Ford Motor company has announced that starting next year, Fords will get access to Tesla’s supercharger network via an adapter sent to all owners, and later, new Fords will be made with the Tesla connector on them, allowing use without an adapter. This may mean the death of the “standard” CCS connector used by non-Tesla cars, and there is a strong case that it should. Whether it means the death of the J1772 slower charging plug is a different story.
Conventional wisdom is that J1772 and CCS are “industry standards” and thus the sure winners. They are also encoded into various laws creating subsidies for the installation of charging stations. But in spite of being a “standard” the Tesla connector is found on 2-3 times as many cars as CCS/J1772 because Tesla has, and continues to outsell all other carmakers combined. Is the “standard” the one chosen by the most companies, or the one chosen by the most people?
Tesla’s connector was proprietary, in that you initially needed a licence from Tesla to use it, while the other connectors were owned by a standards body. Early on, Tesla declared it would licence its patents for “free” but there were a few strings attached and almost nobody accepted the “free” offer. That changed recently as Tesla declared its connector to be entirely open, and people can use it without their permission. They renamed it the “NACS” or North American Charging Standard. EVgo has put Tesla plugs on their fast chargers for a few years, and an adapter to let J1772 cars charge from Tesla slow chargers has also been available for some time, but not much else. Aptera, which has yet to ship a car, has said it would use the Tesla connector.
Ford’s announcement marks a big change because Ford is the (distant) #2 EV vendor in North America, where these plugs are used. With #1 and #2 using NACS, and over 2/3rds of the cars on the road, it has a stronger claim to being the common standard. Everybody would prefer that there was just one charging plug — car owners don’t want to use adapters, and EV charging stations don’t want to have to have two or more plugs or adapters. For some time, there was competition between CCS and the Japanese CHAdeMO standard, but that ended when Nissan, the champion of CHAdeMO, released their Aria car with CCS. Even so, because the Nissan Leaf was the leading EV for a few years, many charging stations support CHAdeMO and may be legally required to do so.
On top of all this, the Tesla connector is generally considered to be superior. (While I am a frequent critic of Tesla’s FSD offering, their charging products deserve high praise.) A single small plug does both slow and fast charging up to 250kW, and the new version supports up to a megawatt. The CCS and CHAdeMO connectors are bulky monsters, much bigger and heavier than the NACS. All NACS cars support a data protocol to handle “plug and play” billing — though only through Tesla — while only a small number of CCS cars have started to support that. The CCS connector was the first to support 800v and 350kW, but only at a few stations, and that advantage is ending.
User Experience
Ford’s CEO indicated that Ford owners will all get the adapter for free, including current owners. They will be able to pay for charging at Tesla SC using the Ford app — they will not need to install the Tesla app, the way that CCS drivers must do when they visit one of the small number of Tesla stations which has a built in CCS adapter.
That’s good, but it’s not the Tesla “plug and play” experience where drivers just plug in and walk away without doing anything else. For that to happen, Ford cars would need to either speak Tesla’s protocol, or Tesla SC would need to speak the “plug and charge” protocol which most existing Fords do support. It is likely Tesla will do that (though there are apparently licence fees which might get in the way, and the protocol is fairly bulky and committee designed, like the CCS connector itself.)
Tesla’s plug and play experience is not just a smoother experience. A significant fraction of failures to charge at CCS stations relate to billing and authentication problems. For unknown reasons, charging vendors have had a hard time at getting that right. In an ideal world, all cars will, after setting up billing, be able to just plug in and walk away 100% of the time.
Charging Port
Current Ford cars have the charging port in front of the driver’s door. That’s a difficult place to reach with the very short cord on Tesla chargers, and it’s on the wrong side of the car, to boot. It is unknown if the adapter provided to Ford drivers will include a segment of cable to solve this problem. Even so, unless it’s a very long segment, Fords will use the charger to the left of the car, not the one to the right used by Teslas, which could cause Fords to block stalls for use by Teslas. There is a simple solution — Fords can be told to use the stalls on the right of a bank of chargers whiles Teslas keep to the left (facing the bank from the parking.) If need be this can even be enforced, only allowing Fords to authenticate at the rightmost available stall and directing them there in the app.
