Tesla Will Supply Free Charging Stations To Office Parking Lots 39
Tesla has unveiled a new "workplace charging" program today, which offers businesses free Tesla wall connectors and will also cover installation, provided they meet certain qualifications set forth by the California carmaker. "Tesla won't cover the cost of operating the charging stations, and the company says there could be other permitting, construction, zoning, or labor costs," reports The Verge. From the report: The workplace charging stations will be compatible with all Tesla cars, but not with other EVs, and they won't show up on publicly available Tesla charging maps. The wall chargers are 240 volts, or "Level 2," which is capable of topping off a battery pack in a handful of hours, though the company says the charge rate will vary by location depending on the infrastructure available.
Smart (Score:4, Interesting)
Very Smart. Its a sales ploy too, if your business has a charger, and you have been thinking about it....
Proprietary Fueling Stations (Score:4, Insightful)
Tesla's attitude with superchargers is a bit odd to me. They made their intellectual property non-royalty from a patent perspective, but you can't charge a non-Tesla electric vehicle at one of their chargers.
Is Elon Musk's vision for the future really one where there are proprietary fueling stations which only work on certain vehicles?
I'm not taking away from the huge progress he's made for humanity, but sometimes he really makes me wonder...
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Seems like the whole "non-royalty from a patent perspective" was also an effective marketing ploy.
Re:Proprietary Fueling Stations (Score:4, Insightful)
Except for the fact that this article is wrong. While Tesla is under no obligation at all to give away free chargers for other manufacturers' charging standards, they're doing so regardless. If the company requests it, Tesla will provide up to one J1772 for every two Tesla chargers. There are also Tesla charger to J1772 adapters.
Tesla has, and continues to try, to get other manufacturers to agree to support their standard on their vehicles; Tesla wants the revenue from more vehicles supercharging at their stations, because capital costs don't pay for themselves. And IMHO Tesla is the only entity out there who has shown competence in designing a charge connector. Take a look at, for example, CHAdeMO (left) vs. Tesla (right) [ytimg.com] and realize that the Tesla connector will charge real-world EVs about three times faster at low SoCs, while being more reliable as well. CCS is better than CHAdeMO, but it's still a Frankenconnector with a needlessly excessive number of pins - to the point that Tesla was able to implement fast DC charging just over the Type-2 (AC) connector without having to bother with the tacked on DC combo pins at all. And meanwhile Tesla is the only one who's managed to have a properly maintained charge network (start clicking through CHAdeMO/CCS chargers on plugshare and note the disturbing frequency of them being down, often for long periods of time), which also happens to usually be the cheapest fast charge network wherever it is, as well as guaranteeing a sizeable number of chargers at each station so that there's no risk of "the charger being down" or "the charger being occupied" when you get there. Even on the general layout, they hit all of the right buttons in comparison to everyone else: separating cabinets from pedestals, so that they can be upgraded individually from each other and you have a clean-looking, quiet setup at each charging stall.
Competitors, however, tend to try to use legislation to force Tesla to adopt their half-baked standards. At least Tesla is now in CharIN. Hopefully they can help steer CCS in a proper direction.
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Is Elon Musk's vision for the future really one where there are proprietary fueling stations which only work on certain vehicles?
Ha! Now I can respond to a car story with a Linux analogy!
The Linux kernel is free and open source software. There are no patents to prevent others from making their own competitors. But the Linux crew has no moral obligation to help Microsoft develop and sell a competing product.
And that is what this post is suggesting, that Tesla already allows their competitors to use their IP, but that is not enough. Tesla should spend extra money to accommodate their competition.
Or did I miss something? I don't really
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The "walled garden" is more coming from different national / multinational entities rather than anything else. The EU is trying to force everyone to use CCS/Type-2, China is trying to force everyone to use GB/T, Japan wanted everyone to use CHAdeMO (they may have to give up on that dream), the US is moving in the direction of CCS/Type-1, etc. Tesla wanted to have a single global standard. They had to give up on that when they moved to the EU, but at least managed to keep their charge port relatively sim
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The "walled garden" is more coming from different national / multinational entities rather than anything else. The EU is trying to force everyone to use CCS/Type-2, China is trying to force everyone to use GB/T, Japan wanted everyone to use CHAdeMO (they may have to give up on that dream), the US is moving in the direction of CCS/Type-1, etc. Tesla wanted to have a single global standard. They had to give up on that when they moved to the EU, but at least managed to keep their charge port relatively similar
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Most of the other automakers have chosen various proprietary connectors and charging standards.
Actually all of the other automakers have chosen various open standard connectors and charging standards that are free to use. The problem is that at the time of Tesla's main expansion these other charging stations were incredibly limited in charging capability.
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No, Tesla's vision is to break every stereotype of electric cars you may hold, so you can get a reasonably informed opinion that for the most part, an electric car and a gas car are mostly interchangeable.
Things like Ludicrous mode, the Roadster and the like are to dispel the myth that electric cars are like golf cars - slow and not very good. No, an electric car is sporty, even m
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He's also selling us batteries which last from 3 to 10 years - built in obsolescence, ongoing sales.
Using Apple type proprietary connectors to try and corner the market.
Brash marketing hype. The guys a great salesman.
But he's going to fail when he is displaced by new technology, possibly hydrogen.
Don't invest in Tesla, it's a "thunderbird" - flies in ever decreasing circles till it flies up it's own ass in a clap of thunder.
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I'm confused. We're talking about workplace chargers, right? So in your place of work, you're going to start shutting off breakers? Or are you breaking into someone else's workplace to shut off breakers? Just because some employees' choice of car annoys you for some inexplicable reason?
