Eddie Lampert had a coherent strategy to loot Sears and it worked (for him). The muskrat is just doing crazy shit, probably due to a persistent manic state induced by stimulants .
And the fact that this shit keeps happening after he meets with a bunch of right Wingers. He just met with Peter Thiel, Rupert murdoch, and others at the dinner suddenly he's on this Warpath. The problem with long-term sleep deprivation and using stimulants to keep you going is that you become very open to suggestion. That's why sleep deprivation is used in torture and trying to get confessions out of people. The man literally opened himself up to bad ideas and is following them. I've maintained for years that's his biggest problem. It's not even the ketamine, that's a symptom of a bigger problem. The fact the man never sleeps. As someone who goes days without sleep sometimes due to environmental factors and his job, I can tell you it's not a good thing at all and it does fuck with your head considerably. You start making weird mistakes, you start making Brash and bizarre judgment calls with little forethought, in the worst part is you think you're 100% in the right doing it. It's not until you get some rest you start realizing oh shit I fucked up. Which I would be interested to see if elon's reversal on his policies coincides with him getting a few nights rest.
As someone who had an overnight job and couldn't get used to sleeping during the day, I feel like I now know what sleep torture feels like. I was led along to believe I was going to eventually get to the day shift but like a horse chasing a carrot on a stick it never materialized despite bringing up my deteriorating mental health.
Having a kid taught me what sleep torture is. At least during the first few weeks when the mom was basically bedridden and I had to take care of both of them. I started disassociating.
You can’t blame ketamine for this. Or maybe you can…
Therapeutic Ketamine cured my depression, anxiety, and the double barrel blast of fears of success and failure.
For me these made me a functional adult again. For Musk, it probably eliminated the last rational voice in his head. - because it also eliminates all those negative voices bouncing around in your skull. For me it was a cacophony of suicidal ideation, for him it was probably ‘hey muskrat! This idea isn’t great!’
I think people misread the situation and are now overcorrecting. All the stock pumpers were talking for years about how Tesla had locked in a permanent advantage with the Supercharger network, that they would become a new oil company owning the infrastructure, subsidizing their cars, and either locking out other cars, or gouging them for the right to use the network. But in fact Tesla would not be allowed a permanent moat on charging on anti trust grounds, and once it becomes a competitive business, charging is inherently high cost and low margin.
Tesla already did something similar in Europe to what they are now doing in the US, they gave up on being a dominant network, they adopted an open charging standard for their cars, and they opened their network to other cars, and then they allowed other companies to take up the slack. In the UK, the number of Tesla hubs has increased from 60 to 130 in the time that that the non-Tesla hubs have increased from zero to 400. Tesla have just accepted that there will be an open infrastructure, and they will compete on an equal playing field with other vehicle manufacturers. And that is a good thing for the EV market.
I feel similarly confused about the overwhelming negative reaction that Musk gets now as I did about the overwhelming positive reaction he got a few years ago. He has always been a tit.
I suspect that the [article about that](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/04/tesla-cars-batteries-power-company/678168/?gift=1Oa6pySWazzwtIrcNSqw1fjbWVa82AJSmNTy-wjwEZM&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share) triggered Musk to fire the charging team.
You mean the article, which praised Tesla's superchargers and Megapacks while casting doubt on the cars and the AI?
Well, that may make sense. "I have a favorite child. If others like one of my other childs more, I need to throw that child under the bus."
Yea the article was complimentary about chargers and storage so of course musk blew up half of it. Next quarter of poor results expect the storage team to go u dear the ax (and if you don’t think everyone at Tesla isn’t looking for an exit right now you are delusional).
Or how about this? “BloombergNEF estimates the company could generate $7.4 billion in revenue and around $740 million in profit by 2030.”
Not just energy company, but this was an important part of their strategy.
I think the headline and the article are mistaken in portraying this move as primarily a shift in strategy. The stories based on more discussions with insiders are reporting that firing the whole group was a retaliatory move, either lashing out impulsively against a group leader who dared push back against His commands, or wanting to make an example of that group to show others what could happen to them if they don't bow down to Him.
Of course, the implications are similar as far as how charging infrastructure will need to proceed, but we needn't assume that there's a rational master plan behind it.
It's true. The core assumption of this article is that Elon's decision to fire the entire team was rational. No one on that team or close to the decision were interviewed. Other sources say this was just Elon being a vindictive prick.
Based on his recent and past behavior I think we can all agree on which story is more likely.
The answer from one of the insider friends of mine is - Both. Both of your assumptions are true. Impulsive move against a group leader to make an example of that group.
I think it was a rage firing. She was voted #2 most powerful in auto industry by motor trend while musk was 50 out of 50.
https://www.motortrend.com/news/2024-motortrend-power-list/
Voted? Come on that motortrend article ranking is just stupid. You don't have to like Musk to admit he's easily more influential/powerful than random execs including Rebecca Tinucci.
It is a bit of a sensationalist list though, seemingly with people randomly inserted because they happend to be in the (western) news. She deserves to be on the list but not at number 2, and as much of a shithead Musk is, he is too influential to be at number 50.
Also the lack of Chinese automotive figures on this list when China has now pulled ahead in the EV transition is hilarious. The only one that makes this list regularly is Li Shufu of Geely, because his company owns Volvo. It is as if Motor Trend was totally unaware of Wang Chuanfu until this year despite the fact that BYD has been rising through the EV ranks faster than even Tesla. He was UNRANKED last year! And now he is at number 3.
Meanwhile they got the head of Vinfast, makers of some of the quest EVs in the industry, on the list, because I guess Vinfast made some news last year? They got the heads of the American EV startups Rivian and Lucid on the list, despite the fact that both companies are struggling to stay afloat, but not a peep about the heads of the car more successful Chinese startup EV makers, such as NIO, Xpeng, Li Auto, who are selling hundreds of thousands of EVsevery year, and taking marketshare in China away from western automakers.
And the biggest snub of all is they have the head of LG in the list at up at number 10, because LG is the ... third largest supplier of lithium batteries in the world? Number 2 is up there too since that's just BYD. But what about the number 1 battery maker in the world whose marketshare is bigger than LG and BYD put together? CATL is not even on this list even though they are now one of the biggest players in the automotive industry.
Don't bother with facts on here... instead of reflecting on why these idiotic lists are published they just love to hate Musk (and ignore Chinese makers)
Elon's increasingly unhinged behavior sure makes it look like he's fallen into the Dictator / Cult Leader trap. That's where their need for control / narcissism cause them to increasingly surround themselves with yes-men and sycophants. That causes them to become increasingly removed from honest criticism and feedback, leading to worse and worse decision making. Perhaps the most well-known example was Hitler, who overrode generals and made increasingly erratic decisions until it was just him in a bunker making delusional plans to win using units that only existed on paper. Note: example provided is to explain the idea, and is not meant to imply any comparison between the two or to equate one with the other.
Yes, I think he's been in that mode for quite some time. It's just that he's smart, talented, and lucky enough that it's taken a long time for it to come back and bite him.
Based on lots of articles that cite anonymous sources inside the company (or recently departed). And based on the fact that no other explanation that has been proposed fits with the facts of how it played out.
Why the need for a conspiracy theory when the move clearly makes good business sense? Charging just isn't that great a business right now. It'd be better if convenience stores and similar businesses expanded on superchargers. The revenue will be in retail, not charging is my guess.
>My guess is that the electricity and infrastructure costs of running the network far exceed the fees provided by Tesla and other drivers thus far,” Ben Rose, president of Battle Road Research, said in an email. “They can now focus on getting maximum use of what they’ve installed.
There are good arguments for why scaling back the supercharger expansion rate could make good business sense. If a smart leader wanted to do that, they would first instruct the existing team to do that, including making decisions about how to handle existing projects in the pipeline. Then they'd start scaling back the team, including selecting the very best people to retain, to carry on the smaller scale effort, or to transfer to other projects.
This was the opposite of that, a sudden steps creating chaos.
So there needs to be a different explanation. And fortunately, there's plenty of reporting based on sources inside the company (or former insiders) that makes it clear what did happen.
Also, note that a conspiracy requires conspiring. This was Musk's impulsive action, not a plan developed by a group of conspirators.
The other car mfgs all saw that a fast DC charging network was key to EV sales which is why the asked Tesla for access to Tesla's SC network.
With Federal government now paying for a large part of an EV charging station via the [NEVI program](https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/environment/nevi/ev_deployment_plans/index.cfm?format=list#map), you would hope GM and Ford would partner and spearhead the build out. GM announced a partnership with EVGo for 2,000 chargers a while ago.
NEVI should be ramping up installs from other players like municipalities, parking authorities, real estate developers, truck stop operators which will add to the 500,000 proposed under NEVI by 2026.
This.
Carmakers relying ONLY on Tesla to make things work is reckless (decisions made by highly paid people...) and utterly stupid, especially since Tesla Superchargers will start getting more busy and then it will be a negative.
Most of us with non-Tesla EVs understood the issues of being 'early' adopters, but if carmakers want EVs to sell (and I'm doubtful of it), a string charging network is needed. It is a must. I don't understand why carmakers don't care about it.
Like I've said before and many criticized me... self-sabotage.
I can easily see GM and Ford being half-hearted at best about sinking more capital into their EV shift. With them losing money on every EV vs. having a relative gold mine selling $60-80K trucks and SUVs, they have incentive to pull back driven by short-term accounting. The only thing that'll incentivize them is if they \*truly\* see EVs as an inevitable shift and an existential threat if they don't keep up.
They only lose money on every EV because they price in the money it took to retrofit the factories. But that's a one time investment that is already done for now. It's in their best interest to sell EVs.
