Edit June 2023: Ford and GM have 'opted in' to using/installing/supporting the NACS (Tesla) charging connector. See the Connecting about Connectors post. If the Tesla charging connector is going on future Fords and GM/Chevy/Cadillacs then it's going to get difficult for the other players in North America. The remainder of this post is pretty much valid. Result: The best one wins.
Edit Apr.2023: Added a bit at the bottom ** about Q1'23 installations
One topic of interest that comes up on occasion during forum threads and other online discourse is the vast difference in cost, efficiency and reliability of the various EV Fast Charger networks.
We might have dabbled in that topic before but it's due for a slightly deeper dive. I guarantee I don't have all my facts perfectly straight on this (much is hidden by the various players for a variety of reasons) but the overview should be pretty accurate.
Like all public crimes there's three parts to it: Motive, Means and Opportunity. We'll leave it to you to figure out which part is which.
Many parts of this are going to look like Tesla vs. Everyone Else. Thats just basically the facts. One player is bringing forethought, intelligence and engineering excellence to the entire process: Cars, Communication, Site-ing, Design, Power Management, Usability, Maintenance, and Cost Containment, ... and the others aren't. At least not firing on all of the above eight cylinders at once. There was nothing really preventing any of the other players from having all of these advantages, other than management ineptitude, lack of vision and this quarter's 'Shareholder Value.'
See this youtube for many details, well explained!
We're trying not to come across as Tesla fanboys. We've had at least 7 EVs and none of them Tesla. That will most probably continue. There is a lot to dislike about the leader and #1 brain in that organization. There is also a lot to like, including vision forethought and execution. There's an old saying that goes something like: "It's better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt." and it's likely that if the other players put their opinions out there on the twitterverse with the same consistency and wild abandon as he does you would dislike them even more. Why does he do it? He probably has no need to care what you think about it. And while that's probably a form of arrogance, it's also probable that level of arrogance is required to succeed in the formative period of this industry.
Getting back to public EV charging infrastructure, let's look at a concrete (and plastic and steel) example:
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| <- Tesla 2nd generation charging station | 'Other player's third generation -> |
This is, in a single photo, an excellent example of how Tesla is so far ahead of the competition.
On the right is actually one of the better 'other player' EV charging stations. Many others haven't looked even this good inside. We're not going into the 'who' on this unit. It's a somewhat generic example.
You can see many off the shelf, presumably low cost components all assembled neatly. It works, there was little custom design engineering required. The manufacturing process was probably pretty straightforward. It's sold to someone else who installs and maintains it. A combination of lower volume, higher complexity and a convoluted many-part supply and installation chain result in this type of charging station costing three or four TIMES as much as Tesla's
On the left is the Tesla charging station. Note that despite having the same charger output capacity, the Tesla station has circuitry taking up a tenth of the space and a tenth the number of components and complexity.
Guess which is lower cost and higher reliability.
One of Tesla's core concepts is: "The best part is NO part." so the entire thing is designed to minimize the number of parts and manufacturing complexity. Almost all the required 'smarts' in this part of the process is reduced to one custom chip on a tiny circuit board. You can do this kind of engineering at low per-unit cost if you know you'll be building lots of them. You also know that you'll be building lots of them if you do it right. They have 40,000 of them installed now.
Also note that the charging cord is connected so there is minimal wear and tear possible, and that the connections, and in fact the whole internal assembly is sited to be out of the weather and minimize the odds of water damage, even with some flooding! Note the lack of seals, hinges, door latches and water shields. It has the 'bumpers' (galvanized steel posts) to fend off haters in big loud smoky pickup trucks (yes, this is a real thing) built in so that nobody has to install them externally and in fact that entire base-plate assembly may come pre-attached to minimize the effort and smarts required of the installation crew. That base conduit is also a bog standard commercial part to minimize effort for the site electricians rather than being some sort of custom part that requires training.
There's almost no 'screen' (another vandalism target) instead just a couple indicators and everything else is handled by either smartphone or the screen in the car. Again, no parts is the best parts. Even the 'Most likely to be damaged' component, the charging cord is designed for minimal cost and ease of replacement, plus it 'knows' when it's been left on the ground where it might get run over and tells somebody.
