San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Tesla will have to share its superchargers
Road trips in electric vehicles are about to get easier in California and elsewhere.
Tesla has agreed to open some of its fast superchargers to other models of electric cars by the end of 2024, freeing up a reliable and highly coveted network of plugs along American roads.
The White House on Wednesday announced Tesla would make at least 7,500 chargers available to all types of electric vehicles in that timeline, including at least 3,500 superchargers.
In California, Tesla has by far the largest market share of any electric vehicle, and its superchargers are scattered across state highways. There are about three Tesla Superchargers for every two similar chargers from other companies, such as EVgo and Electrify America, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Alternative Fuels Data Center.
“I’ll think we’ll be better off” with universal access to superchargers, said Huilin Lee, who was charging her Hyundai Ioniq 5 this week at a Whole Foods parking lot in Santa Rosa.
Lee said it’s common for her to pull up to a bank of chargers and find they aren’t in working order, while Tesla drivers charge without problem nearby. She lives in Willits (Mendocino County) and drives south to Santa Rosa each day for work as a DoorDash and Uber driver. While she has certainly saved gas money, going electric has some serious inconveniences, Lee said.
Tesla chargers are different in several ways. They use a plug that works only with its cars, as well as an integrated payment system within the car. The closed network means that when a Tesla driver plugs in, the machine uses information about that specific car — its mileage and battery health, for example — to calibrate how fast it can power up.
Gil Tal, director of the electric vehicle research center at UC Davis, compared Tesla to Apple products that are designed to seamlessly work together. While other electric vehicle manufacturers have relied on outside
companies to install public plugs, Tesla “vouches for its equipment and makes sure it works,” Tal said.
The new plan from the White House requires that Tesla and other charging companies make their systems accessible to the most drivers by installing universal plugs and payment systems to its kiosks. It is unclear what the fees for non-Tesla drivers will be. Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
Electric vehicles accounted for 19 percent of all new vehicles sold last year in California, according to the California Energy Commission. Tesla, which was early to the trend, had a jump, but more electric car brands are becoming available from more automakers. Carleen Cullen, executive director of Cool the Earth, a Kentfield nonprofit focused on climate change, noted that opening up the superchargers may persuade more people to give up gas-guzzling cars — a near-term goal for climate-conscious California.
“This is best for the consumer,” said Cullen, who drives a Tesla. “It’s the driver experience, it’s the reliability, the quantity of stations out there — it’s an excellent experience.”
California has 13,699 electric vehicle charging stations, according to federal data. That includes 309 supercharger stations. Each charging station can contain one or many chargers, and Tesla’s supercharger network is prized among its drivers for the direct-current fast-chargers — which can charge significantly faster than Level 2 chargers — that are well located along state highways.
Tesla also has 819 “destination” charging stations in California, as of December. These do not offer as fast a charge as the superchargers but are located at places people commonly drive to, like hotels and restaurants. The White House announcement would cover some of these, too.
California needs to grow its
number of electric vehicle chargers by more than 15 times in order to handle a surge in electric vehicle drivers estimated to hit 8 million by 2030, according to a 2021 state legislative office report.
Tesla already has opened its supercharger network to nonTeslas in some European countries and, to a limited extent, Australia.
By opening up in the U.S., Tesla will be eligible for big federal grants, including some of the $7.5 billion that the Biden administration announced Wednesday to boost electric car chargers.
There are tradeoffs for Tesla. Nick Nigro, founder and analyst with research firm Atlas Public Policy, said the company will benefit from continuing to position itself as not just an automaker but also an energy company.
That benefit already shows, he said. Major U.S. auto manufacturer General Motors has a market cap of about $60 billion, a fraction of Tesla’s market cap of about $650 billion, Nigro said.
“Clearly the market sees them,” Nigro said. “They’ve been in the energy industry for some time, but to most people they’re still known as an automaker.”
On the other hand, Tesla drivers could be inconvenienced if the stations fill up during peak charging times or experience more technological glitches once new systems are added, like new plugs and payment mechanisms. But Tal, with UC Davis, said the benefits to Tesla for broadening its customer base should outweigh those challenges, especially since the company has indicated that it will ensure some plugs are only for Tesla drivers.
“Tesla has most of the infrastructure installed already, and just by opening it up to others they can compete on grants and make a lot of money,” Tal said.