With this change, it feels like even though Tesla may be overtaken by the rest of the automotive industry on cars themselves, they seem to have cemented their place as the eventual leader in consumer filling stations.
It was revealed today that the Tesla Model Y took the place of Toyota Corolla as the number one selling vehicle world wide. Tesla is the one doing the over taking.
Wait until the Chinese manufacturers (BYD and friends) catch up - they've been growing immensely over the last few years, and in contrast to Tesla or the legacy auto makers, they all have the limitless coffers of the CCP to back their expansion.
Personally I'd be happier if Chinese products artificially subsidized by CCP government funds be slapped with heavy tariffs to counteract that, but I don't believe that it will happen.
Punishing Chinese companies for being government subsidized feels wrong on a lot of levels, the first of which being we subsidize the shit out of our own domestic industry and two because it presumes that the american way of organizing an economy is the only valid one.
There's rules on how to do subsidies and an international organization supposed to safeguard these, the WTO.
China is violating these rules on a scale that puts the US and Europe combined to shame, the absurd thing is that it's the US who is currently blocking WTO appointments.
It's not wrong if they are abusing human rights/dignity to get there or eating up environmental costs. You might not want to compete with that and tarrifs seem fine in that scenario.
Seems reasonable enough to not want to allow companies subsidized and essentially controlled by an adversary to potentially take out domestic industry.
After all, unlike in democratic nations, China doesn't have to worry about how heavily subsidizing certain companies will be perceived, and Western nations have already seen how bad of a mistake building a strong reliance on a single nation ended up being for the reliability of their supply chains.
While there are some US policies that make it hard for a new manufacturer to setup in the US, it is nothing like the level of protectionism in China. In China the only way to setup a company is if you partner with a Chinese company who owns half of the entity and has full access to everything your company does. That is a pretty stiff block to meet.
Model Y was the best-selling car in the world last quarter. Even if they end up with "only" 20% market share (see Apple's iPhone), their ruthless dedication to operating leverage ensures that they are making more money per car than all their other competitors combined.
"Competition" has been "coming" for 10 years now. Tesla also want others to succeed. It's why they open-sourced all of their patents.
Tesla already owns all the "gas stations," people just don't realize it yet.
Is there much investment required to set up a charging station? There is a requirement of be HV capacity sure, but it would seem some transformers and power electronics is not as expensive as burying fuel tanks underground.
> Companies couldn’t apply for more than 70% of the cost of the chargers up to $150,000 per charger, and Forbes reports that Tesla was asking for only ~$30,000 per charger versus the full $150,000 for most applicants:
I'm honestly not entirely sure, but I don't imagine it's a cheap investment.
I just did a quick google and this site mentions:
> Hardware costs for a Public DC electric vehicle charging station are very expensive ranging from between $40,000-$100,000 per charging station.
and
> In addition to high hardware costs, installation can also be very expensive given the frequent need to install a 480V transformer, upgrade the electrical supply as well as the permitting and increased labor time needed for the project. Installation costs would likely range from between $15,000-$60,000 depending on the specific nature of the project.
Note this an Australian site so it'll be in AUD, and I have no idea on the validity of these numbers. I know at one of our client sites (mining) they recently set up a charging station for vehicles that tipped into the $millions. But apples and oranges in that regard.
A single charging station is not really competitive. Its the network of stations and the integrated software (so you can see in your car navigation if a charger is busy for example).
Has any company actually tried? I don't feel like other car companies, as demonstrated by their public activities, aren't acting like DC Fast charging is critical to the success of their company.
Tesla behaves as though the success of their company is based on being able to use their cars for 100% of the things people use cars for. If there's some potential excuse (Hey I might need to drive to Newark at a moment's notice when my car's nearly empty; I can do that with my fiesta but I can't with some EV) tesla seems to work to overcome that issue. At this point, if you own a tesla (in north america), you can likely drive between any two cities with 50k or more people and always have a supercharger in between. You can drive from Edmonton to Prince Albert with 2 superchargers in between. [edited from 3 to 2; the 3rd is in Saskatoon which isn't really in between]
> Nobody has been able to compete with Tesla with >99% uptime.
How would you know? You're quoting a figure straight from Tesla's marketing and you're not comparing it to other charging networks using the same methodology or the same definition of "uptime".
Tesla's IR claims are broadly consistent with general sentiment. If you have something substantive to share I'm genuinely interested. But just throwing "how do you know" around as a substitute for an actual argument is just sad and tired.
Back your claim. Apply the same methodology and metric to all the charging providers in the world, because remember your claim is that "nobody has been able to compete with Tesla with >99% uptime".
You set the benchmark so prove it. And if you can't do that then admit you don't know what you're talking about.
This is not true. There is plenty of capacity at night and stations can store capacity at night locally at the charger location, no stress on the grid, for use in the day using batteries which can be scaled up massively if needed. They may not cover the full day, but they can smooth the curve enough to solve the problem you have in mind. And if it’s not enough, again just add more batteries.
