🔋NACS Charger Dominance, 🤖Intel unveils GPU for Automotive

NACS Charger Dominance

The NACS (North American Charging Standard) is a proprietary electric vehicle (EV) charging connector developed by Tesla and increasingly adopted by other automakers in North America. The new NACS port is being standardized by SAE International, and today, largely every automaker, including Ford, GM, Toyota, Rivian, Volvo, Polestar, Nissan, Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar Land Rover, Fisker, Hyundai, Stellantis, Volkswagen, and BMW, has signed on. NACS offers a streamlined and efficient design, combining both AC and DC charging capabilities in a single compact connector. Known for its ease of use and compatibility with Tesla's extensive Supercharger network, NACS is becoming a preferred standard for fast charging across the region, aiming to enhance the convenience and accessibility of EV charging infrastructure.

How did NACS become the standard charging interface in the US?

1. Network effects from Tesla's supercharger network: Opening up the NACS standard is a show of Tesla's strategy to get other OEMs also on the supercharger network. For other OEMs this meant they could potentially increase the number of charging stations their vehicles could use by far.
   Another consequence of opening up the NACS standard is that there will be 3rd party native NACS charging providers that would come up. But unlike petrol stations where the experience of fuelling your car is more or less the identical, the same cannot be said about EV charging stations.

2. Superior charging experience offered by Tesla: Let's face it, charging SW and interface are really bad in most charging providers and Tesla has it's experience really dialed in. Issues with accepting payment, start and stop charging and even the general HMI of non-Tesla EV chargers have a long way to go. They(Tesla Superchargers + Tesla App) are much better than competition. So much that, they would get away with a premium pricing that they can charge non-Tesla vehicles.

Intel unveils GPU for Automotive

Summary

Why this matters?

1. This new technology unveiled by Intel is their first real product line towards Automotive in the SDV era. However, it is yet to be seen if the performance of these chips match with competition from Qualcomm and NVIDIA

2. The weak point of Intel's offering historically have been the ecosystem play. Qualcomm's ride platform which is supposedly a chip-to-cloud architecture was their first real stab at this problem. It will be interesting to see how intel fares in this aspect.

3. In the press release from Intel, they mention ThunderSoft Aqua Drive OS. What is it?