For all its faults in quality and corporate bluster, Tesla was a breakout EV automaker in the United States. It didn’t just focus on building cars. it set about establishing a country-wide charging network that would actually enable people to drive them long distances. Volkswagen, in comparison, has faltered in its own efforts to do so and now finds itself adopting Tesla’s own charging connector for its U.S. market EVs.
Yes, Volkswagen has announced that it will adopt Tesla’s connector, starting in 2025. The connector will first appear on all-new models, with existing products receiving the new connector when it’s updated over time. Notably, the ID.7, due in 2025, will still use a CCS port as it is apparently too close to launch to change. Porsche and Audi models will also transition, while the company’s new Scout off-roaders will debut with the standard when they hit the market in 2026. More details will be released by VW as the 2025 switchover nears, with the company also exploring adapter solutions for CCS-equipped vehicles to access NACS chargers in turn.
The North American Charging Standard (NACS) was the name Tesla gave to its proprietary charging connector back in November last year. At the time, it seemed boastful, given it was the only automaker using the connector. And yet, a year hence, so many have pledged to switch.
The full list is a long one, so hold your breath. Ford, GM, Rivian, Volvo, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Fisker, Honda, Acura, Jaguar, Hyundai, Genesis, BMW, Rolls Royce, Mini, Toyota, Lexus, and Lucid have all announced plans to switch to NACS. Volkswagen, along with its subsidiaries Scout, Porsche and Audi, will now join that list. Indeed, the only major holdout remains the Stellantis bunch—Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram, and Fiat. They’re also the major automaker with the fewest EVs in North America.
There’s one primary reason that has driven most automakers to adopt Tesla’s NACS connector. It’s the Supercharger network. Tesla has established chargers across the nation that are fast, effective, and available. While the company once held this network up as a competitive advantage, in recent years, it elected to change tack, announcing that it would open up access to cars of other brands.
NACS chargers haven’t always been the fastest; CCS chargers can deliver up to 350 kW, and only the latest V4 Tesla Superchargers can match that. Where Tesla wins, though, is not in outright speed, but in reliability and availability. Tesla maintains 99% uptime on its charging network. CCS charging networks rarely do so well; one study in the Bay Area found just 72% of chargers were working in 2022. Anyone who regularly uses non-Tesla chargers has stories of getting stranded.
NACS also has the advantage in the sheer number of chargers available. According to the Alternative Fuels Data Center, there are 37,238 individual NACS charger ports available across the U.S.; 25,247 of those are DC fast chargers. In comparison, there are just 15,661 fast-charge ports for CCS users. There are, of course, around 130,000 chargers using the J1772 port for Level 1 and 2 charging. However, using those takes hours to charge and they’re generally less popular for road-tripping purposes.
VW, inadvertently, may have a lot to do with the NACS switchover. In the wake of the Dieselgate scandal, the company somehow convinced authorities to let it roll $2 billion of its penalty into establishing a charging network across America. That was in addition to $2.7 billion spent on other cleanup measures. On paper, it seemed like a great bit of restorative justice. VW would make right the excessive pollution by via the establishment of a company called Electrify America.
The company has established almost 4,000 fast-charging ports across 890 locations, which makes it the second-largest fast-charger network in the country. That figure puts it behind Tesla’s Supercharger network, and ahead of rivals EVgo and Chargepoint, who operate 2,778 and 2,551 charging ports respectively.
It sounds good at first blush, but in reality, Electrify America hasn’t been a stellar performer. As covered by The Washington Post, the company has ranked poorly with customers as well as in reliability metrics. Flaws with the network include stations with charge cables so short they don’t reach vehicles, and rampant reliability issues that have stopped EV owners from getting a charge. Users have suffered payment issues and broken screens holding up their charges. Meanwhile, those that get a charge often have to tangle with the chargers mysteriously running far below their supposed maximum speeds. EV owners have reported rolling into Electrify America charging stations, only to find every single charging port broken or otherwise out of order.
The agreement between Volkswagen and regulators did include provisions that its charging stations had to be maintained. Regardless, those provisions don’t seem to have any real impact, and the company reported to The Washington Post that it has received no fines for poor performance.
