Hello! I agonized over this script for a long time. It is, after all, not a video I had hoped to make. But, as I said, I only have petty, ego-based reasons to be upset by this news. It would be weird to ignore it, so with this video I'm just ripping the band-aid off. Here's hoping it doesn't sting too much. During all this agonizing, a lot of stuff ended up getting removed, some in error. Hence the puppies. To tie a loose end, while Electrify America does accept normal payments (at least, when all the equipment is working) I have to use their app to take advantage of the free charging sessions my car came with. As soon as those run out, I probably won't bother anymore! I don't fast charge enough to make their membership worth it. Good job, Tesla. Now you can have your cake and eat it, too.

"Technologists, don't make it weird, don't make people jump through hoops" is like the child's prayer against evil of the modern age.

As an IT engineer I am pretty worried by the increasing reliance on software and apps for the most basic of functions like payments. The complexity of something should be inversely proportional to its criticality, and having to rely on a poorly coded phone app that is itself running on a device with a long list of possible failure points is just a bad bad bad idea in general.

it's somehow comforting to hear that even outside of gaming ea remains a major pain

As a fellow EV driver, I soooo much agree with your "rant" at the end! We need "fuel" stations for DC fast charging - not another subscription... Thanks for a great video - as always!

One of my strongest held beliefs is that no physical product or service should ever *need* an app to function, period.

You know what else gas stations do? TELL YOU THE PRICE! There's a gigantic illuminated sign with numbers on it facing the road that tells you how much it costs. One of the huge issues I see right now is insane levels of price gouging at smaller charging stations, and you basically have to get there and look at the screen (here in the UK) to work out beforehand what the price per kWh is. Being able to drive past somewhere and work out what the price is both for AC and DC charging, and then benchmark that against the next place, will be crucial for future adoption. Too many times I've shown up somewhere and balked at the price as being two or three times what it is at my local charging point and just driven off.

Nowadays, in France, pretty much every highway gas station have now installed EV charging stations, so that's is pretty neat

40:15 "While I know some EV drivers loathe the idea that charging locations might start resembling gas stations" I'm with you on this one, I really hope they _do_ start resembling gas stations. I like roofs, and fountain drinks, and the windshield squeegie. Gas stations have it figured out when it comes to physical layout, almost like they've been making incremental improvements for a century now. EV's don't need to reinvent that particular wheel.

To add to your spicy bit: people lend their cars out (especially parents). If charging cost is bound to the car then you need to manually go back and sort the payment of the charges with the person who borrowed your car. Instead of, you know, them paying for it immediately

"The presumption that new and different always equals better." This sums up my thoughts as well. When I was going through engineering school to become a mechanical engineer, some of our classes dealt with the reality that new technologies pretty much always have teething issues, or don't actually solve a problem that needed solving and often end up needlessly complicating a system that already works. I completely agree with your position on this. I too carry a wallet with those plastic rectangles and have no issues using them to pay for goods or services. They just work.

You've done it once again. I watched a 48 minute video about something electric car connectors and I don't plan on owning an electric car at anytime in the foreseeable future. Very interesting and fun video to watch. Thanks!

I do Waze map editing. Recently, a 3rd party worked with Waze to add all their chargers to Waze. The problem is that all chargers had to be verified by map editors. The number of broken, blocked off and disconnected chargers that were listed as active is crazy.

In the UK, it is fairly common to see electric chargers at either service stations or at petrol (gas) stations, even having signs on the road advertising the price per kwh like petrol prices. It is such a nice experience to be able to charge whilst under a canopy that is lit and have a shop as well, and also someone to talk to in case of something going wrong.

London/UK has a plug-n-charge solution that connects to your house power bill. With the movement to LED streetlights, there was extra capacity so custom plugs were added to the base of some streetlights. You keep a powercord with an onboard computer in your trunk, and that computer keeps track of your power usage and reports it back.

