From "Tesla won the plug war. Enter the age of the EV charging adapter" (NPR).
BUT: It seems to me that Tesla's technology was in the Betamax position — limited to one brand. Betamax was Sony. So looking at that analogy, the companies other than Tesla might well have thought their technology would win, even if it wasn't as good. That's what happened with VHS.
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Like putting wings on pig. An expensive pig. With little or no resale value.
An individual business intent on being efficient beat out a consortium that just wanted a monopoly. Huh.
Didn't VHS win for basically the same reason? A more compact design. Betamax was a chonkster.
Everything I’ve seen indicates NACS is a superior interface, allowing for either AC or DC charging over fewer wires with a lithe cable. So sometimes things work out. Reminds me when the Europeans wanted to force everyone to use the horrid microUSB standard but we held out long enough to use the much nicer USB-C standard.
It's not about the nozzle, it's about the number of tanks you have.
Think of it this way ... Tesla owns almost 60% of all the EV charging stations in the United States. Imagine that you owned a Ford, but Chevy owned 60% of all the gas stations in America? Would you want your gas tank hole to fit Chevy's nozzles?
He who controls the spice (gas tanks) controls the universe.
And now the auto manufacturers want to keep the EV MANDATE intact because they spent so much gearing up factories to make EV cars that for the most part NO ONE WANTS!
Betamax was slightly thicker but smaller, as I recall. (Can’t be bothered to look it up, and going from memory). Also, Betamax was technically superior, if nuanced.
None of that matters, though, as technology simply is improved and transitory, not invented, these days.
Elon Musk linking linking to a rather risqué "plug-in" meme.
"And lead us not into temptation…"
Electrify America says “early stages” to cover up for their demonstrable incompetence.
If it don't fit, don't force it (don't force it, force it)
Just leave it a little room, let it ease on in (let love just ease on in)
If it don't fit, don't force it (don't force it, force it)
Wait a second with your help, it needs a chance
If it don't fit, don't force it (don't force it, force it)
Mind control is what it's all about (no, no, no)
If it don't fit, don't force it (don't force it, force it)
Just take your time and check it out (take your time and check it out)
It's funny how lots of people have vied but almost nobody ever vies.
And when was the last time you ever heard anyone vie?
Só danço samba
Só danço samba
Vai, vai, vai, vai, vai
Só danço samba
Só danço samba
Vai
Well he installed a ton of chargers on his own dime, until the Biden Administration changed the subsidy rules so that Tesla couldn't qualify, and he could no longer afford to to it. Without this ruling, he would still be building out the charger network, instead we had to spend a half a trillion dollars of taxpayer money to do it.
And remember, Donald Trump *falsely* claimed that it was going to force people to buy EVs! What is likely to happen is that the ICE cars, which the industry will only be able to sell in limited quantities, will get bid up out of the reach of you peasants.
"The auto industry, climate advocates and lawmakers have all bet heavily on the prospect that drivers will embrace EVs as superior to gas-powered cars. They are — as auto executives will eagerly tell you — cheaper to own,easier to maintain, quieter and speedier, and charging at home is downright convenient. But drivers' anxiety about charging..."
Tesla won by doing instead of promising. But as this NPR spin says, it's all about 'anxiety', not facts. Voters: You're wrong again !
And the so-called auto executives are trained seals. Pay no attention to that great big government thumb on the scale, there.
How many charging stations delivered, please?
VHS won because it was easier and cheaper to adopt.
Tesla won this because their solution is ready for mass implementation while the automakers solution was ready for government subsidy.
One design was always going to win. Can you even imagine a world where the gas nozzle hole was proprietary?
"In 2014, Elon "gave away" Tesla's secrets to BWM.
Everyone thought he was crazy.
But this "act of charity" was actually the most ruthless business move in corporate history.
Here's why BMW never saw it coming"
Why Tesla is the charging standard.
Read the entire thread.
No they can't because most of 'em don't realize that there are standards for gas pump nozzles.
