As part of Volvo Cars’ aim to be a fully electric car maker by 2030, the company is the first European car maker to sign an agreement with Tesla, giving current and future electric Volvo car drivers access to Tesla’s vast Supercharger network across the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
Their advantage to Tesla is charging non-Tesla owners a premium and profiting off cars they didn’t manufacture. Honestly, it was dumb of them not to open the standard sooner – it could have been the dominant charging adapter for a decade already.
I don’t think trading their profit margin on cars for the profit margin on charging is worth it, but I guess we’ll see. A lot of people bought teslas for their charging network.
Their profit margins on cars will continue to shrink as competition in the electric space heats up. There’s also a point at which Elon’s general lunacy will start affecting Tesla sales.
Owning the fast charging space will pay dividends on money spent on building infrastructure over the last decade. If charging a Tesla is 10 cents a kilowatt hour, and charging a Ford/Polestar/etc is 12 cents an hour, that’s earning something for literally nothing.