This failure to execute didn’t just put customers offside. As covered by The Autopian, it outraged automakers, too. With charging sites regularly down for months or weeks at a time, and seemingly little improvement on the horizon, it’s no surprise that automakers chose to act. Why continue with CCS charging when the biggest network in the country is so frustrating to use? Once access to Tesla’s network was on the table, switching over made perfect sense.
Whether or not the changeover was inevitable, the whole affair really makes a mockery of the company’s efforts to establish a viable charging network, and the move by both Electrify America and Volkswagen’s brands to adopt Tesla’s standards is basically a white flag that’s waving out of the windows in Wolfsburg.
The real boon will be that over time, it looks like the U.S. will finally settle on one primary EV charging standard that can be rolled out everywhere. Hopefully, this means more access to more chargers for all drivers, and less headaches with broken equipment and slow chargers derailing long journeys. The last few years may have been embarrassing, but the future is starting to look bright.
Image credits: VW, Electrify America
Engineer here. I’d just like to remind everyone that NACS (aka SAE J3400) is literally just CCS1 (see IEC 62196-1) with a different contact arrangement and a smaller plastic shell. It uses IEC 61851-1 PWM for SoC with PLC on top for additional comms (SAE J2847/2 or ISO 15118-2), which is identical to CCS1. This is a major departure from Tesla’s historical communications standard, which is a proprietary implementation of CANbus protocol based on CHADeMO.
What does this mean?
It means that you’ll be able to find CCS-to-NACS and NACS-to-CCS adapters for under $150 because the adapter is as simple as a USB-A to micro-USB adapter. So you absolutely do not have to worry about cross-compatibility or existing EVs becoming obsolete.
Hell, Tesla’s official adapter is $250. https://shop.tesla.com/product/ccs-combo-1-adapter
And you know that means that Alibaba and such will have them for a LOT less.
The real question now is: How long will this Administration maintain it’s anti Tesla stance considering every Major automaker that makes BEVs except for Stellantis has announced they’re adopting NACS?
Personally I’ll probably never own a Tesla, but I’ll probably either buy and or build a BEV and whichever one I choose will have NACS. For the US market it’s a much better charging standard and it actually works!
I think the Administration has reservations about Tesla where they are warranted. But they also encouraged SAE to fast-track the J3400 standard (NACS), and remarkably, SAE delivered it ahead of schedule. On the day that was announced, the government said it would re-examine the CCS requirement for federal charging network subsidies (suggesting that NACS-only chargers may become eligible for those subsidies).
I think it’s apparent that there are people in the government who are clear-headed about what will most benefit consumers, and the ways in which Tesla can both help and hinder those goals.
It’s good that the Government said they’d re-examine the CCS requirement for federal charging network subsidies, but the Government says a lot of things then doesn’t do them or does the exact opposite of what they said. So while I’m hopeful we’ll get a reliable charging standard for all BEVs nationwide I don’t have much faith in the Federal Government.
This dovetails with the electrical issues that seem to hit many VWs, particularly where lighting is involved. A company whose cars have a history of electrical issues creates an electrical charging network that has… issues.
Wonder if they’re still on the hook for some of that $2 billion, and if this announcement means they’ll have to pay up.
Oh wow, Volkswagen is behind Electrify America? Well, that explains some things.
I hope they fix that before the PHEV Ram launches. Shipping your flagship EV with a dead end charging standard would be a massive own goal.
I had heard that Stellantis did not want to act until there was an official SAE standard. If that’s true, then we can probably expect an announcement out of them soon. (Or else that was just a delaying tactic by them, but I don’t see how they can be served by waiting any longer or by sticking with CCS.)
NACS changes the connector mainly as most of the communication is CCS. The NACS connector makes sense in North America because of our power. In Europe they don’t have what we call Level 1 charging.
I also want to point out that Tesla measures uptime as 60% of units at a site working so it’s not as good as reported but as a Tesla owner I have encountered 2 broken chargers.
EA uptime also does not account for derated charging so a 350kw unit doing 50kw is working according to them.
What we have to look forward to is more diversity in charging locations as Circle K, 7-11, Bucc-ee’s, Love’s and other push forward with their charger installs and doo not have to consider which connector is needed.
