There’s really no good solution for problems like this that don’t make someone upset.

Tesla wants to profit off the fruit of their labor and extract some value from their product that is providing value to others and fund its development. It also is used as a sales vector since their charging network is a huge selling point for their cars.

Consumers don’t want to be stuck with two standards for no reason other than corporate politics and pay higher prices via those licensing fees. Or be locked out from certain charging stations just because of the model of their car.

And other automakers don’t want to be put at a competitive disadvantage because they have little choice but have to license the tech from Tesla.

And the world doesn’t want to put up with having to duplicate the massive human effort of setting up a charging network n times just because of corporate politics.

I always thought this was the basically the perfect situation for gov’t to step in and “fix” the market by just funding the development of the charging technology and providing it to all automakers for free/at cost so everyone gets the best charger on the cheap.

Wouldn’t the normal thing be for Tesla to license/rent their existing infrastructure out to other brands? It mainly becomes an issue if Tesla decides its part of their car value — but otherwise they could basically 100% own and entirely govern the development of America’s charging network

Elon Musk has repeatedly offered to allow other manufacturers to use the Tesla supercharger network, he's been saying it for years:

https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/tesla-elon-musk-open-supe...

https://www.gearbrain.com/tesla-supercharger-accessible-othe...

He's even fine with them using adapters for Tesla's plug, they just have to pay "their fair share" to use the Tesla superchargers. Of course the devil's in the details who knows what a licensing agreement like this would cost.

And how much it would cost when you're trapped

It’s not just the amount of capital. Tesla put its capital at risk when the risk was much higher. When it’s company was smaller relative to scale. Volkswaggen got a free ride to see if the experiment works, at no cost / risk, and now they need to somehow contribute otherwise to build your own and let antitrust law break all the proprietary channels into one common later (and risk your capital).

Yes, Tesla could allow other cars to charge but require them to have a Tesla-to-standard adapter and an account. But there is another side effect: At a Supercharger, you meet other Tesla owners, i.e. quite wealthy people, and you are surrounded by the brand. Diluting that would be like seeing a McDonalds with people who eat KFC. Tesla may want to own the visual space.

There's also the option of giving a fine to corporations that don't want to cooperate on infrastructure. They should have freedom to shape the deal, in some proportion to their power on the market, but they have to cooperate.