I talked a tech disassembling a Tesla charger yesterday.
He said they’re installing a computer unit that allows Tesla chargers to work with other brands of car via the app.
These are NOT magic dock stations and NOT V4 stations. Just generic V3 stations with NACS handles.
He said that within the next few days, in our region 100% of V3 chargers will support other brands and will be able to initiate charging from the app.
Obviously, those cars would need an external adapter. He even showed me the unit inside the charger that enables communication with the app to allow this and said all V3 chargers nationwide were getting this module “very soon” if it wasn’t already installed.
He also showed me the cool liquid cooling setup in V3 supercharger cables (he was swapping the cable performing preventative maintenance).
He said that NO V2 Superchargers would ever support third-party charging and they will only ever work with Tesla cars. Unsure how authoritative that is, but he said the unit that enables charging via the app just doesn’t exist and has no means of being adapted to a V2 supercharger.
He said V4 superchargers are going to be a least into next year before we see any (he may have meant in this region).
If charging is via the app, it seems like if you have an adapter, it doesn’t matter what kind of car you have.
Since my Model 3 SR+ is limited to 150 kWh anyway, if the Supercharger stations become a shitshow when other manufacturers have access to them, I’ll limit myself to the plethora or V2 along my usual long distance routes. However, during my long distance trip last weekend, out of the three Supercharger stations I went to, only one had other cars charging (2 out of 20). That one was a V2. The other two were V3 with 8 stalls and there was no one beside us for the whole charging time (15 minutes each) so for now, I don’t think it will be an issue anyway.
Are the V3 charging cords still too short for other EV’s to use?
I wonder if we will see 6 ft or longer adapters for cars with odd port placement.
We’ve known this for months since ford was the first to announce they are switching to nacs. I’m not sure why people thought there was some kind of secret conspiracy in the announcement.
…in our region 100% of V3 chargers will support other brands and will be able to initiate charging from the app.
I don’t know where your region is
He said that NO V2 Superchargers would ever support third-party charging and they will only ever work with Tesla cars.
Now let’s see how quickly those sites get upgraded to V3
Most V2 and V3 superchargers in Europe support other brands and charge by app. I don’t know how similar the EU and US superchargers are internally (other than having different plugs). But they were designed before the supercharger network opened to other brands. So a retrofit should be possible.