GM had great profits as did Ford in 2023. NEVI Federal Program pays 80% of the installation costs.
Both Ford and GM know that a charging network is essential and both have EU, China and US mandates so sell only EV's by 2035.
EV charging is profitable so with NEVI picking up 80% of installation costs, only 20% of the install costs needs to covered by sales revenue to starty making profits. Tesla makes $500M from charging.
I don't mind Tesla saying "We built our network. We're dialing back at this point."
What I don't get is, why they'd do it now that there are millions of gov't bucks available to build out charging networks. It makes no fucking sense at all.
Also, it makes no sense because they have something that everyone universally agrees is the best in industry and they're like "Nah....who gives a fuck?" It's so unusual for a business to build a best in class product and then ditch it.
It's been less than a week, so the cost-benefit analysis for various sites by competitors (who have shoestring budgets compared to what the SC team was working with) are most likely still in work.
Moreover some competitors have announced a desire to take over locations where new SC sites fell through. Revel in New York comes to mind. In the meantime EA says they're continuing their current rollout plans but they just finished recruiting former Rivian charge network employees right before this news broke. They may be evaluating a growth in their team and subsequent rollout of new sites now but it takes a (normal) business time to make a change in direction and planning.
> It's so unusual for a business to build a best in class product and then ditch it.
Monopoly? Nah. I *love* competition that isn't colluding with me. I don't need to make *all* of the money. - Said no Greedy Capitalist ever.
PS: Elon wants a $56 Billion -- with a 'B' -- *bonus*. Don't try saying he isn't a Greedy Capitalist. Maybe with a dictatorial bend, but still greedy. Hence the 'wtf' aspect to all this.
tbf, none of the other automakers are giving a shit about the NEVI funding as well
Electrification seems to be in regress, across multiple industries at the moment.
It's pretty standard when working with the gov't for things just to take way longer than it potentially should.
The money is coming, which is why everyone is waiting. They don't want to spend $500k on a charging station when they can wait 6-12 months and get it funded and only spend $200k.
It's 100% ELON, Its his ego and stupidity nothing else.
The layoff of the entire team came as a complete shock to the team itself and the rest of the company
Afaik Tesla gets less money per station than competitors (because their cost is also lower).
So them stopping the buildout might make tactical sense? But overall it's just not that great a business.
The global taxi market is a small subset of the overall automobile market. Why would they risk the company to chase an even smaller portion of the pie? It simply does not add up.
> Why would they risk the company to chase an even smaller portion of the pie? It simply does not add up.
- Automobile manufacturers have notoriously low profit margins. Factories and designing the process to manufacture a vehicle are expensive.
- Musk has realized building vehicles at a low cost is not as easy as he thought and is pivoting to AI which should be a much higher margin business, as well as a larger opportunity. AI is the main driver, the robotaxis service is just one application of developing AI technology (Optimus is the other AI application Tesla is developing).
> as well as a larger opportunity
Especially a larger opportunity for hype to keep the focus on the next big thing expected to arrive shortly vs. having to execute on what has been developed already.
I don't think this is some recent revelation on low cost manufacturing. I suspect Musk and Tesla knows this is hard. I think what has happened is that Musk has realized how hard it will be to compete against the Chinese EVs that will be available toward the end of this decade. And that even with Tesla's plan for substantially lower manufacturing costs, Tesla won't be able to compete AND maintain revenue that justifies the 500 billion market cap (which takes high P/E ratio). Tesla does not want to end up at BYD's sub $100 billion market cap, while BYD is gearing up to sell quality BEVs across the world for sub $25,000 (and is now selling in China a quality BEV (basically a Bolt competitor) for sub $10,000). Musk has said a number of times that AI tech is the differentiator for vehicles going forward as it might be the only way to compete with Chinese vehicles on the global market. Robotaxi is something that can come out of AI driverless tech, but it is the AI tech that is key here.
Tesla HAD robust profit margins until the mother of all price wars broke out in China at the beginning of 2023 which has yet to stop. Tesla has had to cut prices multiple times since then to maintain sales targets and as a result the profit margin has shrunk accordingly.
>Iirc, didn’t Tesla actually have very robust profit margins per vehicle sold?
it was robust when he conned people into buying non-existent FSD. once people wised up to the scam, their margins decreased to be in-line with traditional car makers.
lol from Fsd new when tesla has sold it at a 3k markup for years used now? Margins were not based on selling FSD. Margins were on decreasing costs on volume production and decreases are now that they need to push more volume.
I don't agree with the strategy, but just to answer the question of why someone might think it's a good business decision: If taxis were driverless, the fares would be lower, and the response time would be faster even outside of areas that now how strong service. That would mean more and more people would choose it over driving themselves and other forms of transportation.
I'll leave it to others to say what's wrong with that idea; just filling in what the idea is.
Costs for sure are lower so there’s a lot of profits there.
Still dumb decision by Tesla because we’re years away from that being a reality on both a regulatory and technology front. Especially if you’re tying your hands with vision only as a constraint. Additionally there’s a ton of other companies working toward the same goal. When one of these companies makes a breakthrough on this front, others will soon follow so there’s not a lot of time you can extract first mover profits on that front before entering price competition with other firms.
Contrast that to the charging and EV space where Tesla has a meaningful first mover and economies of scale advantage that they can extract profits on which probably can’t be matched by other firms until likely the end of the decade.
I agree about lots of potential profit, but the way capitalism works, I doubt the consumer will benefit. We are already willing to pay a certain fee for a service, why would “the market” lower them for a new, initially clean product? No body odor issues, no awkward conversation, brand new vehicles… it will be a premium service. The cheap seats will be old yellow cabs.
I never said the consumer will benefit and that has nothing to do with why Tesla would chase that business model anyway which is the topic of the thread. It’s about profits
I guess part of my point was, while it is attractive in terms of profit, it would likely be a premium service. The problem is, the premium market is only so large and prices can only go so high before even the wealthy choose the alternative.
Eventually perhaps literal cab driving will no longer be done by humans, but we’re quite a ways from that…
They’ll charge what people are willing to pay. If people are willing to paying a premium they will take every dime the consumers have to offer. If not then they’ll test the waters by dropping prices lower and lower until they get enough demand.
I disagree that costs will be lower with robotaxis. Even for markets like apartment rentals, pricing is determined by an algorithm rather than fair market value, and the entire community buys into it to increase profit.
Costs will be determined as to make as much money as possible for the owner, costs don't usually get passes on to the end user. Imagine using an Uber as your primary form of transportation, those costs add up fast for the passengers.
You’re talking about prices or fares like the poster I responded to. I’m talking about costs to the business. Costs to the business are way lower than paying a human to drive the car. Of course prices will be comparable to traditional taxis (but probably just slightly lower to steal market share). But that’s why profits for a robotaxi company would be greater and they have incentive to chase that business model
Apartment's are in short supply, which dirves up prices. There is no indication that robo taxis would be in short supply or would tend to a monopoly, which means competition should reduce prices to a still profitable minimum.
> The full shift to AI and robotaxis at this point seems a bit silly
Robotaxis will need at least [Level 4 of automous driving](https://www.synopsys.com/automotive/autonomous-driving-levels.html) (ie vehicle drives without a driver in a geofence).
Musk's been talking about FSD since 2015. After almost a decade, FSD recently left beta, and is still at Level 2.
Talk of robotaxis is premature. I'm guessing it won't happen for at least another 10 years, considering after 9 years FSD is still only Level 2. Level 4 is going to be much harder.
Come to Quebec, there are already ten times as many non-Tesla chargers as Tesla. The infrastructure can be built a lot faster than many think. I’ve never once worried about finding a charger in the last 2 years, and have done many road trips all over Quebec, Eastern Ontario and out to Estrie, GTA etc.
I think we've officially hit peak Tesla in the EV space.
If they're no longer planning to take the lead on charging, why would every other manufacturer in the US spend millions upon millions to adopt their plug? We could argue the technical reasons for/against that all day, but the business case for doing that seems to be a lot weaker.
It’s a better plug, lets them charge at more chargers and it’s cheaper in the long run.
The technicals are better. There’s no argument. So the business case still makes the most sense.
It's only a better plug if there's a network to use with that plug.
There's only more chargers if they keep building them.
And it's only cheaper for Tesla. Switching over to a new standard is expensive for everyone else.
I can't argue future Supercharger uptime etc but physically speaking it's still a better plug.
CCS's head is a disaster especially teamed with the terrible cable lengths of some chargers.
The NACS plug doesn’t require charging at Tesla. Other charging companies have already announced that new stations will include NACS and existing ones will eventually have them added.
They announced the **costly switch** with the agreement that tesla was growing their network even faster to accomodate more drivers.
teslas j3400 network is now in limbo and automakers are likely getting cold feet.
These arguments are all very poor. Tesla's connector is better, full stop, and regardless of charging stations it makes sense to switch.
It just so happens that As it stands there are still far more stations using the connector regardless of the future, so change now and then build your own stations.
The point of making it a standard would be to have anyone develop chargers that work for that plug right?…. I always thought the assumption was to use Tesla as the standard and develop it together rather than have Tesla be the only one to offer NACS
Yes, but there is no reason for anyone else to bother making NACS when they are already tooled up to make CCS1. They only reason any company would spend tons of money to switch over to NACS is to gain access to the SC network.
It's a simpler and more convenient plug, but I'd argue against technically better. As charging rates increase, the plug will likely have to be redesigned as speeds grow because it just simply doesn't have enough surface area to dissipate the heat produced at 500+ KW, while the more Robust CCS connectors are much more future proof in that regard. Even the brand new 350W V3 liquid-cooled superchargers are pushing the connector past it's limits getting into practically safe, but not as much overhead as engineers (and Lawyers!) typically like. That's why Tesla charging curves at 350W tend to be appreciably slower that CCS at the "same" speed.
