Universal Charging
To successfully make the transition from gas to electric vehicles, charging stations would need to be accessible to any driver on the road, just like how gas stations operate. There are about 145,000 gas stations in the US, compared to 46,000 EV charging stations. Tesla is currently second in that industry with 1,440 charging sites across the country, but their competitive advantage is that their sites hold superchargers, which charge electric cars faster than the standard charger. Teslaโs energy and charging infrastructure are top tier, but the one main problem is that Teslaโs charging stations are designed so that their own vehicles are the only ones who can use it due to the charging port.
Now, Tesla is looking to open some of their chargers to other electric vehicles. This would be a costly process, but Tesla had started to bid for public funding from the government, specifically from the $7.5 billion dollars allocated for electric vehicle chargers as a part of President Bidenโs infrastructure bill. Tesla has already won $6.4 million from the energy department of California to build charging stations in rural areas, and Tesla will begin production of updated supercharger equipment by the end of the year according to the White House. The challenge in the United States is that there are three different chargers, while in Europe there is one standard charger. Way to be different again, America! Tesla would either have to offer adapters or find some other technology to revamp the system, so you should probably bet on the former. Although Tesla might open their chargers up, they could implement a system they are testing in Europe where non-Tesla users get charged higher unless a subscription is bought, bringing a new business model into this company. Itโll be interesting as to how this could affect Tesla as a business, either negatively or positively.
I am not a financial advisor and my comments should never be taken as financial advice. Investments come with risk, so always do your research and analysis beforehand.