As a developer in the software world, we used to say, "The nice thing about standards is that they're so many to choose from." One of the EV barriers, obviously, is/was the types of chargers and their connectors. Not only does it complicate the infrastructure, but it tends to confuse and frustrate users, and probably steers people away from buying their first EV. Thank you for the thoroughly researched video covering this topic. I think your video will have some influence on the direction companies take - and I'd not be too surprised if they requested a consultation with you. I think EVs have a lot more barriers to get thru - before we can say they are "the wave of the future" - but the connector problem is probably going away, finally.

Totally agree on the 'hot take'. Absolutely. I want electric charging stations to look like a petrol station too. They should have cover, they should have staff, and I should be able to pay for the recharge with physical money if that's all I have on me.

I feel like chargers at your workplace are significantly under-appreciated. I used them regularly and I think it's a fantastic use the ~8 hours that the car is not moving.

TC is a class act. He is willing to admit he bet on the wrong horse but that it's really nothing more than an ego blow. Which he admits. When presented with new information he adapts and accepts it

What you described at the end is already happening in Europe. Utilities are placing normal AC charging points on the side of the road. A couple of them are even working on billing it straight to your home power bill (this already works in London in the UK, iirc).

Good points about re-inventing the wheel. I always thought gas stations would voluntarily franchise electric chargers and treat them as pumps. I assumed it would be as easy as buying the charging stations directly from Tesla and installing it on their property. That hasn't happened yet, but still could.

You know what I appreciate a lot about your videos? That you take the time to make sure the closed captions are excellent, despite it probably taking significant effort for videos as long as yours.

The pause after "They will sell you a powerwall" was brilliant. Over here in Europe I see canopies over most charging stations for ev's. Great place for solar panels such a canopy as well.

Regarding the whole paying from the infotainment screen... I couldn't disagree more. We have things figured out, but those things are FAR more prone to damage from the elements. I think manual pay should be an option, but adding more methods could prevent your issue with broken chip readers. Keeping all payment processing internal limits wear and tear on debit processing. Good example of why this already being in place: *Current* card readers. They often have tap to pay... and chip reading... AND the magnetic strip reading still. All 3. Because if 1 breaks, the other two still function. I don't think anyone would be for completely removing debit processing from fast chargers, but I think most are for redundancy.

Thanks for putting this out, despite your previous stance on this. One thing I might add is that, here in the UK, *every* single non-Tesla DC charger I encountered and checked the pricing on, is far more expensive than Tesla's Superchargers (one example: 35p/kWh for 250kW (or 47p on-peak) vs 67p/kWh for 50kW, less than 50 meters apart), and all networks use CCS2 here. Similar experience while roadtripping in the EU as well.

Oh and also, Alec, you are an absolute legend for making an entire 50-minute video about why you were wrong for your audience of millions. I consider myself relatively non-stubborn, but even I am in awe of your candor. A lesser man (by which I mean almost anyone, including me) would never have addressed this.

Another point for your gas station thoughts: Signs visible from the highway and easily findable without GPS is also missing from the charger networks.

37:21 thank you for the new word. I shall now use Automagically, at least 3 times a day.

I really appreciate the quality of your captions, especially how well you include tone and timing jokes/info in them. You’d be surprised how many people don’t bother.

Honestly, I think the future of the highway charging station is something like Buc-ees. Hundreds of access points, stuff for people to do, and make it more of a reason to stop other than just charging.

This is why I love this channel. Reasonable takes and willingness to adapt to new developments without much huff. If more people were reasonable like Alec, we'd be better off. And probably have a lot more bubbly jazz. Hey wait, where is the jazz??

Great job covering everything so thoroughly! I'm glad to see that you're cautiously optimistic about this development. I do think the transition period will be very interesting, probably not always in good ways. Some of the nice things about Tesla's network have been the result of its walled-garden nature, not inherent upsides (for example, the whole "cross-compatibility testing" is something they never had to worry about), and I expect some of those issues to pop up in the early days. But as you say, Tesla does enough stuff right that simply making people compete with them is a good thing for the charging industry as a whole.

Brilliant, as always👋 I have no idea what the situation with ev chargers is like here in Australia, but at least I have a graspable benchmark to compare it against when I need to.

Do you know what I love the most about your videos? Your loyalty to logic.

