Marques Brownlee took a non-Tesla to Supercharger.
Paul Hennessy / NurPhoto via Getty Images
- Marques Brownlee takes his Rivian R1T to a Supercharger that just opened to non-Teslas.
- He noted that non-Tesla EVs sometimes take up multiple parking spots because of their charging port locations.
- The YouTuber said the charging station makes his Rivian a better car, but cuts into Tesla’s profit.
Tesla last month began opening some of its Superchargers to non-Tesla electric cars in New York and California, but a recent video shows how ultra-fast “Supercharger” stations can quickly become a headache for Tesla owners. Are.
YouTuber Marques Brownlee took his Rivian R1T to a Tesla Supercharger in rural New York last week and he said on twitter The trip “descended into chaos” when other non-Tesla drivers showed up as well.
In the video, Brownlee said he had to pick up two parking spots next to a charger because the charging port on his EV was on the front driver’s side of his vehicle, while the charging station equipped for a Tesla had the charging port on the rear. Left corner of the car.
Brownlee said he felt the experience made his Rivian a better car because he would no longer have to rely on more “risky” public chargers, but it could put Tesla owners off guard.
“All of a sudden you’re taking up two spots that would normally be one,” Brownlee said. “If I were like a huge Tesla person I’d probably be concerned you know my own Tesla experience. Would it get worse because more people are charging? Potentially, you’d have more people in line There will be waiting and more people will be taking more spots.”
Things got worse when a Lucid EV and an F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck showed up. For the F-150 Lightning driver, Tesla’s retrofitted charging cord was only long enough to reach the car’s charging port when the driver pulled so far in front of his car that it was practically touching the charging stand and the cord was completely pulled over – one driver said the scenario felt “too risky”.
In a separate YouTube video, Tom Molphoney, the same F-150 Lightning driver who runs the EV charging channel State of Charge, said he might feel more comfortable driving his car toward the station — a move that three Can take you places at once.
Similarly, according to Molfoni, the cable for the Lucid driver was also not long enough.
“It’s not a good day if you own a Tesla,” Molfoni said. “Soon the exclusivity of being able to drive wherever you want is going to get more complicated as superchargers are going to go off with non-Tesla vehicles.”
Ultimately, Brownlee said the conversion was going to take too long, but he was happy with the charging experience of his Rivian, which took about 30 minutes and $30 to charge from 30% to 80%.
“This is probably the first time and not the last time that you’re going to see this reshuffling of who gets to charge where,” Brownlee said. “Hopefully people are nice about it, but when you have cars like that trying to figure it out it would be an etiquette question.”
Musk called Brownlee’s video “interesting” on Twitter. The billionaire earlier this year agreed to open up some of the electric-car maker’s Superchargers to non-Tesla owners. Prior to this, Tesla’s chargers – which account for a large portion of EV chargers in the US – were primarily accessible only to Tesla owners.
While regular Tesla stations have always been open to non-Tesla EVs via a special adapter, the carmaker has pledged to make its ultra-fast supercharging stations compatible with other electric cars by the end of 2024.