EU is a densely populated place where having multiple charging networks of incomparable plugs will be horrible.
When you are not happy with decisions the governments make, it usually means that you should be involved in the process of making the decisions.
Europeans don't trust that the industry will always come up with the best solutions for the user, Americans usually don't trust the government doing something well unless it's the military. Let's agree to disagree.
I like that the car plugs are the same everywhere in EU and want it to stay that way and enjoy the Tesla plugs on a trip to USA.
Let's say I invent a better connector tomorrow. Nobody other than me really knows if it's better or not. The only way for me to convince people is to get it out there in the market so people can try it.
How does that work by voting or any other democratic activity?
Others will be unconvinced that it's really better, for the same reason people are skeptical of startup ideas until they become mainstream. So nobody will want to update the standard. So I couldn't release it in the market to prove that it's better, because that would be "lock-in". And the idea would die.
If you're designing such a connector, I'm sure you'll have the car manufacturers on board immediately. After all, your connector is better. Not only a tiny bit better, it's much better.
The EU will obviously be happy to include your better connector, provided that old cars can use it too via an adapter and new cars can use old connectors via an adapter. Then they can without issue transition to the new connector without wasting everyone's time and money.
The committe that handles the Radio Equipment Directive has been fairly reasonable in their reaction time to newer technology coming out. It's not the full blown comission or council, after all.
No, I do not believe that a multi trillion dollar company would spend billions of dollars making a major change to their devices, without having any idea of if it will be better or not.
Whatever internal research that these companies made, to make them want to change their multi billion dollar market like this, they can go public with it first.
Being densely-populated makes it easier to have a range of different plugs, since there will be a range of alternatives, and you'll be able to find the right one for you nearby.
Consider the opposite of a sparsely-populated region, where the next charging point may be 50 miles away. In that case, having a random hodge-podge of competing connectors could have actual consequences.
In practice though, there is not much of an effect either way. All parties have an interest in interoperability: car owners would have adapter to hand if this was a common problem, and charging stations would make themselves available to as many paying customers as possible.
When you have 24 official languages in 27 countries with no physical borders it doesn't end up having an even distribution of plugs but clusters of different types. There are no large wastelands of cheap land where every network can have a station, it's usually one station on each side of the road every 50km on the highways. In cities, a lot of things are retrofitted into medieval city structure so there's not much free space for all your charging needs.
As a result, this will create artificial limits on where people can travel. EU is that much into standardisation because we want to remove these artificial limits created through the thousands years of history.
You don't need to be. "We can't do anything about anything because the system is run by the billionaires and unless you are one, you have no power" narrative is not only false but also harmful.
Please pardon my inadvertent US-centrism! If you live in a country with a functioning democracy, of course it would make sense to participate. Here in the US, average citizens have little to no influence on policy:
This isn't the case in the US, either. How much influence do you think one person in the US, one of hundreds of millions of people, should normally have? Your power to influence policy is obviously going to dilute the further up the chain of government you go. You could involve yourself in local politics where the population of people is much smaller (and consequentially, your influence is much larger), or you could try to become a representative yourself.
National politics in the US is certainly perverse, though it's probably just your US-centrism at work again if you think it's exceptional in this regard.
I was paraphrasing Gilens and Page, from the linked research article. In their words, they found that "economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence".
If there has been subsequent research which contradicts their findings, I would be happy to read it.
> Please pardon my inadvertent US-centrism! If you live in a country with a functioning democracy, of course it would make sense to participate.
This implies that you think that the reason the person believes that they should participate in government is because they don't live in the US and as such, have a functioning democracy and can have an impact on policy. I am asserting that people can have an effect on policy, just that you are more likely to have an effect when you are dealing with local government. This doesn't require a research paper to figure out; There are approximately 334 million Americans. The "average citizen" in this case would have almost no influence whatsoever on policy even in a "functioning democracy" and this is how it is designed. However, if you narrow that down to your state, there is a much lower population and the policies implemented will have a more direct impact on you. If you go even further and look at it from a county, township, or city level, you, by the virtue of their being a small fraction of the people potentially involved in governance, have a much larger effect on policy. The issue is that it seems that people don't want to affect how their town is governed, they want to make mass impact with big changes in policies at a national level.
Special interest groups and economic elites affecting national policy isn't a unique trait to the United States and they are not a valid reason to encourage people against participating in government. You are teaching helplessness which just perpetuates the issue.
This reading of their study is well known to be false; what actually happens is that most of the population agrees on almost all policies, more often than they should, and that's the reason why they're in winning coalitions.
Since the US is education-polarized, rich people are also more left wing than average, as are people who donate to political campaigns, and the more they donate the more left wing they are. (This is called "being Shor pilled".)
