Hard to say how this will play out long term, from a branding perspective having your brand going to a competitors infrastructure to charge is waving the white flag to an extent. Will be interesting to see how Tesla leverages this from a revenue standpoint, and will other automakers use the Tesla app? At the very least they will have to use Tesla's API. Will be some awkward conversations at the dealership, here's your new VW there are several Tesla Superchargers nearby.

 

Tesla owners get it charged at cost. I bet they charge way more for other OEMs.

 

If this actually becomes a thing I will buy a cheap EV for local use only, probably a leaf of some sort so I don't have to waste so much time charging stuff at home but still not pay too much for a daily.

 

Home charging is about 25% of the costs of a DC fast charger. It's not worth changing to EVs if home charging isn't the primary method of charging.

 

This is a very smart move by Tesla. This will hopefully lead to standardization of the charging infrastructure, and perhaps other manufacturers will invest in expansion of the supercharger network.

 

^^ they already use the CCS standard in Europe so they'll probably follow suit in the US

 

I charged at two different superchargers last weekend (on Saturday and Sunday) as I happened to be near one in both locations that I went to. My wife was doing some shopping so I figured why not get some free electrons (neither supercharger was near my home - stopping the inevitable - "hey, why are you using a supercharger when not travelling").

Both locations were designated as "High usage supercharger stations" as they were both in shopping malls (Sherway Gardens, Etobicoke- 20 charging stalls and SmartCenters, Cambridge - 16 charging stalls) and my car was automatically limited to charge to a max of 80% (a message comes up on the driver Instrument cluster with the message of a high usage center - you can manually override it).

I can only imagine what will happen at such locations when non-Tesla cars also start charging at these already high usage locations that have roughly 20 stalls.

 

If Tesla opens up their network in the US, they will probably begin selling an adaptor to utilize CCS for use in non Tesla charging networks.

This could be a good business for Tesla. both to make money on their networks which typically wasn't a profit center, and to sell more cars as Tesla's will have the added benefit of having cheaper charging vs non-Tesla's.

 

Hameed - so how was the experience, what charge % did you start from and end with at each location and how long did it take? How busy were the stations?

 

First one (Sherway Gardens) had about 12 cars already charging. I charged to 90% from 50% - it took 25 minutes.

Second one (SmartCenters Cambridge) wasn't busy - less than 5 cars - this was around 4 pm on Sunday and I charged from 40 to 90% - this took about 35 minutes. 100% on my car is 250 miles/400 km.

Experience was great at both locations - however the charging wasn't as fast as my battery was not depleted- the fastest speed I saw was 72 Kw.

Last year on a trip when I charged from a much lower state of charge - 15% , I saw speeds up to 120 Kw.

 

I believe the 120Kw is max charging speeds for your 75D which means you hit peak charging rates which is pretty good. Teslas sold after 2018 have the faster charging capability at 250kw and I believe the new Model S can even do 300kw with the new battery pack. All this means is that you save about 10 minutes on the charger as charging tapers pretty rapidly after you hit 50%...most Model 3s charge for about 20 min before leaving.

I bet that last 10% form 80 to 90% took a long time. It gets pretty slow after 80% on all Teslas.

 

Agreed, I echo your sentiments

 

Here's one source I found on the subject.

https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/20/el...ter-this-year/

 

Yes I know my car's max charging speed rate is 120 Kw

And you're absolutely right, in both instances going from 80 to 90 % took at least 10 mins.

 

I didn't see this coming. Interesting.

The Supercharger station nearest me always has a line of Teslas waiting. I can't imagine how busy it's going to get when other cars can use it too.