I love my model 3 sr+, but am under no illusions about the company failings. Elon shoots his mouth off on twitter all the time and it wouldn't surprise me at all this is the first any tesla staff have heard of this plan, which would mean no one has any idea what this looks like in practice.
I've never used one, our Audi is CCS but we have never had to resort to any antics even in 110f weather.
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=ca6c332f-2cc5...
Indeed, there are no documents for executives to sign, but the patents aren't exactly fully free to use either: Tesla promised not to sue any company infringing on its patents as long as they're acting in "good faith," which obviously has a bunch of caveats (one being that you can't sue Tesla over any other patent related issues).
The end result is the same: a decent idea ruined by the lawyers.
Or, more cynically, a publicity stunt, facilitated by lawyers. A lot of "look, you can use our patents!" things fall under this umbrella; they're devised in such a way that the company gets some publicity, but no-one can realistically use the patents.
Certificate built into the car.
Tesla is more of a software company than any other car maker, that's why they'll win.
And of course, use CCS-compatible stalls for all new builds, of which there will probably be a great many as the EV charging station land grab kicks off.
It seems to me that a lot of what happened was politicized just so people can trash the republicans.
This is a poor policy for something that is an essential utility, this isn't just "republican bashing".
It's a very useful policy that can allow both buyers to save on costs, if they're careful; and utilities to decarbonise faster and introduce more renewables. For example, I know that a lot of people are taking out their natural gas heating in the UK and replace it with electric heaters that can be charged overnight when the electricity is cheap.
I would like more demand response in the US, it's a low hanging fruit. We need better protections in extreme circumstances, but that doesn't make it less useful overall.
If you have an EV or if you plan other energy intensive activities smarter (like heating/cooling, washing+drying), you can save significantly more than 20 bucks a month.
This is not a unique Texas solution to this problem. In the UK for example, a lot of people take out their gas heating and replace it with electric ones that can be "charged" overnight at cheap prices.
It's the same think with credit cards and loans: they can absolutely wreck uneducated people, but they're not essentially bad if you know how to use them, they're quite advantageous.
When the situation became a state of emergency, they could have stopped free trading and just provide everything they can, leaving the accounting for later. Or just capping the price to a lower level.
In the meantime, spot pricing would be a very good thing to happen all across America, as I said - it's contributing massively to the de-carbonification of UK. Demand response would help reduce a lot of the spikes in usage, and make renewables integration easier.
Well, of course you pay less. There’s a lot of value to distribution networks in being able to flatten peak loads, so they will be paying/reimbursing you in some way for that capability.
> ”the backlash (in social media and mainstream media) against real-time electricity prices was fierce.”
Grid electricity by nature is scarce at times and abundant at others. So not offering real-time pricing is a market distortion and may not produce the best economic or environmental outcomes.
That said, unpredictable bills can be a hardship for consumers that can’t store electricity or shift their demand. The correct approach is to let customers choose if they want real-time billing or a fixed rate.
Wasn't that the situation that led to a mess in Texas?
These problems are independent of whether you're operating a market model or a monopoly model. The market model is common throughout Europe, but widespread power shortages don't really happen because there are many interconnections between countries, and mechanisms (such as payments made to reserve generators based on their availability) which prevent market failure.
This kind of stuff will only happen if standard protocols are agreed upon.
Poor people can be told they'll save hundreds of dollars on their electricity bill but often don't realize it means they need to turn off the AC when its hottest and turn off the heat when its coldest.
It's good that wealthy people install solar and batteries to only use grid power in the cheapest of times. We literally want to incentivize wealth being put to productive use (in this case, reducing stress on the grid and--in the case of solar especially--emissions). That means more resources for others.
It means you can use a 30-50% smaller amount of solar, wind, transmission, and batteries, roughly, enabling cheaper energy, lower embodied emissions, and a faster energy transition (meaning reduced overall emissions). (And this applies to things like nuclear, too.)
CCS is a bit larger a connector but not meaningfully so and is just as capable as the Tesla connector feature wise really - can support 350kw DC fast charging and automated payments etc. I'd be pretty happy if Tesla switched the cars over to a standard design like they've done on the Euro cars, assuming reasonable adapters were offered to existing owners.
They could convert a decent portion of their network to have one stall with CCS in maybe a couple months.
But the Tesla power adapter is superior. Smaller, cheaper, simpler, and more user friendly than the chonky CCS or Chademo plus in the US. (The European plug isn’t so bad.)
If I could turn back the clock, I’d open up the Tesla plug and mandate all EV makers use it.