Random anecdote: I once got stuck at a friends place in Denmark with my Tesla, because the mobile connector wouldn't work. Turns out despite the voltage and socket being the same, the grounding can vary between countries and the connector wouldn't let me charge (this was back in 2016, I'm not sure if newer mobile connectors are better in that regard)
Is that because some places have 230V and neutral, while others have -115V and +115V (yes like in the US but in Europe)?
There's a single neighborhood in Rome where that happens and car chargers don't work. The "solution" is to request a three-phase 400V connection: the utility company can't deny it and it must be 220V to neutral.
I would like to live in the alternative reality were all AC is three-phase AC; probably it would be uselessly more expensive for normal domestic stuff but it would be quite cooler.
I can imagine that car charging is still too new and fast-moving to enforce a single standard, unlike phone charging, where it's just ridiculous to have 3 separate standards.
On the other hand, you're absolutely right that it doesn't help anyone if your car is incompatible with half of the chargers out there. Are adapter cables an option, perhaps?
I presume you're talking about the J1772/CCS1 adapter that comes for free with every Tesla. This adapter is occasionally handy but it does not allow fast ("super") DC charging. It's strictly a Level 2 AC adapter, which means it takes a few hours to charge your car fully.
The CCS adapter that allows you to supercharge a Tesla at non-Tesla DC superchargers is not (yet) available in the US [0]. Tesla does make them and you can buy them in South Korea, but not in the US.
[0] Except for a dodgy Chinese gizmo which I won't link to because it's reputed not to work reliably.
There is no combined J1772/CCS1 adapter. There are separate passive J1772 and CCS1 adapters, though. The J1772 adapter is obviously really small and easy to use.
I was referring to the CCS adapter that is currently available in South Korea. Its a little heavier, but its also fairly easy to use (well, as easy as CCS usually is). It has become really easy to import them too, thanks to Harumio and other importers. The speeds are 150+kw, and close to 200kw on the newer Model S/X[1]. I expect that official availability will happen sometime this year, but if it doesn't, then presumably a third party will make a suitable passive adapter. Its a ridiculously simple device.
[1] I know officially S/X isn't even supported, but it has been demonstrated to work. Higher speeds are because of the newer 450V battery pack.
Some adapters are more problematic than others. For example if the charger and the vehicle both expect the other side to initiate the charging process and withhold power until some voltage is detected then the adapter may need its own independent power supply to jump-start the charging process. Locks are another problem—some combinations would require the adapter to provide powered locking mechanisms for both sides. None of this makes an adapter impossible, but it could be too expensive or unwieldy to be a practical solution.
That's definitely true. I've used the Tesla chademo adapter and it was a beast. Its heavy, awkward, and the latching mechanism is difficult to fully engage.
The Tesla passive solution to the locking mechanism on their CCS1 passive adapter is as brilliant as it is simple. Just a little springloaded bar that locks the cable onto the adapter if and only if the adapter is inserted into the car. Then the car uses its regular adapter. This works well with CCS1 locking.
The other end of the spectrum are things like the setec adapter or the evhub adapter. Both of those don't have vehicle side locking with CCS1, which is a violation and a potential hazard.
I am "European", whatever that word means, and I definitely don't trust the government to do something well. It happens sometimes that some governments in some countries do some specific thing well. That's definitely not a general rule.
Industry already converged on charging cables though, just Apple is left and they've been moving away from lightning for some time... this legislation is a waste of time.
It's not anyone's business what kind of phone I buy. If chargers pollute so much, just tax them and be done with it.
I'll add to kukx's reason the fact that I can't access some websites anymore because who wants to spend time with bureaucracy so that the website is 100% compliant with GDPR?
Agree 100%. The cookie law is the most visible failure of these regulations. I feel like they should pay me from their own pockets each time I have to click the cookie banner. And by their own pockets I mean the money they got from other sources than taxpayers money. Of course someone will argue that the intentions were good. Often they are! But it does not make it much better.
Most people are more bothered by the annoyance then some nebulous, intangible “tracking“ that will likely never have a visible effect on their lives.
Outside of high tech places like HackerNews, mention the tracking and you’ll get a shrug, mention the cookie banners and you’ll get a “yeah I hate that crap“
How is this different from the American FAA dictating that all aeroplane toilets have to have ashtrays whist at the same time banning smoking on flights[1]?
Should Europeans start hoping the US economy fails so that then FAA has less influence?[3]
Really I don't think this is something that really matters in the grand scheme of things. USB-C is a good enough standard and I don't see Apple coming out with some great new alternative.