As someone who helped drive across country in an electric truck recently, I was happy to see that trashcans were added for the evgo chargers at Casey's gas stations. After we realized we were *that* pleased just because of a trash can, we started talking about many of the above points missing for EV's that ICE vehicles received.

As always, Great Job! I love the clarity in which you speak and the wealth of information you give. Thanks, and keep up the great work.😊

Awesome "Amtrak" shirt , I once had the coffee mug version of that T-shirt. I was fascinated by passenger trains in my youth . I would feel fortunate whenever witnessing them shortly after they depart from Toledo flying westward through Port Clinton and Grey Town. Road crossing went quickly as the RXR crossing lights would be finished by the time the gate was down, then only to return vertically. Good train memories I have in regards to Amtrak. Thank you. I always look forward to your videos'. Excellent work!

Norway has 2 simple "right to charge" laws that helped adoption of EV's there. 1) Tenants can install their own chargers without having to beg permission from landlords. 2) new construction have to be pre-piped so chargers can be installed without having to drill through several feet of concrete

I love the greater charging ecosystem criticisms you bring up. Everyone in the industry should take these points seriously. Convenience is still key and building an artificial moat is backtracking progress.

I love plug and charge! We should have the ability to do either. Either have the car handle the payment or allow the user can do what they want

11:25 Engineer here--and I fully agree. I'm also working on the design for an EV charge port mounting while listening to this video!

100% agree with you on needing payment systems on each charger. Yes, it raises complexity and maintenance, but it increases reliability in the "I'm standing here right now" sense - not being able to charge your 0% car because some web service is down in the cloud or there's a problem with your account would be infuriating.

In Norway they have gas station style charging locations, canopy to shelter people, show with a deli or restaurant.Looks like the future. Hopefully as charging gets faster this will become more popular.

I’m kind of surprised that Love or pilot hasn’t just said they are rolling out EV chargers across the county. They have the infrastructure already there, now it would just be building the chargers themselves on there lots. Set it up like a normal gas station, make people insert cards, charge, then drive away just like a gas station. Plus loves and pilots typically have restaurants in them, they all have restrooms, employees, and places for you to sit in them, as well as are located near other businesses like restaurants and hotels. You could have a nice sit down meal while your car charges and get a break from sitting in it all day while on a road trip. Since they are already located on major roadways, they have great locations already.

Came to say i love your channel. Great information well delivered. Please keep it up!

An electrical engineer here. You're absolutely right about exceeding current rating of wires for limited amount of time. Conductors are going to survive that just fine. Insulation suffers degradation with over time at high operating temperature, shortening its life; in extreme cases insulation may catch fire. Degradation is exponential with temperature. For homes it's really important not to play with this.

I appreciate the point you made about charging needing to be more accessible to renters! I asked my landlord about installing EV charging in my apartment complex (which has hundreds of residents and multiple EVs), and they just ignored me. I'm fortunate enough that I can charge my Leaf at work, but not being able to charge where people live is still a big barrier to EV ownership.

I particularly like plug-and-charge for the situation where someone is borrowing my car. I can just say "plug in at any EVgo and it should just work". Yeah, it's not perfect, but it's pretty okay.

I was about to comment about the providers trying avoid transaction costs with about 7 minutes left in the video. I even said I'm sure you thought about this in my initial comment. Then I thought I should finish the video first. Sure enough you had considered it and talked about it. I greatly appreciate your ability and patience to produce such thorough and well thought out videos.

I love these videos and don't care how long they get. The fact you can speak for more than 5 seconds at a time without a jump cut shows you value your viewers enough to write a script and follow it rather than improvising and heavily editing your rants into something watchable.

Glad to see standardization if it is on a high quality and well functioning design. 😊

Great, clean race Kireth. Enjoyed that alot, thanks for sharing!! 😊

As a Software Engineer, I love your use of "Automagically"

Being able to use an electric car's enormous battery pack as a backup power supply for my house would actually make me consider buying one.

Great and well thought out arguments all the way around, congrats!

I appreciate how clearly you enunciate - it means I can watch on 2x speed w/out missing words.