Although it's not shown here, there's more to the story. Both charging stations above have a bigger cabinet located somewhere on the premises that handles power distribution and maybe some communications. Here again, Tesla has moved as much of the smarts (and expensive parts) into the single cabinet rather than have them duplicated into the 8 to 10 (or even 20) charging stations that are connected. Thus they don't individually need their own Cell or WiFi connections with attendant costs and some of the power management can be offloaded as well.
One key reality in the whole charging mess is Peak Usage electric billing. Many electric utilities tack on giant surcharges (2X to 4X) on the base rate if the usage exceeds a certain amount, even for a moment. That higher rate may be applied for an hour, a day, or even the entire billing period.
If you are buying individual chargers from a vendor and plunking them down a few at a time (therefor meeting the exact letter of your contract) whoever's the actual end operator of this mess might see extremely high electric rates, which they would have to pass on to their customers.
If on the other hand, you treat the entire (larger) charging location as a single intelligently interconnected system you can negotiate a slightly higher average rate, and then make sure you limit the peaks so you don't stray into surcharge territory. This of course costs more up front and 'quotes' a slightly higher electric rate, even though the real average billing will be much much lower.
Obviously this second system would never make it through a bidding process or find favor with a bureaucracy. Despite having lower costs to the customer -and- being much more reliable.
Tesla (and possibly Renault) are also beginning to use their utility scale ('MegaPack' style) battery power systems to 'even-out' the load. Buying power at very even off peak or solar maximum times and then feeding it into the highly intermittent high peak load charging market. This also reduces the strain on rural charging locations that may not have high capacity electrical grids nearby.
Another key thought is where to site the charging stations and how many to put in. If you're intelligent, nimble and fast ... well that ends up being a comparison between what happens when you pit Corporate/Government bureaucracies/accountant types with almost no knowledge of the electric car industry, against a bunch of engineers [With decision making capability!] who have been given the task of making charger infrastructure quick and efficient.
The engineers have access to literally billions of miles of telemetry data from cars, including where they go and what state of charge the batteries are at (and therefor where the best locations for chargers might be) -and- they'll negotiate land and electric rates and maintenance costs based on intelligently placed sets of 8 to 20 chargers-per-location (instead of 1 - 4) based on that car-use-data. Economy of scale is a real thing. Minimizing bureaucracy pays off. Making decisions without being a 'Government partnership' is massively more efficient.
EA (Electrify America) the EV charging arm of Volkswagen/AUDI/Porsche that was 'forced' into existence as punishment for all VW's malfeasance during 'dieselgate' is, to it's credit, absorbing many of these lessons and is probably the closest to following Tesla's footsteps. Unfortunately they seem to think this gives them license to price 40-70% higher. I can't wait for real competition in this space.
Another fun fact associated with incorrect incentives giving bad outcomes: Public/Private 'partnership' charger locations (those partially or completely funded with government/taxpayer money) have, in actual real-world surveys shown 75-90% usability/uptime. This is a combination of poor software/payment systems, poor maintenance and bad product/process design. Rest assured the people who put these systems in got paid the full amount in their contracts though. How would you like every fourth gas station that you actually needed out in rural areas to be randomly unavailable.
Yeah, me neither.
For comparison Tesla has around 99.4% uptime. How can they do that?
They have real-time telemetry from their chargers - and cars. They iterated rapidly in the early days to get the designs sorted out so they don't fail, an advantage of not being beholden to a contract negotiation process that may span years ... while competitors install previous-generation equipment late and over budget. -and- since Tesla makes money on charging, they're actually incented to keep them running.
Hold it. Make money?
Tesla is charging between $0.27 and $0.35 per KiloWatt-Hour (KWh).
The other big players, EVGo, ChargePoint and EA (Electrify America) are all right around $0.43/KWh. EVCS and a few others are around $0.49/KWh.
Wait, that's nearly twice as much. How can Tesla charge less money for charging -and- make money at it? ...while their competitors are claiming to be losing money on it hand-over-fist despite the (MUCH) higher prices.
One obvious reason is that the competitors have contra-incentives:
"See! We're not making anything on this,
please PLEASE give us -much- more government money!"
"We'll even lobby the heck out of you! ...instead of having a CEO who pisses you off."
**
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| If this was 'WorldWide' Tesla would be ~2500 and AllOthers ~1000 |
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