From my perspective I have loads of broken Lightning cables but no broken USB-C ones. Also if something is going to break I'd rather the springs be in the cheap cable than the expensive phone socket as with Lightning.
1. Now you might think it's for people who break the smoking rule to have somewhere to put out their fags[2] but the "innovative" solution to that would be the sink.
2. You know that I know you know that's slang for cigarette, so stick to the point at hand please. :P
3. Just in case that's not blindingly obvious, the answer is NO, that would be terrible for everyone involved including both Europeans and Americans.
Imagine different gasoline plugs...that would be stupid, isnt't it? Or different fuel formula for different car models or different AC sockets in the same house...
Also I'm not sure why you hold Asia so dear. You may soon get some centrally planned standards from China in the EV market and not only(i.e online services such tiktok)
I agree with you, but noting that fuel may not be the best example as you have both completely different fuels (like diesel) and different types of normal gas (premium)
Still though, having the same “regular” gas at every single gas station is an underrated benefit!
I was unable to find any record of legislation forcing standardization of gas pump form factors. Also, in my experience different pumps operate at different rates. I think the fact that pumps tend to be quite similar is a result of their mechanical nature, where less precision is required.
> (f) Every retailer and wholesale purchaser-consumer shall equip all gasoline pumps from which gasoline is dispensed into motor vehicles with a nozzle spout that meets all the following specifications:
> (1) The outside diameter of the terminal end shall not be greater than 0.840 inches (2.134 centimeters).
> (2) The terminal end shall have a straight section of at least 2.5 inches (6.34 centimeters).
Fantastic, that’s exactly what I was looking for, thank you! I thought maybe there would be an earlier law, this one is about 100 years after the advent of cars. I suppose we’re close to thirty years past what could reasonably be considered the advent of cell phones, so maybe legislation about now is reasonable.
Would you happier if you were affected by European corporate actions instead?
We live in a global economy, you are constantly affected by things happening thousand of miles away (e.g. Ukraine invasion bumped the price of gas across the world). Not sure why you're conflating that with the fact that these actions are "centrally-planned".
We all affect each other, a lot of American things have become de facto stands. Anyway, be careful what you wish because it might become real and you might find out that Asia is not the libertarian utopia.
> EU is a densely populated place where having multiple charging networks of incomparable plugs will be horrible.
In the short term, yes. In the long term however competition between these different standards will cause consolidation and overall technology improvement. The next step will be regulating wireless charging so that all devices have to use/do the same thing, rinse-wash-repeat.
> Europeans don't trust that the industry will always come up with the best solutions for the user, Americans usually don't trust the government doing something well unless it's the military. Let's agree to disagree.
A better way to think about this is that both "groups" can learn from one another. For example you could say that Europeans should be suspicious about USB-C manufacturers and advocates effectively being granted a monopoly in the name of convenience. Americans should better trust that certainly in the case of infrastructure it makes sense to have a single standard "plug" for electric vehicles because we really need as many people driving them as possible in the most convenient way.
Anyone can produce USB-C chargers. That's not a monopoly. This will effectively enable competition on the charging market, since the big players can't bind their products to their own proprietary chargers anymore.
Have you ever felt the Apple/Microsoft charger to be lacking in some way? Breaking easily, too long cords, too short, wrong color, too expensive? Congratulations now you can make and sell those better chargers. Before, this was not possible.
Yes but all you’re really doing is encouraging everyone to stay locked in to a USB-C market. This isn’t enabling competition in the charging market, it’s eliminating or hamstringing competing markets. You won’t create a new charging apparatus because you’re legally required to use USB-C.
"What if we created a charging cable that did X,Y,Z?"
"That would be cool but we have to use USB-C"
> Have you ever felt the Apple/Microsoft charger to be lacking in some way? Breaking easily, too long cords, too short, wrong color, too expensive?
No not really. In fact I’ve found most third-party products to be godawful. Good luck not buying something fraudulent on Amazon.com. But also, I’m not really sure what you are talking about. Companies sell charging equipment and cords now anyway.
Everything has trade-offs. I’m skeptical of the necessity of this regulation, especially given that the only holdout that anyone cares about is Apple and they’ve been adopting USB-C in all of their products over time. One benefit though will be manufacturers won’t include charging cables with new devices anymore. So that will further reduce waste. Wouldn’t be surprised to see lobbying behind the scenes from companies such as Apple to implement regulations like this so they can save money. I kind of like this as an investor because now you can save money by not including a cable (or maybe you still do and it’s just some cheap one for now) and then you go and up sell wireless chargers instead.
We can copy the US if the cable freedom gives birth to superior cables on the long run. EU stuff is't written on stone, it changes as it needs to.
