Electric Volvo car drivers will get access to 12,000 Tesla Superchargers across the United States, Canada and Mexico as Volvo Cars adopts North American Charging Standard
www.media.volvocars.com
As part of Volvo Cars’ aim to be a fully electric car maker by 2030, the company is the first European car maker to sign an agreement with Tesla, giving current and future electric Volvo car drivers access to Tesla’s vast Supercharger network across the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
  • 5200@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    This is where Telsa will be making her actual money. That network is so valuable and they have a little head start.

    • variaatioEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Then again, if it will be, as it is supposed to be, an open standard Tesla will not have special advantage except as first mover. They start price gouging the charging, they will get price under cut by competing charging networks. The competing network might not be amazing every where, might be a small regional player. However dammit they do offer the electrons at 15% discount compared to Tesla Station today.

      So Tesla will make money, but not amazing money. Since charging (like fueling) is a commodity market selling same common item electricity at high DC voltage (or petrol incase of fueling stations). Just as gas stations don’t make their money from the Dino juice. It is sold at amazingly tight margins. They make their money from selling the driver caffeine juice or other biological entity fuels in addition to the cars Dino juice.

  • theboomr@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I’m a little bitter that it’s Tesla with the better connector standard but ultimately if every EV in the US does switch to this, it will be a big improvement, especially as regards accessibility/disability concerns with being able to use the connector easily.

    Does anyone know, are other charging networks allowed to use NACS on their chargers too? Like will we see NACS handles on Electrify America eventually, or is Tesla wanting to keep chargers with NACS under their own production?

    • Brawler Yukon@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      They released it as an open standard back in November 2022, so it should be fair game for anyone to manufacture.

      • variaatioEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        it should be fair game for anyone to manufacture.

        No it doesn’t. I have been to the spec downloads page at Tesla site. There is no accompanying signed legal letter releasing the patent rights or giving free universal license.

        They released the specification publicly. Doesn’t make it open standard, unless accompanied with proper licensing documents promising iron clad RAND or FRAND licensing terms. CEO saying so in interview or on twitter is not such legal binding declaration.

        No commercial manufacturer risks producing items without clarity on the patent issue, since it risks expensive litigation and having to back pay unknown amount of licensing fees. If the patent owner agrees on licensing in the first place . No in-house legal counsel will accept “but CEO Elon promised on twitter” as sufficient. They will councel “get that on legal letter, signed by CEO and by head of Tesla legal on we aren’t shafting you here, honest. If we try to shaft you later, you can sue Tesla for breach of contract”

        Tesla has patents on that thing. Until they produce explicit, legal formed paper work, signed and confirmed document to clarify the patent licensing, no blog post or twitter post makes it otherwise. It only implies intent to that end, but not actual binding action. Binding action is a PDF of legal document scan, with lawyer crafted binding text and CEO Elon’s notarized signature under that legal letter. Since that is how actual standards organizations like ISO handle this. They have publicly available database of legal letters including F/RAND declarations for each patent involved in every single one of their standards.

        Until that process happens it is just publicly released spec prospecting to be standard later. Since you also can publicly see patents descriptions of how make the thing X work, doesn’t mean it gives you right to do thing X while the patent protections are in force.

        Any and all other commercial players solidly committing to NACS so far must have bilateral legal agreement with Tesla over the licensing situation (or they are really really dubiously idiotic in their business dealings). However of course we wouldn’t necessarily hear anything since companies are under no obligation to disclose such bilateral business contract. Guide the opposite, said contract probably comes with confidentiality clause as matter of trade secret for both parties.