One presumes the new Ford models with NACS sockets will place them either at the front right or rear-left to match Tesla charger geometry.
The Supercharger Network
The connector is good, but the real attraction is Tesla’s supercharger network, which Ford drivers will get access to. It has more charging stalls than all the CCS networks (though this has recently evened up) and they are generally more reliable. Tesla (and Ford NACS) owners can purchase a low cost adapter which lets them use CCS stations, so NACS drivers have access to more than twice the charging stations, but they rarely use the CCS stations because they are less reliable — though they are sometimes cheaper or more conveniently located depending on where you are.
The surprising difference in bulk between the Tesla NACS (dark) and CCS (gray)
Tesla
The harsh reality is that a cross-country road trip in a Tesla today is a greatly superior experience to one in a CCS car. Enough so that buyers who care about road trips have to really hate Tesla to get anything else.
Access to this network, though, does not come with using the connector. Ford and Tesla have made a deal to allow that. Terms of the deal are not disclosed, but there is a risk to NACS Ford owners that if that deal should terminate, they might be left unable to use it. Tesla has said it plans to open up their charging stations to all comers, but at present has only committed to putting adapters at about 10% of their stalls in the next two years. (Ford drivers will get access to all stalls, not just 10%, via their adapter.)
In Europe, laws made Tesla abandon their connector for the European version of CCS, and some, but not all Tesla superchargers in Europe can be used by other cars. They all have the same connector, but not all will serve other cars.
For a company making a new EV, with the choice of putting NACS on it or CCS, the answer is obvious — as long as they can assure access to the Superchargers for their drivers permanently. What customer wouldn’t want to be able to charge at more than twice the stations, with higher reliability? Only stubbornness would support a choice of CCS. If the adapter that lets CCS cars charge at Tesla SC becomes available to all, and access to the SC network is available to all, that could change the equation, but NACS would still be the better choice for physical reasons.
One important issue for drivers of 800 volt CCS cars (Lucid, Taycan, e-Tron, Ioniq 5 and a few others) is that Tesla SC only do 400v at present. They have an 800v version now but it is yet to be deployed. Some of those 800v cars, notably the Lucid Air, include a low-capacity 50kW 400v to 800v converter and so can’t charge quickly at 400v stations (CCS or Tesla.) CCS stations were initially also only 400v but the 350kW stations and the newer 150kW stations do 800v. While those cars will still get value from Tesla stations, they will prefer the 800v stations where they can get them.
J1772 vs. NACS
The standards war has gone slightly differently for lower speed charging in homes, offices, parking lots and hotels. All Teslas come with a simple adapter that lets them use J1772. Tesla owners tend to have NACS chargers in their homes — they are actually cheaper to buy than J1772 and offer a button to end the charging session, but this is not true in public charging stations. Tesla did a program of giving out NACS slow chargers to a large number of hotels, so these are still popular in that area, but otherwise public stations use J1772, though the most frequent way it is used is to plug into an NACS car via the adapter. The J1772 connector is just a little bit bulkier than NACS — it’s nothing like the large heft difference between CCS and NACS. (CCS is effectively J1772 with two extra large pins added on the bottom.)
There is so much J1772 out there that it will stick around for a while. These stations are low cost and money to retrofit them will not be available. Fast charging stations are expensive, and if NACS becomes the new standard, they can adapt to adding such a cord or switching to it. Over time, the reverse adapter that lets a J1772 car use a NACS slow charging (level 2) station may become cheap and common, allowing new level 2 to use NACS just as the hotels do.
What if NACS doesn’t win?
To the rest of the EV industry, Tesla is the competition, or even the enemy. As such, they may resist a move to NACS as the primary connector. However, with the sign-on of Ford, it becomes less likely that Tesla will cave in and switch to CCS the way they did in Europe, absent a legal requirement. The use of NACS by Ford means Tesla has a solid claim on the billions in subsidies for the installation of “standard supporting” charging stations. It’s valid too — it seems strange to argue that what defines a standard is having the most corporations on board, rather than the most drivers. As long as Tesla remains open with the NACS, they should now have access to that money, though currently the rules also require charging stations to follow stupid, 20th century practices like having screens and credit card readers, and assuring 150kW to each stall rather than having more stalls with better sharing, which Tesla — with good reason — doesn’t currently do or want to do.
