Well, Tesla had developed its own standard, Europe has restricted it and standardized on type 2 connectors, and then CCS.
Tesla had to go along with that, but CCS did not yet support plug and charge, which is also its own implementation on the Superchargers. Plug and charge was not introduced until CCS 2.0.
Tesla now has their own sauce, all other manufacturers work with CCS and, for example, Ionity is a collaboration between:
- BMW (Mini, Rolls Royce)
- Daimler (Mercedes, Smart, trucks)
- Ford (Lincoln)
- Volkswagen (Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Porsche, Seat, Cupra, Ruf, Skoda)
- Hyundai (Kia, Genesis)
So you can blame that on “the rest”, but you can also blame Tesla for not cooperating with the standards, because they want to go faster. There is something to be said for both.
The technical standard is now available for vehicle/charging station communication, but the payment infrastructure is not there yet. At Tesla you now have 1 company that designs, installs, maintains/operates the charging stations and arranges the payments.
It is logical that other companies do not go along with it. The public charging infrastructure is more fragmented, and has a designer (for example ABB), a installer / maintainer (CPO, for example FastNed, Ionity, Allego) and a company that arranges the payments (charging card, for example Shell Recharge).
It will take a while for everything to run smoothly. Fortunately, roaming is already going well with a normal pass, and I don’t expect it to take another 3 years before plug and charge is implemented on all major networks.
–