29:40 My attention was split, and when I came back, I saw a video of puppies and Alec saying "To be clear I don't WANT them to die."

19:00 my old Tesla Model S had a CCS2 adapter. That adapter had a thermostat that disconnected the control pilot of the adapter got too hot. That in turn immediately halted the charging session. The thermal conduction to the charger and car thermistors should cover it. But if not, there was a other failsafe. Never had it happen. Good to know it was there. 👏

I remember the Mobil Speedpass. You had a little dongle on your keychain that looked like a stubby pencil that you held to the Mobil Pegasus logo which would then light up to show authorization. I used to go to a Mobil in Santa Clarita, CA that was equipped with it; but I don't remember ever seeing at another Mobil further North in California.

Tesla’s new superchargers, by requirement through NEVI requirements, will have point of sale credit card readers, and displays for the rate costs. They also announced on their earnings call for Q1 of this year that all of their vehicles will have bi-directional charging by 2025. I’d anticipate their Cybertruck to be the first vehicle to include it. There is also a bill in California that would make it mandatory for all vehicles sold in California and if that passes it’s likely to become necessary across the country.

Agreed on the bucket and squeegee being sorely missed at charging stations... and tire pressure machines please. Also 100% agree on having card readers on every charger. At least contactless ones.

I'm not sure if you've covered this but have you ever covered MIDI and how all keyboard, synth, sampler manufacturers in the early 80s agreed on how to communicate between different manufacturers?

On the subject of canopies, I live in the UK and there’s a Shell petrol station near my house that has a 50kW DC charger, but it isn’t under the canopy 🤣 So you can stay dry while pumping fossil juice into your car but if you’re just there for electrons you might be getting wet.

You won't inhibit vandals without a station attendant to at the very least yell at the vandals and call the police to get help. And as long as copper is a valuable commodity the vandals will keep striking.

Around here, Tesla was smart to get an agreement with Wawa to have Superchargers in the same place as a gas station. All the advantages of a gas station to stop at with almost no downsides aside a lack of canopy since they still take normal parking stands.

We need to see banks of EV chargers at gas stations. Having them at libraries, grocery stores, etc is convenient, but they're essentially just abandoned after installation. By making them part of the existing petrol network they get treated the same as petrol pumps. So yeah, sometimes they go down, but the gas stations have a vested interest in maintaining their equipment. Random parking lots don't.

Hi! Great explanation even for someone in Europe. In Portugal, gas companies like Galp, Prio and Repsol provide electric chargers. Galp and Prio are also electricity sellers and provide NFC cards. Galp also installs and runs public street chargers in streets or shopping mall parks. Then, there is a retailer called Continente (belonging to Sonae) which as entered the business by providing charging in their shopping malls but you can't choose the electricity provider and they also give you back between a max of 1.5€ to 2.3€ in their fidelity card to be spent on purchases. This retailer is the most interesting as in some of their malls the parking lot is covered in solar panels: they provide shadow to any parked car and produce their own electricity. Pretty neat uh?

High quality vid as always. I learned some things. I'm in a state that has mandated no new gas vehicles after a certain date but yet is only just now putting into building codes a requirement to include charging capability in some new residential construction - but not large apartment buildings. If home ownership is seen as a big class divide now, wait until no new gas vehicles can be sold here. At that point, owning an EV will be seen as way more of a class distinction that it is now. That doesn't sound like good times.

The Tesla charger at Kettleman City (roughly 1/2 way between LA/SF on I-5) is exactly what you want. Roughly 40-50 chargers, well lit, 24 hour access to an enclosed lounge with vending machines, bathrooms, etc. a canopy (with solar on the roof, a no-brainier), and I think 250kw charging. It should be the model for all off-hwy charging, but sadly it seems pretty unique.

I have always assumed that the first truly viable open charging system would call itself Standard Electrons.