I guess In Europe we kind of like the idea of being able to overthrow the people in power if they screw us too much. It's much more socially acceptable to burn cars and occupy streets and decapitate politicians than shooting CEO's when you are really not happy with the way things work. It feels like you have control over the stuff going on in your country.
You’re really ignoring the amount of inertia that a deployed fleet of cars creates. You can’t just change standards with the snap of a finger once there are 10M cars in the field with it, once that happens, you’re stuck with that standard for probably decades, as the downsides of changing it become much more acute than the potential upsides.
If the US comes up with the superior cables, EU will simply allow it be optional and the industry will retrofit as needed.
Europe is very old, we are used to have old stuff laying around. Old building that definitely don't meet the modern requirements are everywhere. Besides, the states with Cable Freedom will also have all the obsolate cables when the industry finally comes up with the perfect cable.
> Europe is very old, we are used to have old stuff laying around.
So what's the problem with allowing lightning to exist, since as a standard it predated USB-C (and in fact was the impetus for the creation of the latter)? If we allow neighborhoods to keep their old power connectors without retrofit... why not allow lightning to continue to exist?
There's a difference between allowing old installations to continue existing and allowing mass manufacture of the old standard indefinitely. This legislation isn't going to touch anyone's old phones.
All aside, it’s pretending ‘we’ as civilians have any kind of influence in what the EU does. In reality it’s just an opaque process ran by politicians where 99% of the electorate has no idea whatsoever how they got there or even what party they belong to.
> In the long term however competition between these different standards will cause consolidation and overall technology improvement.
If you think that’s a superior solution, then the regulation should actually support it: require that all EV charging connectors have a free published specification, disallow patents on them, and require that interoperability be permitted without cost or other penalty. (e.g. anyone should be able to implement both ends of the Tesla supercharging protocol such that Tesla’s chargers would charge a competing car at the same prices that they charge Tesla’s; similarly, a competing charger should be able to charge a Tesla.)
I'm not opposed to this and personally think it's all up for discussion/debate and it should be discussed and debated. I'm excited to see what develops in this space.
One nitpick would be:
> e.g. anyone should be able to implement both ends of the Tesla supercharging protocol such that Tesla’s chargers would charge a competing car at the same prices that they charge Tesla’s; similarly, a competing chargers should be able to charge a Tesla.
I think this sounds good, but one of the details here is ensuring that other manufacturers are able to actually build the products correctly so a supercharger doesn't light a car on fire or something due to faulty equipment. Who is at fault? How is it prevented? What are the legal agreements? Etc.
On the pricing side though I'd have to strongly disagree. Tesla (or whoever) builds the infrastructure so they should be able to charge what they want. It's about the plug and interoperability of that standard, not infringing on the business model which I think goes too far. If they charge too much money, people won't use them and competitors will continue to emerge (I see new charging stations in Meijer parking lots being put next to Tesla infrastructure). There's no reason in my view to mandate pricing here and I think it would set back EV adoption to do so.
I was set to be all libertarian about this, but your suggestion is probably more level headed.
There should be some common ground. Regulations that encourage innovation (perhaps even with timed financial incentives) while also ensuring that the best ideas are eventually freely adoptable across the board.
Seems like, as with most issues, people take one extreme or the other, when a common sense middle ground could be found with proper planning and forethought.
Disallowing patents is the libertarian solution, though it would be up to the customers to demand published specifications and official support for interoperability.
The original intention of patent system was to encourage open publication of inventions. It even still works that way for some verticals. The issue is that it also produced a system that it is profitable to game and thus there are patent attorneys who get by by writing the patent in as vague terms as is possible to pass by patent reviewers, and in these kind of adversarial situations it is quite obvious that the private sector will win over the government bureaucrats.
> The original intention of patent system was to encourage open publication of inventions.
That is how it was sold to the public. Unfortunately the system was never designed with the proper structure and incentives to ensure that patents were only granted when doing so actually resulted in the publication of accurate details about useful inventions which would not have become known to the public anyway well before the patent period expired.
In practice, if you think you can keep something a trade secret for more than 20 years without it being independently reinvented you'll do that and not file for a patent. Patents are thus useful only in those cases where a patent is expected to be worse for the public than a trade secret, as they inhibit independent reinvention and reverse engineering for the duration of the patent.
When you are not happy with decisions the governments make, it usually means that you should be involved in the process of making the decisions.
Europeans don't trust that the industry will always come up with the best solutions for the user, Americans usually don't trust the government doing something well unless it's the military. Let's agree to disagree.
I like that the car plugs are the same everywhere in EU and want it to stay that way and enjoy the Tesla plugs on a trip to USA.