Considering that the Biden administration did everything they could to force the country on to EV's, they should have figured this out a long time ago. No, wait, let me guess! This is one of the things they put Kamala Harris in charge of....
"And when was the last time you ever heard anyone vie?"
"Vie" most often describes a continuous activity, so you're more likely to hear "he is vying for the job" than "he vies for the job."
Government inefficiency might have something to do with it.
"So far, the program funded by the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law has installed 19 charging stations in nine states, according to the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, which serves as the program’s technical resource."
Maddow had a meltdown when she saw that. Poor dear just-could-not-go-on.
Straighten up!
"So far, the program funded by the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law has installed 19 charging stations in nine states, according to the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, which serves as the program’s technical resource."
Ahh, but they have also "installed" hundreds of bureaucrats at Federal, State and local levels. Plus funneled tens of billions to poiticos, NGOs and other parasites. Not to mention private industry planners, designers and contractors (all at cost plus rates).
From the perspective of the left this is a raging success.
The EV mandate will die pretty soon, as mainstream green passion fell apart after just two years of Biden's war on gasoline in 2021 and 2022. Remember the sarcastic Biden "I did that" stickers on gas pumps when prices spiked?
Hybrids will be the transit standard for a long, long, long time. Toyota did the energy/efficiency math back in the 1990s for the Prius and got it right the first time. Batteries require lots of mining, there's not enough raw battery material to supply the world battery demand across all industries, and batteries force cars to drag around heavy dead weight as they run down. The only advantage EVs have is for central controllers and dictators -- they limit range and flexibility and thereby can be manipulated to meter use and punish enemies.
Bitcoin + EVs = Brave New World culture
A better analogy than Betamax v. VHS is when railroad companies in the 19th Century were battling over which track-width would become standard.
It's wrong to think that "nobody" wants EVs. Plenty of people love them, and there are plenty of things to enjoy about a Tesla over an ICE car. But obviously range, the scarcity of charging stations, and the time it takes to charge them are huge downsides.
Straighten up
Mrs. Hawkeye has a EV. She loves it. It do too. It's the perfect around-town car; we will never take it on a highway trip. For convenience, we installed a home charger (total cost <$350). I resisted at first, then realized that we don't have a Tesla therefore we don't have access to all the zillions of convenient chargers Elon has built. I stopped at a charger farm where there were about 20 Tesla pumps and 2 non-Tesla.
Elon is the ultimate get-stuff-done guy. I guess that's why lefties and governments hate him.
*I do too
Similar to the way Bill Gates practically gave away the operating system to IBM, making it the defacto standard. Which everyone in the world then wanted, and which Microsoft was happy to sell to them.
Democratic economics.
??? I don't get the drift.
Golly. I winced…
They make adapters. I have one for the Euro plug…
Will your homeowner's insurance go up/disappear if you keep an EV in your home's garage? Fire risk?
Betamax had a superior picture and a somewhat smaller cartridge, but when VHS introduced the ability to record six hours on a single cartridge, it was game over for Betamax. The superior picture didn’t really matter when even the best TV was pretty crappy (unless you were willing to shell out for a Sony Trinitron, which was great but a lot more spendy).
On the EV charging topic…NACS is a much better design than CCS; more compact and the weight of the cable is better reacted by the socket. CCS really is a crappy design; had to have been a committee.
On the general EV topic…I like my Tesla a lot, and with a home Level 2 charger on a time-of-use plan, I save a lot in “fuel” costs. Maintenance costs are also quite low. The car has enough range so that I can do a round trip of 240 miles in one day without recharging, which is about the longest single-day trip I need to do. But…I live in a place where I don’t have to be concerned with cold-related loss of efficiency, and I own my home so having the aforementioned Level 2 charger in my garage is no big deal. IOW, I’m a near-perfect customer for a BEV; not a rare situation but certainly not a large fraction of the U.S. auto-buying population. Without government meddling, there will be a robust market for ICE cars for decades, and with government meddling, there will be a lot of people out there pissed off that the government has meddled in something they shouldn’t have, and made lots of people’s lives significantly worse.
