They are doing what they need done for their business and then inviting others to join. And way earlier than they did with NACS: https://www.tesla.com/blog/opening-north-american-charging-s...
> As NACS is now recognized in a SAE recommended practice (RP) under SAE J3400, we have removed the technical specifications and CAD from our website.
So something that was previously freely available now requires a $300 payment to access.
I'm sad to see that.
It likely is still freely shareable for existing copies.
what a ridiculous counterfactual. We have plenty of wildly successful standards that weren't just thrown at consumers and called a standard.
all of the USB connectors including USB-C, with it mandate to support so many different edge cases that cause cables to not always be compatible with each other defeating the purpose.
Bluetooth again with so many edge cases that made it terrible until Apple came along and cut a lot of that out in their solution finally made it tolerable.
Hell even a lot of electrical connectors (such as the US outlet) suck: developed in that way due to historical interests, it looks terrible, is not entirely safe (ie. ground does not go in first) and now has stuff bolted on to make up for its shortfalls. (GFCI, in line fuses etc.)
Now there are probably loads of terrible proprietary connectors but it seems like the free market eventually takes care of disposing of the chaff. That itself is a forcing function to get to a better design that users will like. Whereas you have no choice of a standardized connector because some "standards body" made up of opposing interests artificially keeps lousy designs around and forces it upon the population.
Im not arguing for one or the other but its just annoying that standards bodies always seem to get a pass when in my experience they produce a lot of mediocre stuff.
Adding a standards body into the mix is going to add complexity to the process by definition, but shouldn't be taken as a default "bad", since there are tangible benefits to non-corporation-managed standards. Otherwise they wouldn't exist.
BGP, 802.11, QUIC, HTTP, SSH all came from dominating implementations.
https://www.tesla.com/legal/additional-resources#patent-pled...
A party is "acting in good faith" for so long as such party and its related or affiliated companies have not:
asserted, helped others assert or had a financial stake in any assertion of
(i) any patent or other intellectual property right against Tesla or
(ii) any patent right against a third party for its use of technologies relating to electric vehicles or related equipment;
So, if another company rips off your IP but Tesla doesn't think it is a "knock-off product", you sue that other company, you're now in violation of Tesla's "patent pledge". Its an attempt to use a carrot of Tesla's patents to make all the other rightsholders essentially give up all their IP. If you sue anyone protecting your EV IP, you're in violation of this agreement and will be open to litigation by Tesla.
The goal seems to be to promote reuse of a good-enough design in as many places as possible. Noone's forced to use it, but it'd make things simpler for everyone if there is as much commonality as possible.
I think we should give Tesla the benefit of the doubt for now. Harmful use of patents could cause issues, but this has potential. We will simply see if other companies are interested, and if they are it can go from internal standard to de facto standard to formalized standard.
edit: Inter to Intra.
Sounds like jumper cables.
But no, I don't think Tesla is doing those.
But it does seem that Tesla is planning to do those some time:
https://cleantechnica.com/2023/08/19/tesla-plans-to-adopt-bi...
https://thedriven.io/2024/05/06/teslas-take-on-v2g-controlli...
While describing stuff that exists in some form, and usually has existed for years already now.
It's not evenly distributed new tech for sure (1). But maybe it's the false assumption that "if it was anywhere, I'd be among the ones to see it early".
1) See William Gibson: "The Future is Already Here, it's Just Not Very Evenly Distributed."
That's entirely possible at present, I think? Many electric vehicles can send power out to power appliances. It's called "Vehicle to Load" or "V2L".
And electric vehicles can slow-charge off a wall power socket, so they could get that from V2L. It won't be a common use, but it would work in a pinch to get you enough juice to get to a better charger?
<10kw, so not super fast, but I bet most people are really close to the charging station when they run out.
(But no, I'm not liking that Tesla is taking the typical entitled-ass attitude of avoiding all the standards bodies, doing whatever they want, and expecting others to ratify their standard. If it is that good, it should be readily agreed to by the relevant standards bodies.)
This exists: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41975736 But for Lucid, not Teslas. And also more generally as a use of V2L.
> in-the-field recharge for cars that run out before the recharging station
This exists: https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/latest-news/2023/06/30/elec... https://www.taxi-point.co.uk/post/rac-to-equip-breakdown-van...
> a range-extending spare battery pack
This is a real Tesla Cybertruck accessory: https://insideevs.com/news/706702/tesla-cybertruck-range-ext...
What is a "standard" then? Does it need to have an ISO seal?
This is not a standard in the sense that engineers use the term. Tesla is hoping it will be adopted as a standard and since Tesla doesn't appear to want to involve any standards bodies, Tesla appears to only be interested in making these connectors a de-facto standard.
In any case, that is not a standard.