This is not an investment forum. We don’t permit hyping EV stocks/SPACs or engaging in EV investment speculation.
If your post mentions a stock in any context, it is likely to be removed.
Chargepoint only sells to site hosts. Don’t see how the stop of new Superchargers affect Chargepoint business model. Perhaps a benefit to CPOs like EA, EVgo, or Ionna.
Elon needs to go. The guy has proven time and time again that he is unstable. Tesla shareholders should be furious with the way he used the company to get Twitter and now this. He is really hurting the company’s reputation by alienating the key members of the population who would be his most likely buyers with his alt-right political takes.
I don’t see myself buying a second Tesla while he is in charge, and I don’t recommend them to people who are interested in EVs… and that doesn’t seem so infrequent among owners. Sure, that’s all anecdotal, but it certainly feels problematic.
Tesla fast chargers are not future proof or upgradeable. The sites require expensive transformer upgrade plus labor for trenching.
Tesla abandoning j3400 network will only hurt their own customers. It's a shame elon went this route instead of spinning it off and selling it to a competitor.
I think this is exactly what happened.
Other brands are years ahead of Tesla in terms of battery tech, and charging.
The only thing j3400 had going for it was its smaller. It’s slower and out of date already. It doesn’t even offer V2L. Plus it’s too small that it can’t be cooled so actual fast charging isn’t even possible with it. Now that they have literally zero support or new installs coming. NACS is dead.
CCS1 is faster and already has more locations than Tesla does. Sure it’s bigger, but it’s better if every other way.
Tesla has been riding its hype train for years. People are finally realizing it’s not a good company.
This is the kind of comment that would have been downvoted to oblivion last summer when all the NACS nonsense started up. Crazy how quickly things have turned around.
Tesla superchargers use CCS2 in Europe and several key Asia-Pacific markets though, while in China they also use a unified standard (GB/T). I'm not sure if these points necessarily apply outside North America.
> Why are the companies moving to NACS?
The big reason was that Tesla's network has an objectively better customer experience. It's easy to use and fairly reliable. For cautious people who are new to EVs, that comfort level can generate a lot of sales.
With CCS, you have so many different networks and different ways to activate charging that it's confusing. Add in some well-publicized failures and the comfort level goes way down.
If CCS could double down on reliability and implement some standard ways to initiate a charge, they'd reduce that discomfort and attract customers.
NACS *had* a slightly better uptime of its chargers.
But that’s gone because Tesla fired everyone who took care of them along with any future plans for new stations.
Since IONNA and other brands have been rolling out and replacing older ccs1 locations, it’s been substantially better for consumers. Especially those that can take advantage of 800v charging.
And yes, CCS1 has more locations, but Tesla has less but tends to install more plugs. However, they split power between chargers. So they claim they’re 250kw. But if anyone else is around, it’ll drop to at least half that.
As an example, there’s 30 CCS1 near me. But only 3 supercharger locations.
> However, they split power between chargers. So they claim they’re 250kw. But if anyone else is around, it’ll drop to at least half that.
This isn't entirely true. For the 150kw, you'll share if someone is next to you but the 250kw are somewhat standalone. You'll only share if all the stalls are at capacity.
> NACS had a slightly better uptime of its chargers.
This is somewhat surprising to me since all I see are complaints of EA/EVgo chargers being unreliable and Tesla superchargers being super reliable but I haven't looked at numbers myself. Lets see how reliable the superchargers are after firing everyone though...
Usual deployment for a V3 Supercharger is 350kw of cabinet capacity per 4 charging posts, and all cabinets at the site are sharing power across the whole site.
So you’re always power sharing with everyone else there, just a question of if there’s enough site capacity to give your charging post all the juice your car is asking for.
> all I see are complaints of EA/EVgo chargers being unreliable
EA's been reliable for me (and I took a multi-state road trip).
EVgo on the other hand can't handle a trip getting to a nearby metropolis. And I tried two different, nearby stations.
> As an example, there’s 30 CCS1 near me. But only 3 supercharger locations.
It's like this here too, but I'd love to see what the actual stall counts are.
Here there's 19 capable (70+kW) capable CCS stalls vs Tesla only has 15 sites, but they each have 8-40 stalls making the count 260.
Sure there's a ton more CCS sites, but 1-2 stalls each. I hated it. Limping from station to station in hopes of finding something empty.
Consolidating charging locations for more stalls makes far more sense from a charging perspective and an installation perspective.
CCS networks average 4 charger per location, and half of those were very old/slow chargers built only to comply with the old funding rules(50 kW counted as ‘fast). Superchargers average 10 chargers per location, and they are mainly 250 kW and the rest are 150 kW. The result is that while if you add up all the little CCS charge networks, together they have slightly more locations, there are more than 2x as many high speed NACS /Tesla chargers than CCS in North America. Of course, on top of that Supercharger locations have over 99% availability (meaning fully functional chargers are available to use), while CCS charge locations fail, and full, or are badly degraded 25% of the time, and of course reliability is important.
Elon Trojan horsed the other EV manufacturers but like any good scam, they only got got because of their own greed. They wanted to switch plugs and let Tesla build the charging network for them.
They can be expanded if there are parking spots available though! They have been expanding a ton of them!! The route to mammoth up the 395 for example has had multiple stations increase charger count by a lot. Nearly double. They did this very quickly, it was only two trips I took before one of them was upgraded with 8 more stalls
^ this comment is not negative, please downvote
Ditto, I have been screaming my lungs out to tell others this exact thing, GOP and big oil have finally got to Elon. Supporting Russia against Ukraine, ditching EV charging infrastructure, calling for his followers to vote for trump, it's all too much of a coincidence.
All this does is hurt Tesla. The onus was on others up until two months ago when SCs opened up for Ford and Rivian. This move does nothing but return to the status quo as far as charging is concerned, while also destroying trust in Tesla.
I still wonder if other companies are going to pull back on their swap to NACS over this. It seems pretty bad to make the swap primarily for access to the super charging network when it's owned by a fucking lunatic and could easily have maintenance issues now
Doesn't work that way. Some states prohibit charging infrastructure from utilities. Yes, I'm serious.
Groups like "Americans for Affordable Alternative Fuels" are gas station lobbyists who have successfully lobbied to have *only gas stations* be allowed to install and deploy DCFC to customers.
There are other PSC regulations that prevent utilities from selling direct to consumers that are not affiliated with an address. For those with states that permit it, dynamic pricing might not be permitted for charging rates so a rate case would need to be created.
So correct me if I’m wrong. The way I understand this is Tesla sold out its superchargers to all other ev’s taking away exclusivity to Tesla owners and creating longer lines and wait times. All for a large sum of money from the government. That said money was supposed to go into supercharger infrastructure. Now Tesla is halting all supercharger expansion. Sound right?
It's actually a bit worse. Superchargers and Other EV's using them is very lucrative for Tesla. They charge non-Teslas much higher rates despite not getting any money directly for others using their plug. They licensed it for free.
The problem is that Tesla is actually giving up profit from future superchargers and subsidies from the government by doing this. If they were still making superchargers, a government program called NEVI would be paying for the majority of those chargers, essentially pumping in free government dollars and paying most of the fixed costs of superchargers for Tesla, leaving them to just reap the profits with out the high installation costs doing something they were already having a ton of success with. That's why everyone is confused. From all visibility it makes little sense. Regardless, it's a massive change risk to growth that the company did not need to take and there are reports that this wasn't a carefully considered strategic move. The response from shareholders has been from blind faith to confusion to anger.
I dislike the NY Times characterizing deep sixing the entire SC group as a pullback, when clearly Tesla is exiting the business.
I am of the opinion that this is a business that car makers should not be in, same as batteries.
Tesla, being the first mover, was forced into the battery market and the charging market to bootstrap the EV industry into existence.
But batteries were always destined to be a commodity industry and charging will be the domain of those gas stations that successfully transition to charging hubs.
Let's look at batteries first. Consider Tesla's original Battery Day. I got a bad feeling about it when Tesla kept delaying it repeatedly. My reasoning was that if there was good news coming it would be leaked before BD and battery day rewarded my inner cynic: the 4680 promised zero above and beyond what batteries were already achieving per the learning curve, its specs were exactly what was expected in three years of development. The structural battery was a brain dead concept in that you don't want to scrap a $50K vehicle because a $2 cell goes wonky. The same way you don't scrap a car every time you blow a fuse...
CATL, a dedicated battery maker, came out with the Qilin cell which is superior to the 4680 and beat the 4680 to market with mass production starting in March 2023 while the inferior 4680 is still experiencing production ramping issues.
On the charging issue, on highway rest stops are going to dominate. Fast charging means a less than 30 minute break to use the washroom and grab a bite to eat or a coffee for the road while stretching your legs a bit. In town lots of people will charge at home and only visit a charging station on road trips. Apartment dwellers will charge while doing the weekly grocery shopping, or down at the mall while shopping or catching a movie, or at work. Even today a lot of gas stations have an attached fast food franchise so grab a burger and fries with a side of fast charging.
None of this is rocket science. Tesla could have handle getting out the charging business much more gracefully while avoiding this bout of highly negative publicity.
I see a class action coming soon to a court near you. Especially since they just made the agreements with all of the other auto manufacturers.
Get your popcorn 🍿 ready and enjoy the show.
Not sure what is up with Tesla. They really need to kick Musk out of the company. Instead they have the shareholders voting on a multi billion dollar pay package for him.
This will be temporary. Tesla is going to replace the supercharging employees. If you look at the last time Elon purged the company, shortly after they actually had a sharp rise in head count along with an over doubling of production. We also don’t actually know how many supercharger related positions there are at Tesla because they don’t publish those numbers.
