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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.
Very Smart. Its a sales ploy too, if your business has a charger, and you have been thinking about it....
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 care either way.
A dingo ate my sig...
Tesla's attitude with superchargers is a bit odd to me.
Most of the other automakers have chosen various proprietary connectors and charging standards. Tesla refuses to pay these other car companies royalties to allow the other companies customers to charge the other companies cars at Tesla charging stations.
The reason you can't charge your toyota at a tesla station is 100% toyota's fault. Any time toyota wants to, they can put a tesla compatible charge port on their car, and then the car could charge at any tesla station. Toyota can do this 100% free of royalties because teslas charging system is free of royalties.
The reason the other manufacturers do not do this is because they all still cling to the hope that their charging standard will be adopted and everyone else will be forced to pay them royalties. It is just one more example of how the patent system in our world is screwing john Q public in favor of a few large corporations. No patents, no royalties, no incentive for the big car manufacturers to behave this way.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
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.
Point of interest. Offering to shoot us might not work so well as an incentive as you might imagine.