Well, RIP to Tesla, I guess. Elno has been likened, in relation to SpaceX, to a small boy who grabs a stick and runs out in front of a marching band going down the street, waving it around as if he’s conducting them. It’s true of all his companies - when they’re doing well on their own, but it’s turning out that the opposite is true when they start doing badly. And so far they’re only doing badly because of him - Twitter because he bought it and saddled it with huge debt, now Tesla because of what he did on/with Twitter. He keeps getting rid of the people necessary for the long-term survival of the company, presumably because he has no idea how the companies actually work (that was certainly true of Twitter, anyways, and wouldn’t surprise me about Tesla). He also seems to have a pretty warped idea of what part of the companies are actually valuable (e.g. Paypal).
I suppose adding none is a “slower pace” and hoping someone else will someday maybe add their own compatible Superchargers is “a plan.”
I think the “hate” part covers hate that’s fully justified - “hate brain” is just a matter of whether that hate unreasonably clouds one’s judgement about the decisions that person makes. Of course, we’re talking about Elon Musk here, and he’s a f’ing idiot, so it’s pretty difficult to be uncharitable about his actions.
Tesla opened up the NACS standard to all automakers in November 2022, and most of the major ones announced that they were going to switch over the new standard last spring and summer:
Here’s the good news: the standard is open source and there’s no longer any reason that other, non-Tesla charger networks such as ChargePoint, Electrify America, etc can’t start building a bunch of fast-charging stations that use them. The bad news is that, so far, most non-Tesla charging stations have had major problems with reliability. Hopefully they step up their game.
(Musk has been huffing his own brain farts for so long that by now he really believes he some sort of techno messiah from a Heinlein novel and can do no wrong because destiny chose him to do things no mere mortal can grasp. And this is neither irony, sarcasm or hyperbole, this is where we are. It would be funny if it wouldn’t have the huge negative impact it has on too many people.)
In my experience, “Turbo” has been a nickname given to operators that had engaged in behaviour at some point that came close to endangering themselves and/or others.
To my mind, Mr Musk has been one of those people for some time now.
They’re starting to do it in UK stations too, gas stations with superchargers, plus the ones in parking lots and and supermarkets and at places like McDonald’s. The biggest issue ATM is the variety of chargers, I use type2, but there are loads of Tesla, chaDemo and similar ones, so you have to find the right place, and hope the two chargers aren’t full…
My car shows me all available chargers and which are full, etc. It’s not great, but I was pretty comfortable driving 1600 miles. At one point I drove into a very low use park, and right there was a free charger.
Seems like here in LA there are chargers in many Walmart parking lots, or other parking lots. Gas stations starting to have them, and also there are streetside chargers.
But the fast chargers can have long lines. Nothing like reaching your next stop on a long drive and confronting a line of other EV drivers who also are waiting.
Answering my own question, the plan is for non-Tesla cars to be able to use certain superchargers by Q4 2024. Some chargers will be NECS compliant, and cars can use them either if their port is NECS or with an adapter.
This is making it more likely that my next car will be an EV. I don’t want to buy a Tesla, but they do have by far the most chargers, so will want the option of using them.
I’d love to see a comparison between Austin and Decatur with regards to numbers of those things… every time I’m in Decatur, I swear to god every other fucking car I see is a god damn tesla…
Two sources told Electrek that Tinucci was fighting back pressure from Musk to fire a bigger percentage of her team, and the CEO decided to let go of the entire team as an example.
At this point, Elon Musk spends a large portion of his day tweeting out white nationalist conspiracy nonsense on the unprofitable social media platform that he paid 44 billion to buy. A transaction in which he waived due diligence and chose the amount of the offer so the per share amount would include 4,20 in it.
Why is anyone expecting rational, well researched plans for anything from him?
And some 5D chess from an Elongelical:
Think long term for a minute:
Elon has already stated the Chinese have won EV car sales in both cost and quality dollar for dollar - thanks to government subsidies but the fact remains. It’s just a matter of time so he needs to pivot now
Superchargers doesn’t help Tesla grow nor is it a huge profit center worth further ROI
Robotaxi EVs are disruptive with a waiting client list from Uber on down
Robotaxi service to compete with Uber without dealing with labor costs? Also disruptive
Self-driving training data for Robotaxi from existing Tesla EVs in USA and now Baidu China? Best in the world and will make Tesla’s self-driving software untouchable because it’s all about training data
Crazy expensive new car prices and the reluctance of Gen Z to drive? The future is Robotaxi not ride sharing
The UK has more public chargers than petrol stations now, though it should be remembered that some petrol stations can serve up to 16 cars simultaneously, while the chargers are spread out into blocks of 1 to 12. The Tesla chargers are exclusive to Tesla, while all the other charger networks offer either CCS+ChaDeMo leads, or a CCS socket to put your own lead into, and are available to everyone.
I don’t think the future of charging is conversion of petrol stations to charging stations. Refuelling an ICE car is quick, but it’s purely wasted time. EV charging happens while you’re doing something else more useful, like having lunch or going shopping.
Using fast charger, my car, a VW iD.4, goes from 20% to 80% in 20 minutes or less. Charging goes much faster the emptier the battery is. Fast charger charges my car at like 45-85 kw/h (sorry if I get the notation wrong). Other cars can chart at up to 160kw/h or soemthing like that.
At a slow charger my car charges at 7kw/h so it takes a few 5-6 hours for that same charging to 80%. It’s not practical to use a slow charger when you are traveling. I mean, you could charge enough to get to the next fast charger (which I did once ;-).
It’s Honda that is irrationally attached to hydrogen fuel cells, not Toyota. I bought a Prius in 2009, but very much would have preferred to have purchased a Honda hybrid. Sadly, they chose to render their only hybrid offering somewhat useless as “hydrogen fuel cells are just around the corner.” (tl;dr - don’t offer a “hatch-back” with rear seats that can’t fold down because that’s where the hybrid batteries are stuffed. )
@Bunbain: I’ve already seen one of these disasters in Ann Arbor. I’m hoping it was just Car & Driver taking it through whatever paces they felt were necessary. (The ‘magazine’ is still headquartered here.)
@GagHalfrunt: Not representative of the entire generation, obvs, but Jr. Kidd doesn’t just want to learn to drive, he wants to learn to drive manual transmission. Lucky for him, I do own a manual and (lucky for me) the clutch was replaced during COVID, it can take his abuse.
(tl;dr - don’t offer a “hatch-back” with rear seats that can’t fold down because that’s where the hybrid batteries are stuffed. 
)
