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.
I live in the NW and there’s plenty of charging options around here. I’ve never had a problem finding a charge driving my polestar around Oregon and Washington. That said this is probably a good move. The NACS connector is easily to handle and understand. I’m surprised that tesla is giving up their competitive advantage though.
Their advantage to Tesla is charging non-Tesla owners a premium and profiting off cars they didn’t manufacture. Honestly, it was dumb of them not to open the standard sooner – it could have been the dominant charging adapter for a decade already.
I don’t think trading their profit margin on cars for the profit margin on charging is worth it, but I guess we’ll see. A lot of people bought teslas for their charging network.
Their profit margins on cars will continue to shrink as competition in the electric space heats up. There’s also a point at which Elon’s general lunacy will start affecting Tesla sales.
Owning the fast charging space will pay dividends on money spent on building infrastructure over the last decade. If charging a Tesla is 10 cents a kilowatt hour, and charging a Ford/Polestar/etc is 12 cents an hour, that’s earning something for literally nothing.
Yeah, and it is getting better everywhere. I’m in the greater Pittsburgh Region and at least in 2021 (I haven’t paid much attention to CCS lately), I literally couldn’t visit my parents a bit south of Erie in the winter because there were no chargers between here and there and the range was so bad.
I too am surprised they gave up the advantage as well although I assume these companies are all paying for access