I don’t know of any other car company that treats its customers or potential customers with such disdain.
Not sure if you’re talking about Tesla or VW. They both excel at it.
VW is such trash. It boggles my mind that people continue to buy them.
They were great, and they had some pretty good automobiles. However all of their new BEVs (the ID series) are trash.
Dunno, the ID3 is not half bad apart from the shitty capacitive stuff. And name, it should have been called just Golf. The WV software has been improving and now it’s functions actually. I’m not saying it’s better than having buttons, but it’s stabile.
And ID4 AWD form especially in Skoda guise without any capacitive stuff is good car with great real life range and resonable perf. I’ve had one now for half year, and 17tkm and with home charging great winter car too.
However I think I jump back to BMW bandwagon with i5 wagon in 2 years or so. I’ve got sever dislike for crossovers.
I think the only thing the ID3 does better than the e-Golf is the range. However everything else about the ID3 is worse than the e-Golf.
Yeah, I think the eGolf feels more premium. Altough it’s got some severe limitations what comes to cold weather. It’s got no heat pump and limited battery handling, so if I recall correctly it stopped working totally in Finnish car magazine TM:s testing below -25C. And heating in even mild winter conditions (around -10C) really tanks the range.
But anyho could see owning one as second car. Or BMW i3, which is better car altough challenging looks.
From what I’ve heard that’s where vehicles like the Nissan Leaf and the eNV200 ironically enough seem to thrive.
I hope Nissan will keep the Leaf and give it NACS (for the US market at least).
Actually leaf is almost summer vehicle in my neck of the woods. It’s literally stopped working in few tests. They are rather popular in southern Finland where there’s less days below -20C (almost none), however this winter has been quite severe.
EV vans are quite popular as they get tax breaks, don’t really see that much miles and running costs in general are less. Fuel prices are after all quite big thing.
Odd. From what I’ve heard the passively air cooled battery pack does quite well in extremely cold temps whereas liquid cooled battery packs that are kept at below freezing temps take a long time to get up to temp and have a hard time staying at temp.
The Leaf and the eNV200 being FWD only doesn’t help much in the winter, though in truth it wouldn’t be hard for Nissan to make AWD versions even if the AWD bit is just a little helper unit like on the new Prius. Just put a driven electric straight axle where the old undriven one went with the necessary hardware and software. TADA! You have AWD.
Yeah, they’ve become a bit of a joke around here.
2-3 years a go there was a test where they drove 4 EV:s from Helsinki to Inari (~1300km) mid winter in 3 days. Roads are not that fast for most of the trip, our winter limit in b-roads in 80km/h and you don’t want to drive much faster with all the animals and ice.
I think it was about -25 to -30C in the north and Leaf stopped way before getting in the cold zone after about 700km and it was about -20C in Rovaniemi where it stopped. Tesla got to there after some charging hurdles, Audi Etron did it flawlessly (apparently it had smalles cold impact of the bunch, altough it was not great in summer) and Jaguar IPace had to drop out of game little short of the target.
Anyho it’s kinda logical that non-heated batterypacks do not fare well, below 0C the power output drops pretty drastically. The solid state stuff (if it ever comes out) shoud change that.
Interesting. What I’ve seen is somewhat the opposite at least when it comes to “starting” the car in below freezing temps. Liquid cooled battery pack having BEVs have a ton of near frozen coolant to heat up before they’ll even take a charge, the Leaf does not have that issue.
Out of Spec Reviews did a couple videos on the subject, a Tesla Model 3 took 45 minutes being hooked up to a Tesla supercharger before it even started to take a charge in below freezing temps. The Leaf took a couple minutes before it started charging and it was charging fairly quickly for a Leaf.
The issue is one of thermal mass when starting from below freezing temps. The Leaf and eNV200s have hardly any thermal mass to heat up as far as the batteries are concerned. Damn near every other mass produced electric car has a ton of thermal mass to heat up via all the coolant. Combine having way more coolant than equivalent ICE vehicles with having hardly any waste heat to heat said coolant (unlike most ICE vehicles), and starting with a car that has a battery pack at near freezing temps or below and you’re in for a bad time and that’s IF it’ll even drive.