^ This comment is not negative, please downvote
A lot of hopium. This move will set them back years.
Just as an example - NEVI funds are being awarded at the state level. When my state in a month/two publishes RFQ who at tesla will compile & publish their bid? That's free money that tesla will relenquish to the competition.
Agreed. It's not clear how the NY Times justifies this sentiment:
>The automaker ... is no longer planning to take the lead in expanding the number of places to fuel electric vehicles.
Tesla could slow down the build out of the Supercharger network substantially and easily retain the lead in expanding charging. The other networks have done essentially nothing to appreciably increase their expansion rates, and they were well behind Tesla's speed.
The truth is: we don't know how much Tesla is actually going to slow down their expansion. We don't know how many people will be on a recomposed "Supercharger team," when it will be recomposed, or even whether it will be named that. We also don't know to what degree expanding existing locations will counter slowing the build of new locations. Perhaps that won't be much of a net slowing of *charging stalls.* Who knows? It seems NY Times is making a lot of assumptions in their reporting to fit a preordained narrative.
Someone made a comment somewhere that even without a team they suspect that Tesla is gonna build more chargers than everyone else in 2024.
I laughed then cried because that wouldn't even shock me.
There is a massive difference between "firing a lot of people in a department" and "firing every single person in that department."
He is starting back at ground level with any new hires. They have nobody to learn from.
And he fired a lot of top talent on his team.
Those people are quickly going to competitors, so he'll be picking his new team out of the minor leagues.
I agree. Tesla made a BIG mistake opening NACS with apparently no kick-in money from the other manufactures. I'm guessing Tesla thought it would get the majority of the NEVI funding? That was a pipe dream. So now Tesla is facing:
* Paying $600 for every EV produced in the US to support the expansion of the EV charging system. Right now that would be about $1200 for each Tesla with that number going up.
* NEVI funding that isn't panning out.
* V4 superchargers being at least 1.5 years late by now. Every V3 charger they put in the ground is partially wasted capital and limits when they can start building 800V vehicles 100kWh+ vehicles.
* Falling sales and the need to reduce costs caused by focusing on the CyberTruck and nothing else for the last 4 years.
I’ve always hated how anti-Tesla this sub is, but fuck man, they keep doing one shit thing after another. Backing away from the best thing they do is just too much. I think you guys are just ahead of your time.
This sucks, but it was never teslas responsibility to be the savior of charging in NA. Wht can't we have a more robust landscape like Norway or something?
Because no one wants to invest. They all want taxpayer money to do it. Clearly people want electric vehicles but someone needs to invest in charging infrastructure or the whole EV industry is dead. The USA is a nation of road trippers. We don't want to be relegated to work and home.
Electrify America and EVgo were forced into this space by court order. Tesla realized early on they needed to do the hard work themselves.
I guess Tesla realizes their tech is outdated and can’t be bothered to make the investment to replace every single supercharger.
Plus after letting their entire design team go, Tesla also gives up on updating their out of date battery tech as well.
Bye NACS, the rest of us will be using 350kw+ 800V actual fast charging.
Yeah, how much of their charging tech was outdated the moment they switch from ChadeMo communications to CCS (with J3400 port)? Everytime a manufacturer does this level of switching it makes part of the industry obsolescent.
This is not an investment forum. We don’t permit hyping EV stocks/SPACs or engaging in EV investment speculation.
If your post mentions a stock in any context, it is likely to be removed.
It looks like the other companies have to step up... Toyota is salivating, hoping this benefits their aim to slow EV/ true "Electrification."... Too bad it won't. The inevitable isn't called so for no reason.
Let's see what they have. /spoiler - not much.
Don't think ICE auto manufacturers will move quickly, after all if not for Elon they likely wouldn't have moved much at all. Unfortunately, with Elon's brain fried, the EV movement now lacks the leadership we need to move on to the next mode of transportation and we will be stuck burning carbon until the world ends. The irony about the battle between EV and ICE is the fact that people still seem to think we have a choice...these are the same people that believe the ozone layer is (magically) repairing itself.
Tesla was made great by the basic principles thinking Elon Musk used to direct Tesla. This was. pre covid 19, before Elon Musk took the red pill.
After the red pill Elon Musk abandoned first principles and embraced, propaganda and censorship to achieve his goals.
Easy street
Now Tesla decays unless they can get their edge (pure thinking) back.
The article confuses two distinct things, expanding capacity and expanding locations. Tesla's still planning on expanding Supercharger capacity, they're just focusing more on expanding capacity at existing locations, and less on expanding to new locations. This isn't a bad thing, they've been filling gaps in coverage for years, and their network has the best coverage by a wide margin, so they can now focus more on simply expanding capacity, which is a lot easier. New locations require negotiating new contracts, getting new permits, utility approvals, etc., which often takes a year or more of administrative work. Expanding existing locations, which are already permitted, have contracts in place, have power, etc., is faster and easier, as expanding existing infrastructure is easier approvals and execution, and is of course lower cost. And they didn't say they were stopping new locations entirely, presumably when they identify high value areas to fill gaps in coverage they'll still go there. But if they spend the next year adding v4 Superchargers to existing v2 and v3 Supercharger locations, that'd be a fine thing, as it'd be the fastest and best way to ramp their capacity up to support non-Tesla EVs, which is their mission this year and next.
Yes. The semi-v4 sites so far in the US are better than v3, with longer cables and magic docks, but real v4, 1,000v and 350kW, are what really needs to happen to support 800v EVs. I wonder if the failure to get those out in the US is why Tesla blew up the supercharger management team. Kinda reminds me of when SpaceX blew up the Starlink team that wasn’t delivering. And the new team delivered.
IMHO launching their flagship truck without (and STILL without) having a single deployed charger that can output the pack voltage is a huge embarrassment.
> they're just focusing more on expanding capacity at existing locations
My guess is that they will do this by putting more stalls on the same number of cabinets. This is the cheapest way to add stalls. So expect to not get 250kW at the start of charging on expanded V3 stations with most stalls in use. This isn't negative at all. I'd much rather have 12 stalls backed by ~600kWh than 8 stalls. Tesla has a good global bus and I'd rather be charging slower than be waiting in a line charging at zero waiting on a stall.
They’ve never done that. The v4 chargers in Europe aren’t designed that way, and neither are the v4 chargers in the US, though in the US it’s just the v4 EVSE connected to v3 power cabinets.
Never said they had done that but my guess is if they are going to focus on expanding existing stations rather than add new stations, this is what they will do to save money. Upgrading transformers and adding more cabinets and stalls to a station isn't cheaper than just building a new station. Building new stations has a lot more benefits because it's another location option to charge. The only reason they would be going for expansion of existing stations is for cost savings and this is the only real way to save costs.
It's hard to make sense out of the plan any other way.
Expanding existing locations means easier permitting and infrastructure and contracts for the location, which are the long delays. Installing superchargers is relatively easy these days. The prebuilt supercharger installs take days to wire up, vs on site construction, etc.
As far as chargers are concerned, anyone should now be able to add J3400 charging plugs to serve Tesla drivers. The question is whether Tesla has anyone left to help other manufacturers access Tesla's chargers, which was the main reason to support the new standard. If that doesn't happen, we could default back to having two charging formats in the US.
What happened to “Tesla is an energy company”? I guess that was superseded by “Tesla is an AI company”.
Tesla is a victim of its CEOs greed.
*stupidity
Two things can be true
Agree more stupidity than greed. At first I thought this was a media play on words when I first saw the story. Well, not so much.
It's how Sears died
Eddie Lampert had a coherent strategy to loot Sears and it worked (for him). The muskrat is just doing crazy shit, probably due to a persistent manic state induced by stimulants .
And the fact that this shit keeps happening after he meets with a bunch of right Wingers. He just met with Peter Thiel, Rupert murdoch, and others at the dinner suddenly he's on this Warpath. The problem with long-term sleep deprivation and using stimulants to keep you going is that you become very open to suggestion. That's why sleep deprivation is used in torture and trying to get confessions out of people. The man literally opened himself up to bad ideas and is following them. I've maintained for years that's his biggest problem. It's not even the ketamine, that's a symptom of a bigger problem. The fact the man never sleeps. As someone who goes days without sleep sometimes due to environmental factors and his job, I can tell you it's not a good thing at all and it does fuck with your head considerably. You start making weird mistakes, you start making Brash and bizarre judgment calls with little forethought, in the worst part is you think you're 100% in the right doing it. It's not until you get some rest you start realizing oh shit I fucked up. Which I would be interested to see if elon's reversal on his policies coincides with him getting a few nights rest.
As someone who had an overnight job and couldn't get used to sleeping during the day, I feel like I now know what sleep torture feels like. I was led along to believe I was going to eventually get to the day shift but like a horse chasing a carrot on a stick it never materialized despite bringing up my deteriorating mental health.
Oof the dreaded overnight shift. That shit is mentally damaging
Having a kid taught me what sleep torture is. At least during the first few weeks when the mom was basically bedridden and I had to take care of both of them. I started disassociating.
It's not even greed, just stupidity and egomania.
If he was victim to the greed he would keep building out the supercharger and not fire everyone. It was very profitable.
Heck. The smart move would have been to stop making cars and just focus on the charging network.
Energy deployment is consistently growing YoY and QoQ. This is publicly available information that is free for anybody to access and view.
Yes, I am aware. They appear to be changing directions, hence my comment.
Megapack is an energy product.
