Comment by flurie

Business electric service often has a demand charge in addition to the usage rates; superchargers could easily incur a lot of cost on that element.

> 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.

How much will owners of other manufacturers' cars pay for electricity at the Superchargers, compared to those who have Teslas? The article doesn't mention this (or I missed it). I'm curious to know what this adds up to over the life of a car.

Something I hope is legislated away in the future. Can you imagine if the norm was that you got a different price for gas at gas stations depending on who owns the gas station and who manufactured your car?

There can be enough chargers without them being anywhere as prevalent as gas stations.

In this rural area, there's generally more gas stations near the chargers than there are plugs at the chargers (like within a 1/2 mile or whatever).

Depends on where you travel, I travel a lot in the west. Gas stations are not as common. I'm glad and not surprised to hear denser parts of the us are getting reasonable charger density as well.

... in the most densely-populated area of the country.

Within one mile of my house, I have access to 4+8+12+10+8=42 gas pumps.

There are 129 "public" chargers total in my metro area, and a decent number are at car dealerships (presumably mainly for use for vehicles left there for service) or hotels (overnight stays). I don't know how actually public the chargers are.

Ugh, please don't take this stance.

Gas stations don't charge different amounts for gas depending on the type of car, and EV charging stations shouldn't be permitted to do so either.

I don't have an EV, but I agree that Tesla has a much much better reputation for reliable, working charging stations in the US. If people will actually pay more for that experience, then sure, Tesla can charge more than a competing charging company. But they should be required to charge the same amount regardless of vehicle.

The only exception to that, I think, is that they should be able to charge differently based on charging speed, which is related to the type of vehicl. All gas cars will fill up at more or less the same rate, but with EVs it depends on the battery technology and the car's electrical system. Taking up space at a charging station for a longer amount of time to consume the same amount of energy is a cost to the operator (and an annoyance for anyone waiting in line), and it seems reasonable to charge for that. So I think it would be fair to charge $X/kWh + $Y/min.

There was someone on a EV Road Tripping group on Facebook mentioning how they took an EV from Florida to New Jersey and talked about how awful it was.

The top comment said something that every EV enthusiast knows. There are two wildly different charging experiences: Tesla, and everyone else.

Can you have a good experience with a non-Tesla? Sure! But with a Tesla, having a good experience is nearly guaranteed. With anyone else, it's a gamble.

You go to a Electrify America or some other charging network location, and you'll likely find only 2-4 stalls, and likely 1 or more of them are broken. Go to a Tesla Supercharger, and there's usually 8-16 chargers, all working. Even with a broken stall (It happens), you've got more available. And with so many stalls, and so many locations, it's exceptionally rare to get to a charging location and finding all of them in use.

This last week I took a road trip in my Model 3 from Portland to San Diego. 2,400 miles round trip. Never ran into a charging issue. I did see that a couple locations had a stall that was out of order, but with so many stalls, it wasn't an issue at all.

I feel bad for people who can't charge at home. I get to charge at my residential 11.5¢/kWh. Though I don't go far from home very often so I've never charged anywhere else. If I wasn't getting this rate the savings over gas would get a lot narrower.

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.

They didn’t have a choice. My understand is the EU dictated all cars have the IEC Type 2(?) connector to sell, so Tesla complied. No mess like the US.

The US had no such law and has refused to make one. We’ve gone with the traditional carrot approach where they wouldn’t get funds to built more superchargers without doing this due to the infrastructure law. But it was their choice and they didn’t have to.

It's a difference between EU and US philosophies on regulation, particularly regulation of _competition_ issues. Broadly, the US's attitude is "please, companies, consider doing this, look at this big sack of subsidies", whereas the EU's attitude is "do this".

(This wasn't always the case, and in fact at one time the US was tougher on competition law than Europe was, but since the late 90s the US has been largely asleep at the wheel on competition.)