This Is Why You Have To Back In Your Tesla To Charge It
Tesla has created something of a tangle for electric vehicles.
Every major automaker has decided to adopt Tesla’s NACS-type charge port and cut deals with it Tesla to get access for their vehicles to its Supercharger network. One hitch is that the stations have been designed to work with Tesla’s vehicles, which all share a specific trait.
Their charge ports are all located at the left rear of the vehicle, so the parking spots and charge cables are positioned and sized with this design in mind. Other automakers have installed them in literally every corner and also the nose, so it’s not the ideal setup for many of them.
The most common position is on the left front fender, which is too far from the standard Supercharger cable, whether you back in or pull in head-first. Tesla is addressing it by installing longer cables at new stations, but it will be a while before the current ones can all be converted.
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What’s interesting is that the position of the port was apparently a personal preference of Elon Musk’s, according to a former Tesla executive. Lucid Motors CEO Peter Rawlinson was a Tesla vice president and the chief engineer for the Model S when it was in development and he has shared some interesting incites on its design with PC Mag.
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“Most Americans drive nose in rather than parallel park. And if you drive nose in, you want the charge port on the front,” Rawlinson said he told Musk. “You don’t want a long, dirty old cable coming past the doors. And you don’t want to put the charge port on the very front, like the Nissan Leaf, because it’s a vulnerable spot. You can have a slight bump or fender bender, which could mean you couldn’t open it if it was damaged.”
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However, Musk was living in a mansion in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Bel Air at the time and the way his garage was set up, he said he would trip over the cable if the port was on the left front fender, so he directed Rawlinson to move it to the rear.
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Every Tesla since has stuck with the design and, now that Lucid is adopting the NACS as factory equipment, so does its new Gravity SUV. Some other brands, including Rivian, are planning to follow suit with their future products, but with the average time vehicles stay on the road now nearly 13 years, it will be a long time before the current mix filters out of service.
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Of course, by then things might change again as battery and charging technology is quickly evolving and Tesla itself is planning to introduce wireless charging pads that will be located underneath its vehicles.
Musk has not commented on Rawlinson’s statements.
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