Ketamine. Ketamine happened
You can’t blame ketamine for this. Or maybe you can… Therapeutic Ketamine cured my depression, anxiety, and the double barrel blast of fears of success and failure. For me these made me a functional adult again. For Musk, it probably eliminated the last rational voice in his head. - because it also eliminates all those negative voices bouncing around in your skull. For me it was a cacophony of suicidal ideation, for him it was probably ‘hey muskrat! This idea isn’t great!’
I think people misread the situation and are now overcorrecting. All the stock pumpers were talking for years about how Tesla had locked in a permanent advantage with the Supercharger network, that they would become a new oil company owning the infrastructure, subsidizing their cars, and either locking out other cars, or gouging them for the right to use the network. But in fact Tesla would not be allowed a permanent moat on charging on anti trust grounds, and once it becomes a competitive business, charging is inherently high cost and low margin. Tesla already did something similar in Europe to what they are now doing in the US, they gave up on being a dominant network, they adopted an open charging standard for their cars, and they opened their network to other cars, and then they allowed other companies to take up the slack. In the UK, the number of Tesla hubs has increased from 60 to 130 in the time that that the non-Tesla hubs have increased from zero to 400. Tesla have just accepted that there will be an open infrastructure, and they will compete on an equal playing field with other vehicle manufacturers. And that is a good thing for the EV market. I feel similarly confused about the overwhelming negative reaction that Musk gets now as I did about the overwhelming positive reaction he got a few years ago. He has always been a tit.
That is tit slander.
It's one thing to dial back the pace of supercharger development. It's another to suddenly rage fire the whole division.
I suspect that the [article about that](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/04/tesla-cars-batteries-power-company/678168/?gift=1Oa6pySWazzwtIrcNSqw1fjbWVa82AJSmNTy-wjwEZM&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share) triggered Musk to fire the charging team.
You mean the article, which praised Tesla's superchargers and Megapacks while casting doubt on the cars and the AI? Well, that may make sense. "I have a favorite child. If others like one of my other childs more, I need to throw that child under the bus."
Explains why he has so many children.
Yea the article was complimentary about chargers and storage so of course musk blew up half of it. Next quarter of poor results expect the storage team to go u dear the ax (and if you don’t think everyone at Tesla isn’t looking for an exit right now you are delusional).
These are all variations of "Tesla is a stock manipulation company"
The same can be said of most publicly-traded companies. Boeing is one instructive example.
“Tesla is a taxi company”
"Or it's orthless" Quite a ceo statement
Or how about this? “BloombergNEF estimates the company could generate $7.4 billion in revenue and around $740 million in profit by 2030.” Not just energy company, but this was an important part of their strategy.
Tesla is a humanoid robot company.
Tesla is full spandex dancing company. ;-)
Tesla is a *whims of Elon* company.
Been pointing that out for years after the solar city fraud went through
Megapacks and powewalls would like a word.
"We have a lead on the sector."
Tesla is run by a fool.
I think the headline and the article are mistaken in portraying this move as primarily a shift in strategy. The stories based on more discussions with insiders are reporting that firing the whole group was a retaliatory move, either lashing out impulsively against a group leader who dared push back against His commands, or wanting to make an example of that group to show others what could happen to them if they don't bow down to Him. Of course, the implications are similar as far as how charging infrastructure will need to proceed, but we needn't assume that there's a rational master plan behind it.
It's true. The core assumption of this article is that Elon's decision to fire the entire team was rational. No one on that team or close to the decision were interviewed. Other sources say this was just Elon being a vindictive prick. Based on his recent and past behavior I think we can all agree on which story is more likely.
The answer from one of the insider friends of mine is - Both. Both of your assumptions are true. Impulsive move against a group leader to make an example of that group.
And perhaps with a generous helping of misogyny thrown in.
Then why did he hire her in the first place?
I think it was a rage firing. She was voted #2 most powerful in auto industry by motor trend while musk was 50 out of 50. https://www.motortrend.com/news/2024-motortrend-power-list/
Voted? Come on that motortrend article ranking is just stupid. You don't have to like Musk to admit he's easily more influential/powerful than random execs including Rebecca Tinucci.
It is a bit of a sensationalist list though, seemingly with people randomly inserted because they happend to be in the (western) news. She deserves to be on the list but not at number 2, and as much of a shithead Musk is, he is too influential to be at number 50. Also the lack of Chinese automotive figures on this list when China has now pulled ahead in the EV transition is hilarious. The only one that makes this list regularly is Li Shufu of Geely, because his company owns Volvo. It is as if Motor Trend was totally unaware of Wang Chuanfu until this year despite the fact that BYD has been rising through the EV ranks faster than even Tesla. He was UNRANKED last year! And now he is at number 3. Meanwhile they got the head of Vinfast, makers of some of the quest EVs in the industry, on the list, because I guess Vinfast made some news last year? They got the heads of the American EV startups Rivian and Lucid on the list, despite the fact that both companies are struggling to stay afloat, but not a peep about the heads of the car more successful Chinese startup EV makers, such as NIO, Xpeng, Li Auto, who are selling hundreds of thousands of EVsevery year, and taking marketshare in China away from western automakers. And the biggest snub of all is they have the head of LG in the list at up at number 10, because LG is the ... third largest supplier of lithium batteries in the world? Number 2 is up there too since that's just BYD. But what about the number 1 battery maker in the world whose marketshare is bigger than LG and BYD put together? CATL is not even on this list even though they are now one of the biggest players in the automotive industry.
Ok
Don't bother with facts on here... instead of reflecting on why these idiotic lists are published they just love to hate Musk (and ignore Chinese makers)
That's besides the point. The list could have included literal monkeys and Musk would be jelous to the point of firing people.
Elon's increasingly unhinged behavior sure makes it look like he's fallen into the Dictator / Cult Leader trap. That's where their need for control / narcissism cause them to increasingly surround themselves with yes-men and sycophants. That causes them to become increasingly removed from honest criticism and feedback, leading to worse and worse decision making. Perhaps the most well-known example was Hitler, who overrode generals and made increasingly erratic decisions until it was just him in a bunker making delusional plans to win using units that only existed on paper. Note: example provided is to explain the idea, and is not meant to imply any comparison between the two or to equate one with the other.
Yes, I think he's been in that mode for quite some time. It's just that he's smart, talented, and lucky enough that it's taken a long time for it to come back and bite him.
Even if they want to reconstruct the charging team, how will they hire people?
Agreed. No strategy. Just ego.
And this is based on fact or hearsay too?
Based on lots of articles that cite anonymous sources inside the company (or recently departed). And based on the fact that no other explanation that has been proposed fits with the facts of how it played out.
Why the need for a conspiracy theory when the move clearly makes good business sense? Charging just isn't that great a business right now. It'd be better if convenience stores and similar businesses expanded on superchargers. The revenue will be in retail, not charging is my guess. >My guess is that the electricity and infrastructure costs of running the network far exceed the fees provided by Tesla and other drivers thus far,” Ben Rose, president of Battle Road Research, said in an email. “They can now focus on getting maximum use of what they’ve installed.
There are good arguments for why scaling back the supercharger expansion rate could make good business sense. If a smart leader wanted to do that, they would first instruct the existing team to do that, including making decisions about how to handle existing projects in the pipeline. Then they'd start scaling back the team, including selecting the very best people to retain, to carry on the smaller scale effort, or to transfer to other projects. This was the opposite of that, a sudden steps creating chaos. So there needs to be a different explanation. And fortunately, there's plenty of reporting based on sources inside the company (or former insiders) that makes it clear what did happen. Also, note that a conspiracy requires conspiring. This was Musk's impulsive action, not a plan developed by a group of conspirators.
The other car mfgs all saw that a fast DC charging network was key to EV sales which is why the asked Tesla for access to Tesla's SC network. With Federal government now paying for a large part of an EV charging station via the [NEVI program](https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/environment/nevi/ev_deployment_plans/index.cfm?format=list#map), you would hope GM and Ford would partner and spearhead the build out. GM announced a partnership with EVGo for 2,000 chargers a while ago. NEVI should be ramping up installs from other players like municipalities, parking authorities, real estate developers, truck stop operators which will add to the 500,000 proposed under NEVI by 2026.
GM has partnered with the gas stations Pilot and Flying J and has opened up their Ultium Charging Stalls at these locations
This. Carmakers relying ONLY on Tesla to make things work is reckless (decisions made by highly paid people...) and utterly stupid, especially since Tesla Superchargers will start getting more busy and then it will be a negative. Most of us with non-Tesla EVs understood the issues of being 'early' adopters, but if carmakers want EVs to sell (and I'm doubtful of it), a string charging network is needed. It is a must. I don't understand why carmakers don't care about it. Like I've said before and many criticized me... self-sabotage.
I can easily see GM and Ford being half-hearted at best about sinking more capital into their EV shift. With them losing money on every EV vs. having a relative gold mine selling $60-80K trucks and SUVs, they have incentive to pull back driven by short-term accounting. The only thing that'll incentivize them is if they \*truly\* see EVs as an inevitable shift and an existential threat if they don't keep up.
They only lose money on every EV because they price in the money it took to retrofit the factories. But that's a one time investment that is already done for now. It's in their best interest to sell EVs.
GM had great profits as did Ford in 2023. NEVI Federal Program pays 80% of the installation costs. Both Ford and GM know that a charging network is essential and both have EU, China and US mandates so sell only EV's by 2035. EV charging is profitable so with NEVI picking up 80% of installation costs, only 20% of the install costs needs to covered by sales revenue to starty making profits. Tesla makes $500M from charging.
NEVI pays 80% and the State pays the other 20%. It's free money for the winner of the bid.
State or a commercial partner. Tesla has taken a lot of NEVI money to build out stations so that part of Tesla's expansion will continue.,
Wild how much autos are subsidized
There is no dumb like truck dumb.