I live in New York State, and I recently discovered that EvolveNY Charging Stations are installing free CHAdeMo/CSS to Tesla (North American Charging Standard) adapters next to all their DC Fast Charging facilities

I live in a whole other country, New Zealand, where about half the cars have CCS-Type2 and the other half have CHAdeMO. The Teslas have CCS-Type-2. Almost all the DC chargers have both types of connectors, with some having two CCS and one CHAdeMO per dispenser. It's super fun to charge three cars on one 300kW charger. We will continue to import vehicles with both types of connectors. We have a few charging networks and I don't enjoy signing up to networks to use chargers in different regions. There is one network that I have tried to sign up for twice, and I have still never managed to get it to work. However, I have done about 400 or 500 charge sessions and only have suffered about 5 charge locations I could not get to work. Mostly the two networks I use are very reliable. They do the maintenance and they upgrade and replace old equipment. We have some DC chargers at petrol stations, But mostly DC chargers are at supermarkets and cafes. I think the petrol station chargers are starting to get more common, I figure that on the main north-south highways, there will be pull through petrol station like chargers popping up in the next few years. Quite a lot of car parking buildings have AC chargers for all day charging, and they use the same tags and apps as DC chargers. We also have some AC chargers for residents in city neighborhoods that have no off street parking. I made some videos about most of this stuff.

Love the fact that you're wearing an Amtrak shirt in this one. Electric cars are nice, but I think that it would be much more practical to implement electrified public transit given the issues with obtaining the raw resources for every car in North America to have a battery pack.

From someone who has been working in the EV charging industry for over a decade, I will say that you completely nailed it. I may also add that you nailed it in an entertaining and easy to understand (and share) manner. Keep these videos and perspectives coming.

Here in the Netherlands (and other European countries) we have an EV charging company called Fastned which has canopies and pull thru chargers along many highways, they often don't have other services themselves but I tend to see them at or close by existing fuel stations and rest areas which makes the use of those places services possible (I want to add that I don't own/use an electric vehicle and probably won't for a long time and these are observations while driving by and looking some stuff up while typing this comment)

This is such an awesome and intelligent video. I’m sending this link to every EV owner I know. Thank you!!!

One additional thing from your gas station analogy that I'd like to see - a large sign by the roadside displaying the price you'll be paying per unit of charge. So you can decide whether even to charge there, or look for somewhere cheaper.

I strongly agree with what you said in the ending bit about how technological progression should be done to solve problems. The dogma of progress for the sake of doing what's cool instead of doing what's practical is something that i've been frustrated by before, and i'm glad to know others feel the same way.

I had a Mobil speedpass, except I have the one where it was a little box that sits on the back shelf of your car on the side that has the gas pump, so that you can just pull up and it automatically starts the pump up with your card and you can just stick the pump in and start fueling. I quickly found that you had to pull up exactly right to the pump for it to work, and also I wasn't making enough money at that point that I could just casually fuel up all the way every time without thinking about it. Are those still around? I don't think I've seen a Mobil station in awhile. I think they're less common in the part of California where I live now.

Absolutely brilliant video I'll even include the puppies segment in that comment. Clear information that makes total sense Thank you

Gas pumps have already figured out how best to handle the transact of resupplying of fuel to a vehicle. I insert or tap my card, then select my resupply type, then connect the it to my vehicle. EV charges could reverse the "select" and "connect" order so your vehicle can tell the charger what types of resupply are available, but other than that it should be the exact same.

Over here in Norway, gas stations have started building chargers (and calling themselves "Energy stations") as they get more people through the door when charging, Although some chains just let a 3rd party set up a couple of chargers much like the ones you describe, with most of the same issues. Not uncommon to see Tesla chargers next to the large highway service stations either, especially if there also happens to be some sort of diner/resturant thing near it.

40:25 The do in Europe! 🌍 TotalEnergies and Shell is literally swapping some of their gas station pumps with EV chargers. 😁👍

Alex, excellent and thorough as usual but this video is a real tour de force! Thanks!

Speedpass at the gas station was SUPER handy for me, because I was constantly driving for work or company cars at the time. So I could just swoop it over the scanner thing and automatically charge the fuel to the correct account. I may have been one of the only to use it, but it worked for that VERY small niche audience. :)

Speedpass also briefly had a large EZpass type transponder that allowed you to simply pull up and pump gas, but the transponders went in the rear side window, and were frequently stolen by car wash employees and their support was discontinued.