Beyond that, are you unaware that if charging is interrupted that they'll instantaneously get a phone alert?
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$35k MSRP. I know, I know, we're going to pretend that the fact that if you want a base version you don't get to line-jump in front of half a million other people on the waiting list means that it's not really a $35k MSRP; I'm well aware of this curious "argument".
"Free" (Score:2)
Tesla Will Supply Free Charging Stations
Tesla won't cover the cost of operating the charging stations
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it does.
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Tesla is supplying the hardware and paying for installation of that hardware. Free.
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So if I gave you a free computer, and said, "Now, you'll obviously have to pay for the power to run it..." would you turn around and respond, "AHA, so it's NOT really free, now is it?"
Wait a minute (Score:2)
Isn't this just a standard 240V outlet with a proprietary connector? Can't somebody just come up with an adapter for other electric vehicles?
Re: Wait a minute (Score:2)
They have come up with an adapter. Itâ(TM)s about $300 on eBay.
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Beyond what ai4px wrote: also, it's not just an outlet. There's data and sense pins, and a thermocouple in the connector. EV charge connectors have a lot more safety built into them than simple outlets. The same goes for how power is drawn - even if you plug into a normal power socket with a mobile connector, the vehicle will measure the voltage drop as it ramps up to determine if there's unexpectedly high resistance coming from the wall, and if so will limit its max charging power. And said plug is tempe
Bosses Parking Spot (Score:2)
And no where else.
At least they learned from one of their mistakes (Score:3)
Re:At least they learned from one of their mistake (Score:4, Interesting)
Q3 2016 cash-on-hand: $3,1B
Q4 2016 cash-on-hand: $3,4B
Q1 2017 cash-on-hand: $4,0B
Q2 2017 cash-on-hand: $3,1B
Q3 2017 cash-on-hand: $3,5B
Q4 2017 cash-on-hand: $3,4B
Yep, sure looks like a company on the fast route to bankruptcy. And never you mind that ever-increasing revenue from Model 3 sales, the increasing orders for Powerpacks in the wake of the huge success of the Australian battery project, the fact that the Solar Gigafactory just went online, the fact that Model S and X demand exceeds Panasonic's ability to supply cells... No no no, clearly, they'll run out of cash any day now, just like we've been hearing nonstop for the past decade.
And clearly the bond market has no interest in them! It's not like as though they sold half a billion dollars of bonds a month ago, mostly at a .3% premium to the benchmark swap rate, with the highest possible credit rating, with initial investor orders as much as 14x what the company intended to sell. No no, clearly bankrupt! Tomorrow, maybe the day after, surely!
And hey let's slip into a world that for some reason Tesla did run out of cash and had to sell shares. 1/5th of the volume of TSLA is shorts. That's artificially depressing the stock relative to demand. Now, I'm sure you'd laugh if stock had to be diluted, but that'd be little comfort vs. the steady share price that would result from the cash influx. Don't think that there would be a cash influx? Have you not watched what happens whenever there's any bad news? The share price drops on the news, then a month or two later it's back up to where it was because of all of the people who want to buy low, even slightly low - let alone as low as you'd get from a major dilution.
And why do people want to own Tesla? Because whether you do or not, Tesla is seen by a very large number of people as breaking a path to the future, in a wide range of fields. Again, you personally may not agree, but you have many millions of people to convince otherwise if you want to see your dreams of a bankrupt Tesla realized.
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Q4 2017 cash-on-hand: $3,4B Yep, sure looks like a company on the fast route to bankruptcy.
Do you know why they were able to show that much cash on hand? For all the supposed smarts on this site, no one seems to be able to read a quarterly result, much less a 10K. Tesla currently has $2.3B in accounts receivable. That's what they owed their suppliers at the end of 2017. There's a reason why one of the first things Musk said on the 4Q conference call was a big thanks to the patience of their suppliers. They also blew out their entire stale inventory of Model S and Model X at a huge discount to he
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For someone who wants to lecture someone about how to read a quarterly result, you should probably start by learning the difference between accounts payable and accounts receivable.
Secondly, in Q4, accounts payable was $2.390.250k.
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That mistake made the car popular to the point of having difficulty fulfilling orders. What you call a mistake, Tesla calls a strategy that has made it one of the most valuable car companies in the industry, and THE most valuable one based on the number of cars produced.
Electricity is incredibly cheap especially in the USA, and the realisation was clear from the beginning: The vast majority of owners do not use superchargers even though they are free. Any why would the, they can just top up at home.
So, two charging ports needed everywhere in USA? (Score:2)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but everywhere I go -- at least in California...there are two separate groups of electric or plugin hybrid cars and two sets of chargers and this seems set to go forward as more and more infrastructure is built out. It doesn't seem efficient.
Tesla chargers for Tesla only (perhaps usable via adapter by other vehicles, but seriously why would someone driving a different manufacturer car want to go to a tesla network).
J1772 chargers via multiple 3rd party commercial/industry groups s
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No, DEALERS are not bothering with electric cars.
Because it cuts into the #1 source of income for the dealer.
Automakers don't care - as long as they're making a profit selling cars, they win.
Dealers make crap all on new car sales, and very little on used car sales. (This does not mean they don't charge above cost - it just means once you take into account overhe
shopping centre car parks (Score:2)
A good location for solar powered charging stations would be shopping centre car parks. Also providing shaded parking and battery backed up power to the shopping centre. Use a drone to map shading to optimise solar power production. It's a project that wins all round.