I don't mind Tesla saying "We built our network. We're dialing back at this point." What I don't get is, why they'd do it now that there are millions of gov't bucks available to build out charging networks. It makes no fucking sense at all. Also, it makes no sense because they have something that everyone universally agrees is the best in industry and they're like "Nah....who gives a fuck?" It's so unusual for a business to build a best in class product and then ditch it.
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It's been less than a week, so the cost-benefit analysis for various sites by competitors (who have shoestring budgets compared to what the SC team was working with) are most likely still in work. Moreover some competitors have announced a desire to take over locations where new SC sites fell through. Revel in New York comes to mind. In the meantime EA says they're continuing their current rollout plans but they just finished recruiting former Rivian charge network employees right before this news broke. They may be evaluating a growth in their team and subsequent rollout of new sites now but it takes a (normal) business time to make a change in direction and planning.
> It's so unusual for a business to build a best in class product and then ditch it. Monopoly? Nah. I *love* competition that isn't colluding with me. I don't need to make *all* of the money. - Said no Greedy Capitalist ever. PS: Elon wants a $56 Billion -- with a 'B' -- *bonus*. Don't try saying he isn't a Greedy Capitalist. Maybe with a dictatorial bend, but still greedy. Hence the 'wtf' aspect to all this.
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tbf, none of the other automakers are giving a shit about the NEVI funding as well Electrification seems to be in regress, across multiple industries at the moment.
It's pretty standard when working with the gov't for things just to take way longer than it potentially should. The money is coming, which is why everyone is waiting. They don't want to spend $500k on a charging station when they can wait 6-12 months and get it funded and only spend $200k.
NEVI is a joke and Tesla has very little chance of getting significant money. In my state all the money is going to go to in-state companies.
It's 100% ELON, Its his ego and stupidity nothing else. The layoff of the entire team came as a complete shock to the team itself and the rest of the company
Afaik Tesla gets less money per station than competitors (because their cost is also lower). So them stopping the buildout might make tactical sense? But overall it's just not that great a business.
The full shift to AI and robotaxis at this point seems a bit silly given the regulatory environment.
The global taxi market is a small subset of the overall automobile market. Why would they risk the company to chase an even smaller portion of the pie? It simply does not add up.
> Why would they risk the company to chase an even smaller portion of the pie? It simply does not add up. - Automobile manufacturers have notoriously low profit margins. Factories and designing the process to manufacture a vehicle are expensive. - Musk has realized building vehicles at a low cost is not as easy as he thought and is pivoting to AI which should be a much higher margin business, as well as a larger opportunity. AI is the main driver, the robotaxis service is just one application of developing AI technology (Optimus is the other AI application Tesla is developing).
> as well as a larger opportunity Especially a larger opportunity for hype to keep the focus on the next big thing expected to arrive shortly vs. having to execute on what has been developed already.
I don't think this is some recent revelation on low cost manufacturing. I suspect Musk and Tesla knows this is hard. I think what has happened is that Musk has realized how hard it will be to compete against the Chinese EVs that will be available toward the end of this decade. And that even with Tesla's plan for substantially lower manufacturing costs, Tesla won't be able to compete AND maintain revenue that justifies the 500 billion market cap (which takes high P/E ratio). Tesla does not want to end up at BYD's sub $100 billion market cap, while BYD is gearing up to sell quality BEVs across the world for sub $25,000 (and is now selling in China a quality BEV (basically a Bolt competitor) for sub $10,000). Musk has said a number of times that AI tech is the differentiator for vehicles going forward as it might be the only way to compete with Chinese vehicles on the global market. Robotaxi is something that can come out of AI driverless tech, but it is the AI tech that is key here.
If this is true everyone should invest in Chinese EVs now or see a significant portion for their investments get fucked.
Iirc, didn’t Tesla actually have very robust profit margins per vehicle sold? I suspect it is more that Musk has become far too drunk on the AI con
Tesla HAD robust profit margins until the mother of all price wars broke out in China at the beginning of 2023 which has yet to stop. Tesla has had to cut prices multiple times since then to maintain sales targets and as a result the profit margin has shrunk accordingly.
>Iirc, didn’t Tesla actually have very robust profit margins per vehicle sold? it was robust when he conned people into buying non-existent FSD. once people wised up to the scam, their margins decreased to be in-line with traditional car makers.
lol from Fsd new when tesla has sold it at a 3k markup for years used now? Margins were not based on selling FSD. Margins were on decreasing costs on volume production and decreases are now that they need to push more volume.
Lol there is no way it will be approved
I don't agree with the strategy, but just to answer the question of why someone might think it's a good business decision: If taxis were driverless, the fares would be lower, and the response time would be faster even outside of areas that now how strong service. That would mean more and more people would choose it over driving themselves and other forms of transportation. I'll leave it to others to say what's wrong with that idea; just filling in what the idea is.
“The fares would be lower”… That is incredibly doubtful and even if lower initially that would change eventually.
Costs for sure are lower so there’s a lot of profits there. Still dumb decision by Tesla because we’re years away from that being a reality on both a regulatory and technology front. Especially if you’re tying your hands with vision only as a constraint. Additionally there’s a ton of other companies working toward the same goal. When one of these companies makes a breakthrough on this front, others will soon follow so there’s not a lot of time you can extract first mover profits on that front before entering price competition with other firms. Contrast that to the charging and EV space where Tesla has a meaningful first mover and economies of scale advantage that they can extract profits on which probably can’t be matched by other firms until likely the end of the decade.
I agree about lots of potential profit, but the way capitalism works, I doubt the consumer will benefit. We are already willing to pay a certain fee for a service, why would “the market” lower them for a new, initially clean product? No body odor issues, no awkward conversation, brand new vehicles… it will be a premium service. The cheap seats will be old yellow cabs.
I never said the consumer will benefit and that has nothing to do with why Tesla would chase that business model anyway which is the topic of the thread. It’s about profits
I guess part of my point was, while it is attractive in terms of profit, it would likely be a premium service. The problem is, the premium market is only so large and prices can only go so high before even the wealthy choose the alternative. Eventually perhaps literal cab driving will no longer be done by humans, but we’re quite a ways from that…
They’ll charge what people are willing to pay. If people are willing to paying a premium they will take every dime the consumers have to offer. If not then they’ll test the waters by dropping prices lower and lower until they get enough demand.
Agreed.
I disagree that costs will be lower with robotaxis. Even for markets like apartment rentals, pricing is determined by an algorithm rather than fair market value, and the entire community buys into it to increase profit. Costs will be determined as to make as much money as possible for the owner, costs don't usually get passes on to the end user. Imagine using an Uber as your primary form of transportation, those costs add up fast for the passengers.
You’re talking about prices or fares like the poster I responded to. I’m talking about costs to the business. Costs to the business are way lower than paying a human to drive the car. Of course prices will be comparable to traditional taxis (but probably just slightly lower to steal market share). But that’s why profits for a robotaxi company would be greater and they have incentive to chase that business model
Apartment's are in short supply, which dirves up prices. There is no indication that robo taxis would be in short supply or would tend to a monopoly, which means competition should reduce prices to a still profitable minimum.
The only reason that fares would be significantly below market rate is to take market share.
> The full shift to AI and robotaxis at this point seems a bit silly Robotaxis will need at least [Level 4 of automous driving](https://www.synopsys.com/automotive/autonomous-driving-levels.html) (ie vehicle drives without a driver in a geofence). Musk's been talking about FSD since 2015. After almost a decade, FSD recently left beta, and is still at Level 2. Talk of robotaxis is premature. I'm guessing it won't happen for at least another 10 years, considering after 9 years FSD is still only Level 2. Level 4 is going to be much harder.
The regulatory environment isn't the problem. The technology just isn't there yet and there is no telling when it will be.
It'd silly given reality.
Come to Quebec, there are already ten times as many non-Tesla chargers as Tesla. The infrastructure can be built a lot faster than many think. I’ve never once worried about finding a charger in the last 2 years, and have done many road trips all over Quebec, Eastern Ontario and out to Estrie, GTA etc.
The charging infrastructure in Quebec has been built by a state company. Most americans would think that's communist nonsense.
I think we've officially hit peak Tesla in the EV space. If they're no longer planning to take the lead on charging, why would every other manufacturer in the US spend millions upon millions to adopt their plug? We could argue the technical reasons for/against that all day, but the business case for doing that seems to be a lot weaker.
It’s a better plug, lets them charge at more chargers and it’s cheaper in the long run. The technicals are better. There’s no argument. So the business case still makes the most sense.
It's only a better plug if there's a network to use with that plug. There's only more chargers if they keep building them. And it's only cheaper for Tesla. Switching over to a new standard is expensive for everyone else.
I can't argue future Supercharger uptime etc but physically speaking it's still a better plug. CCS's head is a disaster especially teamed with the terrible cable lengths of some chargers.
The NACS plug doesn’t require charging at Tesla. Other charging companies have already announced that new stations will include NACS and existing ones will eventually have them added.
They announced the **costly switch** with the agreement that tesla was growing their network even faster to accomodate more drivers. teslas j3400 network is now in limbo and automakers are likely getting cold feet.
These arguments are all very poor. Tesla's connector is better, full stop, and regardless of charging stations it makes sense to switch. It just so happens that As it stands there are still far more stations using the connector regardless of the future, so change now and then build your own stations.
It doesn't let them charge at more chargers if there's nobody at Tesla to turn on the system.
The point of making it a standard would be to have anyone develop chargers that work for that plug right?…. I always thought the assumption was to use Tesla as the standard and develop it together rather than have Tesla be the only one to offer NACS
Yes, but there is no reason for anyone else to bother making NACS when they are already tooled up to make CCS1. They only reason any company would spend tons of money to switch over to NACS is to gain access to the SC network.
