this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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Nah can't have standards in the USA, let the market solve that and Canada just follows whatever the USA does for these things.
In this case there is, it's called the North American Charging Standard! Granted, Tesla did name it that way just last year, before it became a standard, but hey, at least it worked out in the end. Probably.
It's not a standard unless it's made mandatory by the state, it's just an agreement between manufacturers and sadly it seems like States always wait too long to establish standards and we end up with incompatible tech that lose support in the long term because of it.
that is absolutely not true. most standards AREN'T mandated by law. ANSI is voluntary for example. USB is a standard that isn't written into law, you get the picture
My point is that at any time a manufacturer can just go "Fuck them, I'm creating my own interface" for this reason, the standard isn't mandated by law! Case in point: Apple
I guess I don't understand the problem. Companies use the superior standard. Innovation is good. Look at NACS charging plug, everyone has given up on CCS in the US and signed up to switch. Despite the government mandating CCS in charge stations
Companies don't necessarily use the superior standard, maybe you're too young to have known or you don't remember the time when each cellphone brand had their own plug and sometimes had a different plug for different phones...
Heck, the car charging ports are a perfect example, the government could have stepped in and imposed a standard in the early days of EVs, instead it had to wait nearly two decades for manufacturers to agree with brands using one of multiple standards for their car and now we'll end up with charging stations that will be borderline useless in a couple of years because no one will be carrying a bunch of adapters just in case they try to charge somewhere with the wrong plug for their car and if the stations are updated then it's still a whole lot of waste for the landfills and owners of older cars will need to carry adapters with them so they're able to keep charging their car.
While I understand with what you're saying, I personally believe that regulating standards during the early days of an industry is just asking for trouble.
It often isn't until later on that we truly understand what we need out of a standard. This can take iterations and different approaches. I think it is too big a risk to potentially be hamstrung with a shitty solution later on
It often isn't until later on that we truly understand what we need out of a standardGuess we shouldn't be using the Tesla standard then because it's what's been used by them since the release of the model S in 2012... You know, the early days of wide adoption of EV cars?
EDIT: the guy I'm replying to edited his comment. Originally he asked something along the lines of "why didn't they mandate the tesla plug"
so the government should've mandated a closed protocol that wasn't a standard?
The government should have sat down with manufacturers, telling them "Better come to the table cuz that's where we'll decide what the legal standard will be." and come up with a solution instead of letting manufacturers do whatever they want until 8 standards came to be.
well, we'll have to agree to disagree on that. I think it's easy to say that with hindsight, but you don't know where standards are needed when things are first getting going
Not as if it was unclear that EV cars were coming though.
It was, actually. Many people are still skeptical of that even. Some people still think hydrogen is the future
We had a standard before that, it was called CCS. Musk changing the name of his charger doesn't make it a defacto standard, no matter what the Muskites tell you.
No, but the majority of carmakes adopting it does.