That being said it seems like the weakest link for all modern automobiles when it comes to extreme cold temps is the 12 Volt battery. Look at them wrong in cold temps and they’re deader than a Dodo. That’s some battery tech that drastically needs improving for certain.
>99% vs 72% uptime
The thing to remember is this is the reciprocal of what matters. Put another way, with Tesla you have a 1 in 100 chance of a charger being broken. With EA, it’s a greater than 1 in 4 chance it’s broken! I’ve driven my Model 3 95K miles, supercharged in 21 states from Maine to Florida to Texas, and never been blocked by a broken charger.
… but, have you been charge-blocked by a Bro-Dozer truck?
good one, dork
>99% vs 72% uptime.
It’s more than just the Supercharger network that makes NACS (J3400) a good solution. If you ignore the hyperbolic title this is a good article on the advantages that will eventually happen: https://electrek.co/2023/12/15/saes-nacs-certification-is-ready-and-itll-fix-every-ev-charging-problem-at-once/
I read that same article, and it was so informative for this non-EV owner. It really presented the big picture. Highly recommend reading it.
This is what will probably happen. Electrify America (VW) will throw in the towel and give all their stations to Tesla, so long as the government gives it the OK. Then Tesla dumps the garbage EA chargers and puts their SC’s in place and for little cost they have greatly expanded their footprint. VW gets out of the charging business. Everybody but the consumer wins!!!!!!!
Electrify America will go down in history as one the best ever examples of malicious compliance.
VW and electrical issues. Just business as usual.
VW dashboards are always in the Christmas spirit!
“We at VW have realized that we are not the best steward of this network, so please welcome the new owner, Lucas Electric.”
Lucas has better electrics than EA/VW.
Hmmm. This will not solve the problem of poorly maintained non-Tesla owned charging infrastructure. For example, Electrify America could, and probably will, eventually convert all their chargers to NACs plugs. This will now be a NACs charging location that is just as poorly maintained and designed as the CCS chargers currently in use. They will still be unreliable and unavailable prone. Its not like fairy dust will be sprinkled on the converted chargers and they suddenly will be reliable. Electrify America has shown they can’t manage a EV charging network. That won’t suddenly change by using NACs plugs.
Yeah, you can use Tesla run charging stations, which is great. But Tesla’s charging network will not be enough to handle the number of EVs that will be on the road. Other players needs to come into the market to ensure charging is everywhere.
Tesla will gladly use increased revenue from other EV owners desperately using their stations to build more and become the preeminent “gas station” company for the next 20 years
My thought is…will franchisees like Circle K, FiveStar, etc. turn their gas stations into charging stations? There’s a local Circle K in the tiny “town” close to my grandma’s house and it’s the only gas station for a few miles, so it stays pretty busy. I could see it installing a few chargers easily.
It depends on too many factors to know, but I assume that this is kind of your point. IDK. Tesla is very quickly earning a reputation as THE charging station, and their moat is only growing. It’s going to take a ton of capital to convert or expand current gas stations, especially the initial R&D needed to go toe-to-toe with Tesla. Imagine Circle K going all-in on EV charging, but then people still prefer to go to a Tesla station? rip
What I meant is that we don’t have any Tesla chargers around here in BFE Kentucky. So, Circle K adding a few NACS compatible ones would serve them well.
Sheetz here in PA is installing chargers pretty quickly. I expect they may do the same throughout their footprint in PA, OH, WV, VA, NC, KY. I 1000% agree there is a big need in many small towns, particularly those not on the major interstates. I see car dealerships as a charging growth opportunity as well – most towns still have one new car dealer. Let me pay to charge there.
I’ve used the chargers at Sheetz and they’re a good idea; plug in the car, order a meal, hit the rest room, and the car is usually ready when I go back out. It’s nice.
I actively avoid charging at dealerships. I don’t want to hang out there when salesmen are around to annoy me, and after hours they tend to feel a tad sketchy for some reason.
Don’t disagree, but I’ve been through some backwaters in Arkansas, Missouri, Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, Georgia, etc. where it may be Hobson’s choice where you can charge. That’s one reason I’m still running the Toyota hybrid.
