I spend a lot of time thinking about electric vehicle charging. Like, a lot a lot. Between my own Kia EV6, testing an ever-growing number of EVs and just covering the auto industry’s ongoing electric transition here at InsideEVs, the question of where and how cars get plugged in—especially ones that I’m driving—is not often far from my mind.
For anyone driving an EV in 2024, there’s always some element of planning ahead. And for me it's like some app running in the background of a smartphone. When I plan a trip, whether it’s in my car or another one, I’ll always look up what’s available for charging along the way or at my destination on PlugShare. I only book hotels or Airbnbs with close access to charging. I'm always thinking about how the cold might affect my range. And I'm used to thinking about planning for how and when to charge a car if I have to leave it somewhere before some air travel.
I'm actually quite used to this. So much so, that I didn't realize how much I think about charging until I drove an EV where that never really entered into the equation at all.
That EV was a Tesla Cybertruck, rented on Turo on a recent family trip to Texas. And for the first time in a very long time—maybe ever?—I just didn't really think about charging it at all. That's because of what Tesla owners already know very well: the damn chargers are just everywhere. And this is what the EV ownership experience needs to be.
I doubt any of this will come as a shock to longtime readers of this publication and EV owners of all stripes, including those who own Teslas. But breaking out of my typical thinking around EV charging drove home just how ubiquitous Tesla's network is, and why the rest of the U.S. auto industry moving to use that network and ultimately the Tesla-designed plug natively is such a game-changer.
And this is a very big part of why the Tesla Model Y was the world's best-selling car last year, America's best-selling EV right now, and why the similar Model 3 is in second place: if you own a Tesla, you just don't have to think about charging all that much.
Tesla's Supercharger network is regarded as the best, most reliable and most widely available charging network around. Anecdotally, there's little reason to dispute this. Data backs it up as well. In Q1 of this year, the most recent study I could find, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory noted that 60.4% of America's public DC fast EV charging ports belong to the Tesla network. I don't doubt that number may have shrunk somewhat as other networks continued to grow this year and Tesla laid off much of its own charging team (though many of those positions were later replaced or re-hired.)
Still, this is the dominant player in the charging world and just the easiest one to use. You pull up, plug in your car, and then... well, that's it. Everything the rest of the charging industry is trying to do now—better compatibility, instant "plug-and-charge" capability, the sheer ubiquity of the stations themselves—Tesla has been doing and doing for more than a decade now.
I won't say building that network out has been "easy" for Tesla, but the way the company has done so has had inherent advantages. Tesla is so heavily vertically integrated with so much done in-house that it guarantees ease of use and compatibility since everything runs on the same common software. That's a bigger challenge for, say, Electrify America or ChargePoint, which have to work with everything from Audi to VinFast just as easily and effectively.
This is nothing new. But I am not a Tesla owner. I've driven many of them over the years and usually, many times a year. Typically that involves renting one since Tesla does not dole out cars to journalists for testing the way most other automakers do. Yet I had this realization driving the Cybertruck (which I'll have more to say about here soon) that my usual mental calculus around charging just wasn't there.
Why would it be? Tesla Superchargers are never hard to find. I knew there were Superchargers at a grocery store near where I was staying. People come and go there all of the time. If I needed another plug, I was maybe two keystrokes on the navigation system away from finding more of them, and they were often only a few miles away at most—or anywhere else I needed to be. They work, too.
Again, nothing new here—just a reminder for me, a non-Tesla owner, what the experience should be like and why things are moving in that direction.
As I've written before, the vast majority of American drivers probably couldn't even tell you the basics of how an internal combustion engine works. They just know it needs gas, oil changes and whatever maintenance their mechanic tells them they need. And yet, in the EV era, the auto industry expects mainstream people to learn about kilowatts, charging speeds, voltage levels and battery pre-conditioning. Good luck with that, I say; as one editor at TechCrunch wrote recently after a week with a Chevrolet Equinox EV, "the point of a car is to get where you need to go quickly and efficiently," and the auto industry has perhaps "made cars a little too complicated." He's an electric newcomer, but he's not wrong.
Nothing is complicated about charging a Tesla. You find a station, and they're everywhere, you plug in, and you drive away when you're done. You think your average Model Y owner could write you a dissertation on the nuances of charging curves? Hell no. That's why people keep buying them. And that's the way it all should be.
Soon enough, it may be. There's a tendency, especially among EV veterans, to scoff at the idea that allowing owners of eventually every other auto brand to access the Supercharger network will actually spark EV sales. But I think it will. We keep hearing from people who own Kias or Hyundais or Nissans and so on that they're waiting for their cars to get the Tesla-style North American Charging Standard (NACS, or more properly now, the SAE J3400 standard) from the factory. Those buyers shouldn't be scoffed at. They want what every Tesla owner has: the ability to plug in everywhere and anywhere and not think about it much.
Honestly, who can blame for that?
Of course, that plan rides on Tesla's ability to keep building out its charging network. That feels in question now after Tesla's layoffs as it seemingly orients its resources toward the vastly more unproven concept of fully autonomous robotaxis. Lately, we've seen some signs of life there again, at least globally. But with so many different car brands to serve soon, we had all pray that Tesla takes this commitment seriously. And we do know that the rest of the charging industry is meeting this transition with units that include many different plug types.
And in the end, a jaunt in a Tesla was a reminder of how all of this is supposed to work. Because if living with an EV requires as little thought as pumping a tank full of gasoline, as it is on Tesla's cars, people will run out of reasons not to go electric.
Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com
