla app, you go to the Supercharger, you just indicate which stall you are in, you plug in your car, even if it’s not a Tesla, and you just access the app to tell “turn on the stall that I’m in for how much electricity”, and this should work for almost any manufacturer’s electric car.

Yes, that's pretty much what Musk described.

So... Basically you're prepaying for an amount of electricity, and have to guess as to what amount you want is. Sounds like EA, but with the pain if prepayment. Hopefully it all works 90% as well as it does with Tesla's.

Nothing was said about pre-payment. With the current Tesla system you have a credit card on file. Presumably before charging is authorized the validity of that card is verified. It would probably be the same here. There are systems where you have to have $ in your "wallet" before charging is authorized. But that's just antiquated software, IMO.

An interesting possibility but one that was not mentioned is that the adapter will be able to get the VIN number of the car being plugged in and relay it to Tesla. This suggests that current Tesla owners could register their non Tesla vehicles with Tesla and have their sessions billed to their Tesla accounts and, perhaps, be treated as preferred customers.

Since Tesla locks out DCFC (not just Supercharger access) from salvage title cars "for safety reasons", I can't see them allowing third party adapters on the SC network.

Described thus it is clear that the car itself would have to have DCFC disabled (can't request service from any DCFC) in which case the adapter doesn't matter. There may be other reasons for Tesla to refuse connection to third party adapters but this wouldn't be one of them.

Nevertheless the adapter has some interesting questions attached to it. Is there one chained to each staill? Do I have to buy one? Is there a "vending machine" on site to which I give my credit card and which takes a large deposit until I return the adapter?

The more interesting question is given that the cable feeding the wand has to be liquid cooled to dissipate the losses associated with the 626A required to deliver 250 kW, presumably the adapter has to be cooled too. I'm guessing that this can't be practically done and that, therefore, the adapter will be limited to around 100 kW as the other DCFC adapters on the market today are limited to numbers of about that order of magnitude. This leads me to further conclude that therefore there will, in the final stages of evolution (new SC installlations, retrofit to existing stations)of the system, no adapters but rather two hoses one with CCS and one with Tesla wands.

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[Trandall]

On a less sassy note, this is huge news. This may let me switch from the max pack back to the 300mi pack if I'm able to depend on the Tesla SC network. I'm usually one of (but not THE one you're thinking about) that thinks "Range is King". But enough range and a legitimately good DCFC network(s) to depend on would make me reconsider and save that 10k for the max pack. An interesting development indeed! ?

AH HA! so you admit charging infrastructure is king!
The reality is ease of travel in an EV is a combination of range, charge speed, access to chargers etc... with range being the biggest factor and the one that can most readily be adjusted (with battery size) so yeah range is the current king of EV specifications for mass adoption... there I said it.

 

[slawwach]

I think this is a very good news, but somehow I'm feeling skeptical about this.
It seems to me that a lot would have to happen to make this an interesting alternative. For example.

• I think the cables are currently too short to charge most CCS cars out there.
• Some of them I think have liquid cooled connector, so adapter seems out of question on those unless the charge rate is significantly lower.
• Many new cars are 800V and SCs are not (480V?)

 

[sub]

Nothing was said about pre-payment. With the current Tesla system you have a credit card on file. Presumably before charging is authorized the validity of that card is verified. It would probably be the same here.

As of 6 months ago, the current Tesla system did not validate the CC until after you complete the charge. I know this because my CC expired and I forgot to update the CC expiration date on Tesla's website.

With an expired CC on file, it will let you charge once, and when the CC fails to process a message pops up on the screen saying supercharging is disabled until you pay for the previous charge.

 

[TessP100D]

AH HA! so you admit charging infrastructure is king!
The reality is ease of travel in an EV is a combination of range, charge speed, access to chargers etc... with range being the biggest factor and the one that can most readily be adjusted (with battery size) so yeah range is the current king of EV specifications for mass adoption... there I said it.

Ahh. Yea. range is king.

 

[TessP100D]

Tesla doesn't do "soon" Tesla does Elon-time. Elon is generally massively optimistic with his timelines, so definitely pad by 6m to a year ... perhaps more

Crazy Elon says a lot of dumb stuff. Case in point… The CyberTruck is coming. Send in your money now.

 

[ajdelange]

Coming from a systems engineering background I suppose it is natural for me to think of a vehicle as the "transport segment" of a transportation system. The other segments are the charging segment and the repair and maintenance segment. Rivian was only selling the transport segment and, IMO, had a huge problem which they attempted to solve, too late, with the RAN. If the Tesla plan comes off, even with power limited adapters at first, Tesla will be solving Rivian's problem (and all the other OEM's) problem too.

When most people are asked why they wouldn't by an EV charging has now replaced range as the main concern. Tesla will relieve this concern. We'll have the national charging network we need. This should be a tremendous boost to the industry.

 

[ajdelange]

As of 6 months ago, the current Tesla system did not validate the CC until after you complete the charge. I know this because my CC expired and I forgot to update the CC expiration date on Tesla's website.

With an expired CC on file, it will let you charge once, and when the CC fails to process a message pops up on the screen saying supercharging is disabled until you pay for the previous charge.

I don't really know whether the card is validated or not. I think it is. Else how would it know that you bounced once?