Yea, it definitely would. I’m just dubious that Circle K will find investing in rural EV chargers to be a strategically sound decision before Tesla does
Circle K is the one who faces the risk of stranded assets and ultimately irrelevance if they don’t at least start the changeover process though.
That may take decades, but it is looming.
The key phrase there is before Tesla does. History is littered with companies that took too long to pivot and never retained/regained former market share. I’m assuming Tesla hits it out of the park if they do put their foot on the accelerator for Supercharger expansion, but I think that evidence points to them doing a better-than-competitors job at it
That may be true, but Tesla, as market leader and as a company with significant other business interests (namely manufacturing cars), can afford to be much more circumspect about where they expand.
Circle K and other companies whose primary business is fueling vehicles might have to start taking the plunge earlier than they’d like (and earlier than would make sense for Tesla) or risk oblivion.
Agreed, having seen Circle K as a regular charging locations that Bjorn Nyland uses, mostly of course in Norway, I don’t know what ev charging location rollout strategy Circle K may use in the US*, however it seems clear they (Circle K) clearly have adapted to the change in consumer ‘fuel’ preference.
*strategy thoughts I’d pursue…
1. Map out where Tesla currently has their superchargers (specifying which version is at each location) And include Teslas planned future locations
2. Overlay map of Teslas (current and future) locations with Circle K’s current and future locations
3. Include US population density (by location) and traffic / travel patterns
4. In fill chargers probably starting with the highest traveled routes
I would think popular family vacation destinations would be smart site locations too and ensuring you build out a network suitable to reach said destination locations, for example starting with the most popular US National parks
Oh and absolutely your chargers have to be reliable, 99% uptime bare minimum
What I’ve seen here in Colorado is that the hilariously-named “Kum and Go” stations are installing banks of Tesla chargers in their parking lots. Not optimal for pull-through, but it’s a start. I’ve also seen a couple of ChargePoint level 3 chargers in the parking lot of a Conoco in Steamboat Springs. So yeah, it’s definitely starting to happen. As long as there’s a major electrical infrastructure already there, installing a bank of Level 3 chargers seems to not be a huge deal.
I’ve been to a Kum-and-Go station when on a road trip and I got side-eye from my wife when I giggled at the station’s sign for five minutes.
My wife laughed with me when we stopped at a Kum and Go out west this year.
I think my wife thought their name was odd as well but she was more annoyed at HOW funny I found it.
We stopped at one during a trip out west some years back. My kid dubbed it “ejaculate and evacuate”.
How can anyone NOT giggle?
I mean it is the path forward but I only really see it working if you have a lot of parking. The Pull through chargers (put where the gas pumps were) should be reserved for BEVs that are towing and put chargers in every parking spot. However the cost of doing that adds up a lot.
If I was in charge of it I’d have 7-11 do the stores, expand their hot food menu a little bit (I really want nacho cheese and fajita veggie taquitos), put in quality bathrooms (with a paid deluxe one with a self cleaning shower), and TADA!
That being said the cost to install that many fast chargers is obscene
I thiiiiiiiink I saw where some 7-11s have chargers now.
Yeah the reliability had nothing to do with the standard, but the operator of the station
As a regular long distance driver, Tesla was the ONLY brand I would have considered prior to these announcements. Say what you will about the man and the cars, only Tesla had the vision to actually build out a nationwide charging network – this may be the company’s biggest societal contribution. Everywhere I go (primarily east of the Mississippi) I find Superchargers on a regular basis. I am now even more likely to make the next car (for the wife) a full electric.
I think the biggest societal contribution has been motivating legacy auto to make EVs in a serious way (ie not crappy compliance cars in small numbers). The charging network would be a close second.
VW singlehandedly ruined America’s appetite for small diesels and soured thousands of people on EV ownership.
Let’s not forget Infotainmentgate either! They ignored obvious trends (see: Honda/Ford having to quickly move away from haptic nonsense back to buttons), designed arguably the single worst and least intuitive interface in the history of the automotive industry, ignored consistent feedback from journalists and customers along the way that it was absolutely terrible, and standardized it across their entire lineup.
