Tesla isn't doing this out of the kindness of their heart, they make money off of charging cars. I bet the money they make off of charging stations comes easier too. Like they really just need to pay for maintenance. Compared to building cars, delivering them, providing service, etc. it's kind of a no-brainer to just make tesla chargers able to charge all EV's and just keep building out that network.
But why wouldn't someone (really, anyone) be just as equipped to build out NACS stations? Each new manufacturer switching over to NACS means the really big companies (bp, Shell) who already have tons of physical land and infrastructure, will be more incentivized to serve NACS, doesn't it?
I'm not sure that the current locations that companies like BP and Shell have for gas stations would work for EV charging station.
According to what I've read most gas stations make very little profit if any on gas sales. It is the things they sell in the accompanying convenience store where they make their money.
An average ICE "charging" at a gas station adds mileage around 15x faster than the fastest charging EV at a Supercharger. If you convert an existing gas station location to an EV charging station that means that the number of cars you can handle per hour goes down by more than an order of magnitude, which means your convenience store sales will go down.
The convenience store sales probably won't go down by an order of magnitude because there are usually a significant number of people who come just for the convenience store and don't refuel their car. Still, I'd expect that at a lot of locations that drop of in convenience store visits from people who are there to refuel will be enough to make that location not profitable.
> I'm not sure that the current locations that companies like BP and Shell have for gas stations would work for EV charging station.
North America is behind on EV infrastructure. The current fighting over which plug to use will delay it by some more years. In Europe there are many fuel station style charging locations. For example:
> 15x faster than the fastest charging EV at a Supercharger
Shell's new station has 400 kW CCS chargers, but the problem is on the battery side more than the charger side. EVs can't make full use of the charger's available power across the whole charge curve. Better, fast charging batteries are needed.
Well I think the business model would change a bit and e.g. you’d probably see convenience stores being converted into something more lounge-y. No matter how you slice it, having real estate at every high-traffic location in America is a much better position to be in than not having such real estate. Especially given that those companies have gargantuan war chests, are technologically, logistically, and financially extremely sophisticated, etc etc. Not to mention they also own the fuel sources that generate most of the electricity, and they’re the largest players even in the next generation energy sources.
There might be something I’m missing, I just don’t see why this would be anything close to a durable advantage for Tesla.
Don’t know about BP or Shell but local power companies seem prime to take over that space. Tesla relies on them for power. I don’t see why the local power companies won’t cut out the middle man that’s Tesla and service customers directly.
In theory, they could do this, but local power companies are so regulated and bureaucratic that they'd never be able to take on building and maintaining charging stations for cars. At least that's how it is where I live (I have family that works at my local power company)
