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

Smart

[saloomy]

Very Smart. Its a sales ploy too, if your business has a charger, and you have been thinking about it....

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

[glitch!]

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.

Re:Proprietary Fueling Stations

[geoskd]

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.

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.

Re:"Free"

[jep77]

Tesla is supplying the hardware and paying for installation of that hardware. Free.

At least they learned from one of their mistakes

[fozzy1015]

Tesla should have never offered free charging to Model S and Model X owners and instead have charged for their use in the beginning. Now they're stuck with paying electricity costs for these vehicles. "A new “workplace charging” program unveiled today 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." I wonder what Tesla owns after install. The Supercharger network will be one of the few assets another company will buy when Tesla goes into bankruptcy reorg.

Re:At least they learned from one of their mistake

[Rei]

The Supercharger network will be one of the few assets another company will buy when Tesla goes into bankruptcy reorg.

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.