It’s dramatically effected sales and is so bad that the CEO had to come out and admit it was a mistake…and now they’re trying to rush updates but they’re so far down the rabbit hole of their own preposterous bullshit that it’s looking like the best we’re going to get is backlighting for the haptic nonsense and maybe a volume knob.
It’s been one of the most profound and hilarious unforced errors in recent automotive history. Everyone told them it was a terrible idea and they just shouted NEIN while doubling and tripling down on their ridiculously over-engineered solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. It’s the most German shit ever lol.
Not even my gigantic soft spot for all things ‘wagen can get me to love that new interior. Nope. Give me buttons, you hosers.
This statement implies America had an appetite for small diesels to be ruined. VW brands were pretty much the only ones trying.
Who else was selling diesel cars in any quantity in the US in 2015? BMW? Mercedes? 1 out of 4 (25%) of VWs sold in the US were TDIs. Less than 1 in 16 BMWs (6%) and less than 1 in 30 Mercedes (3%)were diesel. I can’t find a number, but I’m confident Chevy sold at least a dozen Cruz diesels. Anytime else selling passenger car diesels?
Apple should have done this with their lightning plug, instead of letting the EU force it to use USB-C.
Side-note: Lightning was outdated so would have been replaced anyway.
I’m convinced that VW built EA just to let it fail and convince folks they needed ICE vehicles after all! (conspiracy anyone?!)
In reality, it’s genius on VW’s part. Make a network for EV’s, never service it, and then when someone does a better job, declare bankruptcy and write off the business for good. Instead of forking over 2 billion dollars to the government, you’ve played the long con to slowly burn that cash. Smart move.
I figured VW was done when Aging Wheels drove to their factory and their EA chargers are were broken. At the VW factory!
Welcome to the electric car of the future! Sponsored by the Gasoline Producers of America.
https://frinkiac.com/meme/S14E07/761344.jpg?b64lines=IAogSGVsbG8sIEknbSBhbiBlbGVjdHJpYyBjYXIuIApJIGNhbid0IGdvIHZlcnkgZmFzdAogb3IgdmVyeSBmYXIu
I believe it was Jason Cammisa who it best: Don’t expect a company that built a charging network as a punishment to do a good job at building a charging network.
That’s a bit of a paraphrase, but it rings true, VW is likely loosing far more from EA than they had initially planned with their $2B investment, and if government enforcement of maintenance and reliability isn’t there, don’t expect VAG to bend over backwards for customers to beat out Tesla at their own game.
VW: want to see us shoot ourselves in the dick?
Everyone: no, not really.
*bang*
VW: want to see us do it AGAIN? WE’LL DO IT! WE’LL FUCKING DO IT!
Everyone: pls stop
VW: *puts another round in the chamber* YOU ALL REALLY WANT US TO SHOOT OURSELVES IN THE DICK AGAIN DON’T YOU?
Everyone: we really don’t, do you want some help?
*BANG*
VW: WE TOLD YOU! Want to see it AGAIN?!
Everyone: okay we’re going to look at other cars now
An EV boxster with NACS and Carplay is my dream car, so I’m glad they finally committed. My guess is they were waiting on the official SAE announcement yesterday.
This is another example of what I mean when I say by 2035, EVs will be a solved problem. We’re a little over a year away from the charging network being a non-issue for most long by distance driving, and less than 3 years away from it being a non-issue for towing. (With pull through charge stations and massive plugin hybrid trucks) NIO has demonstrated a solid electrolyte 150kwh battery in a sedan, so even solid state batteries are making an appearance in a meaningful capacity.
I’ll make the prediction that by 2030, you’ll be able to buy a solid state battery second hand at about $60-80 per kwh.
Your timelines seem optimistic to me but overall I agree. People are so reactive and hyperbolic on so many topics, and EV adoption is no exception. “Everyone is getting EVs! Wait! No one is getting EVs!” It’s always been about the infrastructure, and you can’t throw that up in a year.
I don’t know enough about the tech to comment on battery pricing, but I don’t see why it would follow a different trend from other emergent technologies.