It's a simpler and more convenient plug, but I'd argue against technically better. As charging rates increase, the plug will likely have to be redesigned as speeds grow because it just simply doesn't have enough surface area to dissipate the heat produced at 500+ KW, while the more Robust CCS connectors are much more future proof in that regard. Even the brand new 350W V3 liquid-cooled superchargers are pushing the connector past it's limits getting into practically safe, but not as much overhead as engineers (and Lawyers!) typically like. That's why Tesla charging curves at 350W tend to be appreciably slower that CCS at the "same" speed.
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Chargepoint only sells to site hosts. Don’t see how the stop of new Superchargers affect Chargepoint business model. Perhaps a benefit to CPOs like EA, EVgo, or Ionna.
I hope they switch to manage their own network or part of it personally. It’s super costly though it seems.
Nothing was stopping them before.
Elon needs to go. The guy has proven time and time again that he is unstable. Tesla shareholders should be furious with the way he used the company to get Twitter and now this. He is really hurting the company’s reputation by alienating the key members of the population who would be his most likely buyers with his alt-right political takes. I don’t see myself buying a second Tesla while he is in charge, and I don’t recommend them to people who are interested in EVs… and that doesn’t seem so infrequent among owners. Sure, that’s all anecdotal, but it certainly feels problematic.
The same applies to me. Musk contributed a lot for my first EV NOT being a Tesla, nor do I recommend it to anyone.
Tesla fast chargers are not future proof or upgradeable. The sites require expensive transformer upgrade plus labor for trenching. Tesla abandoning j3400 network will only hurt their own customers. It's a shame elon went this route instead of spinning it off and selling it to a competitor.
I think this is exactly what happened. Other brands are years ahead of Tesla in terms of battery tech, and charging. The only thing j3400 had going for it was its smaller. It’s slower and out of date already. It doesn’t even offer V2L. Plus it’s too small that it can’t be cooled so actual fast charging isn’t even possible with it. Now that they have literally zero support or new installs coming. NACS is dead. CCS1 is faster and already has more locations than Tesla does. Sure it’s bigger, but it’s better if every other way. Tesla has been riding its hype train for years. People are finally realizing it’s not a good company.
This is the kind of comment that would have been downvoted to oblivion last summer when all the NACS nonsense started up. Crazy how quickly things have turned around.
Tesla superchargers use CCS2 in Europe and several key Asia-Pacific markets though, while in China they also use a unified standard (GB/T). I'm not sure if these points necessarily apply outside North America.
I'm surprised to learn CCS1 has more locations. Didn't know CCS1 charging is more widespread than NACS. Why are the companies moving to NACS?
> Why are the companies moving to NACS? The big reason was that Tesla's network has an objectively better customer experience. It's easy to use and fairly reliable. For cautious people who are new to EVs, that comfort level can generate a lot of sales. With CCS, you have so many different networks and different ways to activate charging that it's confusing. Add in some well-publicized failures and the comfort level goes way down. If CCS could double down on reliability and implement some standard ways to initiate a charge, they'd reduce that discomfort and attract customers.
NACS *had* a slightly better uptime of its chargers. But that’s gone because Tesla fired everyone who took care of them along with any future plans for new stations. Since IONNA and other brands have been rolling out and replacing older ccs1 locations, it’s been substantially better for consumers. Especially those that can take advantage of 800v charging. And yes, CCS1 has more locations, but Tesla has less but tends to install more plugs. However, they split power between chargers. So they claim they’re 250kw. But if anyone else is around, it’ll drop to at least half that. As an example, there’s 30 CCS1 near me. But only 3 supercharger locations.
> However, they split power between chargers. So they claim they’re 250kw. But if anyone else is around, it’ll drop to at least half that. This isn't entirely true. For the 150kw, you'll share if someone is next to you but the 250kw are somewhat standalone. You'll only share if all the stalls are at capacity. > NACS had a slightly better uptime of its chargers. This is somewhat surprising to me since all I see are complaints of EA/EVgo chargers being unreliable and Tesla superchargers being super reliable but I haven't looked at numbers myself. Lets see how reliable the superchargers are after firing everyone though...
Usual deployment for a V3 Supercharger is 350kw of cabinet capacity per 4 charging posts, and all cabinets at the site are sharing power across the whole site. So you’re always power sharing with everyone else there, just a question of if there’s enough site capacity to give your charging post all the juice your car is asking for.
Thanks for the info!
> all I see are complaints of EA/EVgo chargers being unreliable EA's been reliable for me (and I took a multi-state road trip). EVgo on the other hand can't handle a trip getting to a nearby metropolis. And I tried two different, nearby stations.
> As an example, there’s 30 CCS1 near me. But only 3 supercharger locations. It's like this here too, but I'd love to see what the actual stall counts are. Here there's 19 capable (70+kW) capable CCS stalls vs Tesla only has 15 sites, but they each have 8-40 stalls making the count 260. Sure there's a ton more CCS sites, but 1-2 stalls each. I hated it. Limping from station to station in hopes of finding something empty. Consolidating charging locations for more stalls makes far more sense from a charging perspective and an installation perspective.
CCS networks average 4 charger per location, and half of those were very old/slow chargers built only to comply with the old funding rules(50 kW counted as ‘fast). Superchargers average 10 chargers per location, and they are mainly 250 kW and the rest are 150 kW. The result is that while if you add up all the little CCS charge networks, together they have slightly more locations, there are more than 2x as many high speed NACS /Tesla chargers than CCS in North America. Of course, on top of that Supercharger locations have over 99% availability (meaning fully functional chargers are available to use), while CCS charge locations fail, and full, or are badly degraded 25% of the time, and of course reliability is important.
Elon Trojan horsed the other EV manufacturers but like any good scam, they only got got because of their own greed. They wanted to switch plugs and let Tesla build the charging network for them.
They can be expanded if there are parking spots available though! They have been expanding a ton of them!! The route to mammoth up the 395 for example has had multiple stations increase charger count by a lot. Nearly double. They did this very quickly, it was only two trips I took before one of them was upgraded with 8 more stalls ^ this comment is not negative, please downvote
I suspect that musk is doing this to cripple EV expansion now that he is trump’s lackey.
Ditto, I have been screaming my lungs out to tell others this exact thing, GOP and big oil have finally got to Elon. Supporting Russia against Ukraine, ditching EV charging infrastructure, calling for his followers to vote for trump, it's all too much of a coincidence.
All this does is hurt Tesla. The onus was on others up until two months ago when SCs opened up for Ford and Rivian. This move does nothing but return to the status quo as far as charging is concerned, while also destroying trust in Tesla.
I still wonder if other companies are going to pull back on their swap to NACS over this. It seems pretty bad to make the swap primarily for access to the super charging network when it's owned by a fucking lunatic and could easily have maintenance issues now
We don't know the financials of building a charging network. I assume it would be profitable but I'm not too sure.
Did the government not have strings attached to the subsidies that were provided for charging networks??
If I’m a Tesla shareholder, I’m pissed. Why give up a potential opportunity to be the leader in this space.
This may cause some short term chaos, but in the long run it's best to get Musk out of the picture. He's too mentally unstable to be reliable.
The other charging companies have a bevy of talent to snap up now. You’d think the utilities would be all over this opportunity.
Doesn't work that way. Some states prohibit charging infrastructure from utilities. Yes, I'm serious. Groups like "Americans for Affordable Alternative Fuels" are gas station lobbyists who have successfully lobbied to have *only gas stations* be allowed to install and deploy DCFC to customers. There are other PSC regulations that prevent utilities from selling direct to consumers that are not affiliated with an address. For those with states that permit it, dynamic pricing might not be permitted for charging rates so a rate case would need to be created.
So correct me if I’m wrong. The way I understand this is Tesla sold out its superchargers to all other ev’s taking away exclusivity to Tesla owners and creating longer lines and wait times. All for a large sum of money from the government. That said money was supposed to go into supercharger infrastructure. Now Tesla is halting all supercharger expansion. Sound right?
It's actually a bit worse. Superchargers and Other EV's using them is very lucrative for Tesla. They charge non-Teslas much higher rates despite not getting any money directly for others using their plug. They licensed it for free. The problem is that Tesla is actually giving up profit from future superchargers and subsidies from the government by doing this. If they were still making superchargers, a government program called NEVI would be paying for the majority of those chargers, essentially pumping in free government dollars and paying most of the fixed costs of superchargers for Tesla, leaving them to just reap the profits with out the high installation costs doing something they were already having a ton of success with. That's why everyone is confused. From all visibility it makes little sense. Regardless, it's a massive change risk to growth that the company did not need to take and there are reports that this wasn't a carefully considered strategic move. The response from shareholders has been from blind faith to confusion to anger.
I dislike the NY Times characterizing deep sixing the entire SC group as a pullback, when clearly Tesla is exiting the business. I am of the opinion that this is a business that car makers should not be in, same as batteries. Tesla, being the first mover, was forced into the battery market and the charging market to bootstrap the EV industry into existence. But batteries were always destined to be a commodity industry and charging will be the domain of those gas stations that successfully transition to charging hubs. Let's look at batteries first. Consider Tesla's original Battery Day. I got a bad feeling about it when Tesla kept delaying it repeatedly. My reasoning was that if there was good news coming it would be leaked before BD and battery day rewarded my inner cynic: the 4680 promised zero above and beyond what batteries were already achieving per the learning curve, its specs were exactly what was expected in three years of development. The structural battery was a brain dead concept in that you don't want to scrap a $50K vehicle because a $2 cell goes wonky. The same way you don't scrap a car every time you blow a fuse... CATL, a dedicated battery maker, came out with the Qilin cell which is superior to the 4680 and beat the 4680 to market with mass production starting in March 2023 while the inferior 4680 is still experiencing production ramping issues. On the charging issue, on highway rest stops are going to dominate. Fast charging means a less than 30 minute break to use the washroom and grab a bite to eat or a coffee for the road while stretching your legs a bit. In town lots of people will charge at home and only visit a charging station on road trips. Apartment dwellers will charge while doing the weekly grocery shopping, or down at the mall while shopping or catching a movie, or at work. Even today a lot of gas stations have an attached fast food franchise so grab a burger and fries with a side of fast charging. None of this is rocket science. Tesla could have handle getting out the charging business much more gracefully while avoiding this bout of highly negative publicity.
