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The have a charger very near to where I go in Michigan, and 30 miles from the nearest supercharger. They announced earlier this year that they would open up the RAN “near the end of the year” so I’ve been waiting for this announcement. The fact that they will only gradually modify existing chargers to work with other vehicles is a disappointment. It’s all CCS so it should just be a software update. I am really looking forward to charging my model Y at the Rivian charger. I’m guessing that that will be a long time coming now. Oh well, I guess the Red E charger gets my business for the foreseeable future. They have excellent customer service and they just upgraded the charger to be much faster.


I've only used the RAN chargers once, but IIRC, they don't really have an interface for allowing third-party transactions (i.e., paying with a credit card).

You have to register your vehicle through their app, which may also make this a bit more difficult.


Hopefully they allow web-based registration of your car for plug and charge.


> It’s all CCS so it should just be a software update.

Nope.

CCS has to negotiate voltages with the attached vehicle. Unfortunately there isn't a standardized pack voltage and the range of what it can be is anywhere from 400 -> 900V.

That can mean new inverter hardware at a location to handle the varying range of voltages that come in. For a single manufacturer, it's easier as the cars and charging stations are more aligned on the supported voltages.


All CCS cars support 400V charging, though. Just some of them do it much more slowly compared to an 800V charger.

This is why Tesla is able to work with CCS, despite superchargers not supporting 800V.


> Unfortunately there isn't a standardized pack voltage and the range of what it can be is anywhere from 400 -> 900V.

The CCS spec supports up to 1000 volts. All chargers support variable voltages.

A car's pack voltage also changes continuously across the charge curve as the battery's state of charge increases. The pack is at its lowest voltage at 0% state of charge and at its highest at 100%.

Here's an example of four cars charging, three at 400 volts and one at 800 volts. You can see how the voltage and amperage change across the charge curve:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-Cil3seCHM


Sorry to be pedantic but there are cars on the road where the voltages go below even 300 and the Lucid Air Grand Touring is over 900 when it gets near full. So chargers actually need to be able to handle more like 200-1000.


This is very cool. I’ll have to read his blog. My 9yo just picked up a book on coding from the library, I hope he gets interested as well.


The song needs to be updated to reflect our current reality.


Great for assassins, but not terribly useful in a large battle.


Very true. Also not useful for space battles. Or rhinoceros training.

Useful information.


Apparently OpenAI can’t ask the AI to design a better AI. Perhaps the singularity isn’t as close as people thought.


An amazingly talented person.


Yup, it is your works crazy policy of making sure everyone gets a one size fit all VS code Configuration. I’ve loaded VS code on a 10 year-old Lenovo and it runs just fine with only basic Python plug-ins. Five minute startup time is crazy.


My mom’s hard and fast rule when buying a new computer: It had better run Print Shop. She was barely computer literate but that program was soooo useful to her. You guys did a great thing.


That's great to hear, thank you! They were fun days, for sure. One of the most fun activities were the conventions that were created around Print Artist, the successor to Print Shop. PALs (Print Artist Lovers) were quite rabid with their love for the program. Blew me away.


FSD is revolutionary. There isn’t anything as good on the market yet. Other than that I agree, their competitors have caught up.


isn't that the one that kills people?


That's a risk that Tesla is willing to have you take.


No, Autopilot is the system with a bunch of deaths. AFAICT FSD only has a single death known, and it doesn't seem like FSD was at fault in that death.


Wait, they gate a safe and functional system behind a $10K upcharge, and ship a killy one if you don’t pony up?

(edit: looks like $99/month now instead of a flat charge?)


Sure, just like every other car maker who ships a cruise control that can kill you if you stop paying attention.


I am reminded of Rana systems, who used to make disc drives for Apple II Systems. They announced the new product that was basically an IBM PC built into a disk drive so you could run IBM PC applications on your Apple. They sank the company trying to make it work. At least that’s how I remember it through the fog of memory. The 80s were a while ago.


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