But AFAIK you are right. It will let you charge at least once. I too had this happen. There was no indication in the car that anything was wrong but I got an email a couple of hours later saying tht the card was bad. I thought that this was going to be big problem because I was about 1/3 of the way home and if I couldn't charge at the SC for the rest of the trip I was in trouble. Turns out the card wasn't bad after all but I wonder if it would have let me continue the trip at least or would have shut me down after the single burp. Maybe the prepay system isn't so dumb after all.

 

[aAlpine]

There are systems where you have to have $ in your "wallet" before charging is authorized. But that's just antiquated software, IMO.

In some cases at least, I think this is to avoid CC fees. One larger transaction is cheaper than smaller ones, say for pay parking. Makes less sense for charging an EV.

 

[Driveout]

Here is a massive opportunity to develop a mobile charging station. I have AAA and they will bring me enough gas to get to a station if I run out (the time to fill is inconsequential). The Rivian v to v charging is a great thing but how many Rivians are on the road? Stack some power walls in the back of a coal burning diesel and rescue the stranded and of course leave the engine idling it's black cloud.
From the videos and articles I've tasted the EA charging stations are limited in their real through-put and the billing can be an issue when your cc gets rejected. The advent of Tesla charging for all electric cars may make Tesla owners a little pissy as they will be a little less pampered by fast and easy charging as compared to the rest of the market. The competition may make EA up their game for all aspects of their network.

 

[ajdelange]

Well it does that for sure but the other thing it does is speed authentification. To verify a card central has to contact the bank. It does not have to do that if you have a wallet with funds in it.

Of course I don't like having to give CircuitElrctrique a bolus of my $ to hold onto for an indefinite time.

 

[ajdelange]

Here is a massive opportunity to develop a mobile charging station. I have AAA and they will bring me enough gas to get to a station if I run out (the time to fill is inconsequential). The Rivian v to v charging is a great thing but how many Rivians are on the road?

AFAIK the only V2V charging from Rivian will be by plugging the UMC equivalent into one of the 110V outlets on the donor vehicle. You would be able to use any other vehicle with a 110 or 220V outlet (ICE or BEV) as donor in this case.

Does anyone know anything about real V2V from Rivian?

Stack some power walls in the back of a coal burning diesel and rescue the stranded and of course leave the engine idling it's black cloud.

You don't just stack powerwalls. They are expensive as hell, in short supply and don't hold that much energy. As this is for emergency use it is hard to condemn an ICE gerenator for this purpose and I think someone was running such a service at one time but I haven't seen any mention recently.

Someone is making a big ICE truck whose motor shaft also connects to a pretty hefty generator.

From the videos and articles I've tasted the EA charging stations are limited in their real through-put and the billing can be an issue when your cc gets rejected. The advent of Tesla charging for all electric cars may make Tesla owners a little pissy as they will be a little less pampered by fast and easy charging as compared to the rest of the market.

There certainly have been problems with the reliability of EA's stations but the main problem is that there just aren't enough of them and by this I don't mean their system doesn't have the capacity needed but rather that they aren't close enough together to allow you to go from arbitrary A to B without having to go out of your way.

The competition may make EA up their game for all aspects of their network.

If it does, all the better. But I am more fearful that it may put EA out of business. I don't think that would be a good thing.

 

[Amdolan]

AFAIK the only V2V charging from Rivian will be by plugging the UMC equivalent into one of the 110V outlets on the donor vehicle. You would be able to use any other vehicle with a 110 or 220V outlet (ICE or BEV) as donor in this case.

Does anyone know anything about real V2V from Rivian?

You don't just stack powerwalls. They are expensive as hell, in short supply and don't hold that much energy. As this is for emergency use it is hard to condemn an ICE gerenator for this purpose and I think someone was running such a service at one time but I haven't seen any mention recently.

Someone is making a big ICE truck whose motor shaft also connects to a pretty hefty generator.

If I'm not mistaken, most tow trucks have a generator running off the PTO to power the hydraulic lift system. I wonder if they'd be able to tap off that to add an outlet that would allow you to charge enough to limp to the next charging station. Not sure what the voltage is for the hydraulic lifts, but it should be fairly straightforward if i'm not missing something.

 

[ajdelange]

I surely don't know anything about hydraulic systems except that they are hydraulic and use hydraulic motors - not electric ones.

 

[Gator42]

There certainly have been problems with the reliability of EA's stations but the main problem is that there just aren't enough of them and by this I don't mean their system doesn't have the capacity needed but rather that they aren't close enough together to allow you to go from arbitrary A to B without having to go out of your way.

I've been perusing the cross country videos from Out of Spec on YouTube and came away with two points:

First, EA is way behind Tesla's network in terms of reliability. The struggles with the car/charger handshake, software bugs, chargers that are out of order or throttle charging speeds- it looks maddening...and most of the time they're the only vehicle at a station. Imagine in a few months when more EVs of all brands are out and about...

Second, I was surprised at the present day expanse of EAs network. The stations are close enough to use a cross country charge hopping strategy where you take full advantage of the peak of the charge curve, unplug at the start of the taper at around 50%, then hop over one or two stops and repeat. In most case at only about that half capacity. I didn't know that was possible today...and across multiple cross country routes, with only the 1-90 corridor being the most notable exception

https://tinyurl.com/OuTofSpecREviews

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