I see a class action coming soon to a court near you. Especially since they just made the agreements with all of the other auto manufacturers. Get your popcorn 🍿 ready and enjoy the show. Not sure what is up with Tesla. They really need to kick Musk out of the company. Instead they have the shareholders voting on a multi billion dollar pay package for him.
Just when I thought Elon couldn't be more of a twat.
This will be temporary. Tesla is going to replace the supercharging employees. If you look at the last time Elon purged the company, shortly after they actually had a sharp rise in head count along with an over doubling of production. We also don’t actually know how many supercharger related positions there are at Tesla because they don’t publish those numbers. ^ This comment is not negative, please downvote
A lot of hopium. This move will set them back years. Just as an example - NEVI funds are being awarded at the state level. When my state in a month/two publishes RFQ who at tesla will compile & publish their bid? That's free money that tesla will relenquish to the competition.
Agreed. It's not clear how the NY Times justifies this sentiment: >The automaker ... is no longer planning to take the lead in expanding the number of places to fuel electric vehicles. Tesla could slow down the build out of the Supercharger network substantially and easily retain the lead in expanding charging. The other networks have done essentially nothing to appreciably increase their expansion rates, and they were well behind Tesla's speed. The truth is: we don't know how much Tesla is actually going to slow down their expansion. We don't know how many people will be on a recomposed "Supercharger team," when it will be recomposed, or even whether it will be named that. We also don't know to what degree expanding existing locations will counter slowing the build of new locations. Perhaps that won't be much of a net slowing of *charging stalls.* Who knows? It seems NY Times is making a lot of assumptions in their reporting to fit a preordained narrative.
Someone made a comment somewhere that even without a team they suspect that Tesla is gonna build more chargers than everyone else in 2024. I laughed then cried because that wouldn't even shock me.
There is a massive difference between "firing a lot of people in a department" and "firing every single person in that department." He is starting back at ground level with any new hires. They have nobody to learn from.
And he fired a lot of top talent on his team. Those people are quickly going to competitors, so he'll be picking his new team out of the minor leagues.
I agree. Tesla made a BIG mistake opening NACS with apparently no kick-in money from the other manufactures. I'm guessing Tesla thought it would get the majority of the NEVI funding? That was a pipe dream. So now Tesla is facing: * Paying $600 for every EV produced in the US to support the expansion of the EV charging system. Right now that would be about $1200 for each Tesla with that number going up. * NEVI funding that isn't panning out. * V4 superchargers being at least 1.5 years late by now. Every V3 charger they put in the ground is partially wasted capital and limits when they can start building 800V vehicles 100kWh+ vehicles. * Falling sales and the need to reduce costs caused by focusing on the CyberTruck and nothing else for the last 4 years.
I’ve always hated how anti-Tesla this sub is, but fuck man, they keep doing one shit thing after another. Backing away from the best thing they do is just too much. I think you guys are just ahead of your time.
It seems Elon is anti Tesla
This sucks, but it was never teslas responsibility to be the savior of charging in NA. Wht can't we have a more robust landscape like Norway or something?
Because no one wants to invest. They all want taxpayer money to do it. Clearly people want electric vehicles but someone needs to invest in charging infrastructure or the whole EV industry is dead. The USA is a nation of road trippers. We don't want to be relegated to work and home. Electrify America and EVgo were forced into this space by court order. Tesla realized early on they needed to do the hard work themselves.
I guess Tesla realizes their tech is outdated and can’t be bothered to make the investment to replace every single supercharger. Plus after letting their entire design team go, Tesla also gives up on updating their out of date battery tech as well. Bye NACS, the rest of us will be using 350kw+ 800V actual fast charging.
Yeah, how much of their charging tech was outdated the moment they switch from ChadeMo communications to CCS (with J3400 port)? Everytime a manufacturer does this level of switching it makes part of the industry obsolescent.
What is currently the best charging standard?
The faster one
I hate Elon so much
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Meh. Tesla have like 12% of the DC rapid chargers in UK. No big deal
It looks like the other companies have to step up... Toyota is salivating, hoping this benefits their aim to slow EV/ true "Electrification."... Too bad it won't. The inevitable isn't called so for no reason. Let's see what they have. /spoiler - not much.
EnBW, Ionity, FastNed, Aral etc. seem to be doing just fine.
Nytimes is a shit site.
Don't think ICE auto manufacturers will move quickly, after all if not for Elon they likely wouldn't have moved much at all. Unfortunately, with Elon's brain fried, the EV movement now lacks the leadership we need to move on to the next mode of transportation and we will be stuck burning carbon until the world ends. The irony about the battle between EV and ICE is the fact that people still seem to think we have a choice...these are the same people that believe the ozone layer is (magically) repairing itself.
hope he goes and leaves us
Musk has gotten more and more right wing. Did oil companies get to him and is he slowly dismantling everything he has?
He just decided that pushing fascism is more important to him than running a car company
Tesla was made great by the basic principles thinking Elon Musk used to direct Tesla. This was. pre covid 19, before Elon Musk took the red pill. After the red pill Elon Musk abandoned first principles and embraced, propaganda and censorship to achieve his goals. Easy street Now Tesla decays unless they can get their edge (pure thinking) back.
Its the begining of an end..
The article confuses two distinct things, expanding capacity and expanding locations. Tesla's still planning on expanding Supercharger capacity, they're just focusing more on expanding capacity at existing locations, and less on expanding to new locations. This isn't a bad thing, they've been filling gaps in coverage for years, and their network has the best coverage by a wide margin, so they can now focus more on simply expanding capacity, which is a lot easier. New locations require negotiating new contracts, getting new permits, utility approvals, etc., which often takes a year or more of administrative work. Expanding existing locations, which are already permitted, have contracts in place, have power, etc., is faster and easier, as expanding existing infrastructure is easier approvals and execution, and is of course lower cost. And they didn't say they were stopping new locations entirely, presumably when they identify high value areas to fill gaps in coverage they'll still go there. But if they spend the next year adding v4 Superchargers to existing v2 and v3 Supercharger locations, that'd be a fine thing, as it'd be the fastest and best way to ramp their capacity up to support non-Tesla EVs, which is their mission this year and next.
If they actually make v4 the real 350kw as expected.
Yes. The semi-v4 sites so far in the US are better than v3, with longer cables and magic docks, but real v4, 1,000v and 350kW, are what really needs to happen to support 800v EVs. I wonder if the failure to get those out in the US is why Tesla blew up the supercharger management team. Kinda reminds me of when SpaceX blew up the Starlink team that wasn’t delivering. And the new team delivered.
IMHO launching their flagship truck without (and STILL without) having a single deployed charger that can output the pack voltage is a huge embarrassment.
It is frustrating. My guess is that the lack of real v4 Superchargers in the US is why Tesla blew up the Supercharger management team.
> they're just focusing more on expanding capacity at existing locations My guess is that they will do this by putting more stalls on the same number of cabinets. This is the cheapest way to add stalls. So expect to not get 250kW at the start of charging on expanded V3 stations with most stalls in use. This isn't negative at all. I'd much rather have 12 stalls backed by ~600kWh than 8 stalls. Tesla has a good global bus and I'd rather be charging slower than be waiting in a line charging at zero waiting on a stall.
They’ve never done that. The v4 chargers in Europe aren’t designed that way, and neither are the v4 chargers in the US, though in the US it’s just the v4 EVSE connected to v3 power cabinets.
Never said they had done that but my guess is if they are going to focus on expanding existing stations rather than add new stations, this is what they will do to save money. Upgrading transformers and adding more cabinets and stalls to a station isn't cheaper than just building a new station. Building new stations has a lot more benefits because it's another location option to charge. The only reason they would be going for expansion of existing stations is for cost savings and this is the only real way to save costs. It's hard to make sense out of the plan any other way.
Expanding existing locations means easier permitting and infrastructure and contracts for the location, which are the long delays. Installing superchargers is relatively easy these days. The prebuilt supercharger installs take days to wire up, vs on site construction, etc.
This leaves me with a question. For the companies who have to fill the gap Tesla is creating, can they use NACS or do they back to CCS?
As far as chargers are concerned, anyone should now be able to add J3400 charging plugs to serve Tesla drivers. The question is whether Tesla has anyone left to help other manufacturers access Tesla's chargers, which was the main reason to support the new standard. If that doesn't happen, we could default back to having two charging formats in the US.
Makes sense. I’m sure several car manufacturers are having high level meetings to decide if they want to reverse original plans to convert to NACS
Except CCS is horrible to use compared to NACS. If one US manufacturer (most likely Ford) goes full NACS the others will quickly lose sales.
They don't even have to reverse course, just say they're pausing until they see what Tesla is doing.
If they are smart they will install NACS and at least set up to allow the rest that Tesla does.
So f***ing weird...elon is unstable. So glad I sold my Tesla 2 years ago
when a headline contains "The automaker led by Elon Musk..." then you should know you are being manipulated.