The timelines are based on what’s currently known plus a little buffer. Depending on how long it takes for UL certs to get done, NACS to CCS adapters should be available by end of Q3 24. In 2027, the Lightning 2nd gen, T3, and off lease ramchargers should be available, and the various large scale Pilot et. al charging stations will be fairly deep into their deployment.
Batteries will also be significantly cheaper circa 2026, so you’ll see more battery buffered charging stations allowing fast charging deployments in areas that aren’t major travel corridors. Covid threw a major wrench in things, but the momentum for infrastructure buildout has been growing for a long time. As an example for how things might change fairly quickly, NACS is about 277 volts for AC charging, vs about 208 for J1772. This means you can pull chargers for NACS off of industrial 480 without needing extremely expensive transformers. We’ll probably see more destination chargers in recent years, but I’m less confident about that.
Dear god I hope you are under 20 years old…
Haha, why so?
Because those are wild claims. 🙂
I’m just being a smart ass about it.
I just think that we have a long way to go before EVs problems are behind us.
You’re right, and that will take time. There are still several form factors that will have their first BEV version available in the US over the next several years, so it will be a while before the market overall makes sense at a price most can afford. But it will happen, and it won’t be decades away.
Electrify America is a good lesson in actually trying to maximize return in whatever you put your time and money on. VW could have been in a stellar spot to be the ones to dethrone NACS. Now, they’re truly $2 billion in the hole with effectively nothing to show for it
“Now, they’re truly $2 billion in the hole with effectively nothing to show for it”
Do a bunch of pissed off customers and an even more tarnished reputation count?
can’t tell if glass half full or not…
Is that because the touchscreen interface is malfunctioning?
Depends what it’s full of..
Well they (VW) had literally billions they had to pay to the US Govt. anyway. Getting approval to drag put spending at least $2B over several years Was a smart business decision
Plus it could have been an excellent PR opportunity to show the US market how serious they were about embracing the ev future.
While VW has fucked it up, they Could decide to double down their efforts and commit to making the electrify America Network 99% reliable just like Teslas supercharger network is.
There are several events charging networks (besides Teslas) in Europe which Are highly reliable so it is not like Electrify America has to reinvent the wheel, assuming of course they can make the case this os the future and therefore valuable to commit to the investments needed to make their system reliable
I still want to start my own charging company that functions like a gas station where, you can pay at the charger without an app or you can go inside to pay with cash or card and also not have to use an app, have a coin/cash/credit card self operated car wash, and a convince store inside, and even maybe a service bay or two to handle tires or fluid top offs or wiper blades what have you. Just make the process familiar and not annoying. Oh and pay the people who work there well and give actual benefits and I just sold the business off because I’m deep in the red and now the business isn’t what it used to be and there’s a tweaker sleeping in the car wash and the rats have eaten all the Reese’s Cups
Not being able to pay cash to charge is a major failing that will be a sticking point for people long after the technical problems have been solved. Hopefully some of the truckstop stations rectify that.
Treating charging stations like normal gas stations is absolutely something that has to happen – normal app-free payment methods, an employee on site monitoring things, and a canopy over the chargers to keep the rain and snow off
I like this idea way better than the chargers that are in behind some municipal building for sure. I think Sonic might have the best layout to add chargers for cars, assuming you could fit a charger in the spot where the order kiosks are. They have way more covered spots than a typical gas station, and they already have food. If they added a pull through area in the rear along with some additional restrooms, they would have everything I want in a rest stop (footlong chili dogs, tater tots and a Route 44 Cherry Limeade).
I’ve been pitching the Sonic (but with good food) for EV’s for the better part of the decade now, yet no one seems to want to do it.
I can speak from experience that our Tesla ownership/charging situation has been FAR superior to my brother’s ID.4. In the few times we’ve road tripped to the same location and had to charge in the same place (where superchargers and EA charging stations coexist) he has had nothing but trouble while we plug in, charge, and are on our way was he waits for one of the two working EA chargers to become available. I won’t sit here and say the Tesla is perfect, but compared to what I see others going through we are definitely on the right side of the EV equation.
This leaves Stellantis as the only one who has not committed to the standard. While this will not solve all of charging’s problems a single standard for the plug and communications is a step in the right direction.