[jrbuhl]

Tesla payed a lot of money (billions) to build the super charger network. Money no government or other company seems to want to spend. Legislating away vendor lock-in would just cause companies to be even more averse to capital investment in recharging infrastructure.

[oblio]

I'm pretty sure gas station networks weren't built with public money. And other companies are investing in charger networks: https://ionity.eu/ or https://www.electrifyamerica.com/index

At least in the EU I'm 99% sure that the EU will mandate (if it hasn't already) a standard charging interface. Don't know about the US, it's a bit like the Wild West in this regard...

[_ph_]

The EU has a standard charging interface, Type 2 (AC) and CCS (DC). The Model 3 has both and most superchargers in Europe got retrofitted with CCS-Plugs. Cars of other manufacturers currently still cannot use it however.

[ssheth]

Ionity just came out with a _500%_ increase in cost of charging starting in February.

https://electrek.co/2020/01/17/ionity-increases-electric-veh...

Tesla charges about €0.33/kWh at most in Europe whereas Ionity will be charging €0.79/kWh .. which will make EV charging even more expensive than gas at that point.

This type of crazy price structures are why none of the EV charging networks can get enough traction / users to actually be profitable and build even more stations.

[davidgould]

Electrify America is mainly funded by VW as part of the Diesel-gate settlement. So not entirely voluntarily.

[WBrad]

Elon has received billions from the US government across his companies. It'd be a slap in the face to the entire US population for Tesla to have a 100% proprietary charging network when we helped get the company going.

[xedeon]

You mean the $451.8M Department of Energy loan they used to buy the old NUMMI Toyata plant? Yeah.... They paid that off nine years early with interest. Try again.

https://www.tesla.com/blog/tesla-repays-department-energy-lo...

Meanwhile, why don't we talk about the GM bailout money?

If you can cite a source for the "billions" you mentioned, that would be great to read, since I must've missed that one.

[_ph_]

Did he? What kind of government money did Tesla get? I am not aware of any specific money paid to Tesla, only general benefits for electric cars, which were paid to the buyers, not Tesla. Not like GM, which got billions in a government-bailout, which they used to build their charging network /s.