I don't know why, but that pause at the end after saying Tesla will sell you a Power Wall cracked me up! 😂

Great video, and worthy of an update. The NACS standard is now finished, and a real standard, in record time. CCS to NACS adaptors are available (but not yet enabled at Superchrgers yet, but likley very soon). Cybertruck have Vehicle to Load (240 V and 120 V sockets even) and Vehicle To Grid. And Cybertruck has an 800 volt architecture. More and more charger makers are supporting NACS. Government funding has been released to fix a lot of bad chargers. v4 Superchargers are being installed in the USA (though seem limited to 400 volts, although expected to change soon). Lots more to do, but things are looking up.

Us automotive engineers pretty much always advocate for some mechanical override, just sometimes the sales guys dont like the extra ~$2 BOM cost... The overrides are generally simple enough to design, wires and pullies. Excellent points about the protection of the chargers from the elements. one big challenge we face is finding ways to protect the charger on EVs, currently we're solving this vehicle-side with complicated features. an overhead canopy would make this easier.

I never understood why charging banks didn't look like gas stations already. People are more comfortable seeing/using what they already know, and everyone knows what gas stations look and act like. Having an attendant on duty to help out with technical issues would also be a big plus. Now that everything is actually going to standardize, connector-wise, perhaps we can finally see this apparently very novel idea take hold.

With all the issues about the charging cables, the charging stations, lack of payment options and out of the way locations. Makes me want to go out and buy an electric car and have all those inconveniences, headaches and higher cost, just to drive around.:( ☹ Really I agree with you, when you stop to recharge your car, the amenities of a gas station would sure come in handy while you waiting for your car to get recharged!

Thanks for going into the details behind the various charging standards. While I don't yet have an EV this does open my eyes to some of the issues that currently exist. I really liked how you explained the....oh hell I'll just say it - the puppies were the best part! Great content, but...but...the P U P P I E S !!!!

I agree 100% on the payment issue. I don't want to have to sign up for anything or fiddle around with my phone just to get a charge started. Just accept credit/debit cards! This should be universal. Anything else is just weird and most likely involves having to sign up for something that will only work with that one charging network.

Thanks for this. It's unfortunately uncommon, in the tech field in particular for people to change a position based on changing facts. I recall your earlier videos on VHS vs. Beta, where there are folks to this day who are still convinced that the defeated format was best. (Something you did a very nice job of debunking). I think charging stations will improve markedly over this decade, it takes a critical mass of customers to create a viable business case. I do fear however that you may not see as many attended stations, the trend seems to be to try to minimize that (see the now ubiquitous self checkout lanes). Even though it's not perhaps the bleeding edge these days, it is still very early days for EVs.

I love your videos. They let me learn about things I would not know otherwise.

You got what you wanted! Tesla is rolling out new units of its V4 superchargers, and it has a card paymant option with a mini screen

The electronic payment system seems like something the labs guys at RCA would've come up.

11:23 YES! YES! YES! Mechanical overrides are a requirement and clearly marking them should be a no-brainer. Obviously this isn't understood in the industry though. This, as well as complete systems integrations that cause some vehicles to not function at all if the infotainment system is down, keep me from buying anything made within the past decade.

Software engineer here. Their mistake is redundancy. Take a gas pump. You can either: 1. Tap your card on the NFC reader. 2. Insert your card into the magnetic stripe/chip reader. 3. Pay inside the nearby convenience store with cash. If any of these fall, you can still pay for your gas. And that's why you never see pumps down due to broken card readers. Also, the technology is more mature, which helps a lot. As for charging equipment being down, the charging network operators need to get gud. There's not really any way around this problem.

Hyundai/Kia just announced they're adopting NACS late next year. I personally really like plug and charge. I don't have to fish out my wallet or open my phone. I just push a button on the connector, the charge port opens, and plugin. Done. Maybe it's because I've been doing this for years, but it beats dealing with a gas pump any day. I also don't need to worry about all the skimmers that are now out there.