"Patents are for the weak" - Elon Musk
Interesting trailer for an interview with Jay Leno about rocket engines. Musk open sources all his patents meaning that anyone is free to use them.
NASA, Boeing, blue origin are free to copy anything he does.
And they are still a decade behind and orders of magnitude more expensive.
John Henry
Example: the giga press casting an entire chassis as a single piece. It eliminates a couple hundred parts from a dozen suppliers.
Ford, gm, BMW etc all could have done it but they knew
Link to the Leno Musk clip
https://youtu.be/DpZj9mvcJYs?si=2PQ4WCrpY4IooHcv
Yeah, my tense was wrong, "instead, we are going to spend a half a trillion dollars so that it happens some time in the future."
Fires in EVs are actually very rare, but when they happen, they are spectacular. ICEs have a few more fires per 100,000 cars, and the "Ford Pinto Award" goes to hybrids, which have the most fires per 100,000 by far. Most non accident related EV battery fires are due to manufacturing defects, which means that they will eventually disappear.
I did my research before keeping an EV in my garage, which is attached to my home where my family sleeps.
hn henry
Example: the giga press casting an entire chassis as a single piece. It eliminates a couple hundred parts from a dozen suppliers.
Ford, gm, BMW etc all could have done it but they knew it was impossible.
Musk was bright enough to see the benefits but to naive to know it could not be done.
So he did it.
Like Henry Ford did with the float process for plate glass. The glass manufacturers td him it was impossible. So he plucked a young naive engineer from the drawing room and told him to do it.
The process is still the industry standard.
Tesla didn't win because their charging plug was a better technology. They won because they had invested a lot of money to make sure that their public chargers were more widespread and available. (Plus, another factor could be that Tesla's patent on their charger plug has expired so companies can make cheaper knock offs.)
Betamax was not better. It had better picture quality, but was limited to only one hour of playback. That made it worse, not better.
VHS allowed for longer recordings, and longer playbacks. And it was less expensive.
With those options put before the consumers, the consumers chose what they ultimately decided was the superior choice.
The Adult Video Entertainment Industry chose VHS and it was over for Betamax.
I'm unclear on the influence porn has had on the EV Charger market. But it's got to be there somewhere.
If you're a certain age and your first VCR didn't have a corded remote control then you can't really call yourself an "early adopter."
It's possible that my interest in the Adult Video Entertainment Industry and my early adoption of VCR technology were connected.
Is this an analogy for Elon screwing the left?
"So far, the program funded by the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law has installed 19 charging stations in nine states, according to the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, which serves as the program’s technical resource."
And there's the no high-speed internet connections installed after billions spent.
This low-hanging fruit for DOGE. Fire everybody involved in these two programs.
"For convenience, we installed a home charger (total cost <$350). I resisted at first, …"
You want to go sit in a parking lot for 45 minutes everytime you need to fill up?
This is the issue that will keep EVs forever a niche product unless they can fix it.
Achilles nails it.
In VHS vs Betamax what drove the victory of VHS was customer adoption
In Tesla vs everyone else, what drove the victory was "competence in getting charging stations put in".
Tesla sold lots of cars, then used that to pay for installing more charing stations than anyone else.
Everyone else faced a "tragedy of the commons problem", since any charging station they built could be used by their competitors..
They were too small to make their own proprietary design, and no one had an incentive to build stations, rather than to try to get the gov't to build stations.
Morons
Fuck the automakers. Nuke the mandates
20 years from now, EVs in general and Teslas in particular will play the same role in civilian transportation that recording TV shows on tape does today.
No one has mentioned the commenter formerly known as Betamax 3000….
JSM
I doubt that. More likely that two-car households like mine will have an EV for their runabout, in addition to a gasoline car for the road. Once I bought the charger I realized it’s a very convenient option. I spend 30 seconds a week hooking up to the ‘gas station’ on the wall, and 30 seconds disconnecting.
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