Tesla Will Supply Free Charging Stations To Office Parking Lots

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.

Comments

Proprietary Fueling Stations

[bit trollent]

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...

Re:Proprietary Fueling Stations

[Rei]

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) 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.