It’s also unclear just how eager Tesla will be to give up their big advantage in the charging network. Will they be willing to guarantee lifetime access to that network to those who buy a car with NACS, even if Tesla and the maker of that car get into a fight?
Following Ford, other vendors may also adopt NACS, others may not support the change. The presence of the $175 (or less) adapter that lets NACS cars use CCS — which is a highly recommended purchase for any Tesla from the last few years — means that NACS owners who care can use the CCS stations, and as such there is not as big an incentive for CCS station managers to add NACS plugs. (Pre-2021 Teslas and a few later ones need a retrofit controller card to use this adapter.) As such, companies like Electrify America, the largest operator of CCS stations, are taking a wait-and-see about adding NACS. If they were operated as businesses, they would not do this — the majority of cars use NACS and at present don’t have the adapter, so they are turning away their business. But EA was created to fulfill the Volkswagen dieselgate penalty, and does not run as a pure business. EA has reiterated that they support CCS because most manufacturers use it, which suggests they care more about manufacturers than drivers — but on the other hand because the Tesla drivers already have a network they prefer — even at a higher price — they feel less push to support them.
Because of the adapters, it won’t be a calamity if there continue to be two “standards.” That’s particularly true if the NACS adapter for CCS cars that Ford owners will all receive becomes available to any driver. In that case, any driver willing to spend a modest amount will be able to charge at any charger, providing Tesla is willing to let them connect. It will just be less convenient when using the adapter.
Digital platforms like Uber,Airbnb and Etsy have made it easier than ever to make some extra cash on the side, but experts say you need to be diligent about tracking and reporting that additional income, or risk the consequences.
“Especially in the first year … make sure that if you’re not familiar with how to report self-employed income, seek assistance and get it right, rather than take the risk of getting it wrong. It’ll take a lot longer and cost a lot more to fix it,” said Bruce Goudy, director of BDO Canada’s indirect tax practice.
More and more Canadians are earning income from websites and apps, whether they’re renting out a property on Airbnb, delivering food through Uber Eats, or doing graphic design on Fiverr.
In December 2023, 927,000 people ages 15 to 69 years old said they had earned money from a digital platform in the preceding year, said Statistics Canada. This included platforms that pay workers directly and those that connect workers with clients.
If you earn money through a digital platform, you are considered self-employed, said Stefanie Ricchio, a chartered professional accountant and spokesperson for TurboTax Canada.
Instead of the standard T4 tax form you get from an employer, you’ll need to report your self-employment income on a T2125 form when you file your taxes.
As well as your income, you also need to report your expenses, said Ricchio. These expenses can include home office costs, car maintenance, and even the fees you pay to the digital platform — there are hundreds of deductions available, she said.
“The more eligible deductions that you apply to that income, the less that tax bill is going to be when you file.”
Because you’re generally not collecting taxes when you earn money on a digital platform, you need to be prepared to pay those taxes when you file, said Ricchio. She recommends setting aside about a quarter of your income for this purpose.
For those who are new to being self-employed, it can require a big mindset change, she said.
Once you’re earning $30,000 or more over four consecutive quarters, you have to register for a GST/HST account, said Ricchio, though you can voluntarily do it earlier.
But if you are providing rideshare services, you have to sign up right at the beginning, she said.
“It’s immediate because you start charging GST, HST immediately.”
This threshold might take some sellers by surprise, said Goudy, which is why it’s important to monitor your revenues closely so you’re not caught off guard.
Goudy noted that since Canada has several different sales tax jurisdictions, sellers should make sure they’re aware of those implications — tax obligations are based on where the customer is located, not the seller.
Canada recently introduced new reporting rules for digital platform operators, which came into effect this year. The rules themselves target the platforms, but could affect people working through those platforms too.
Certain platforms are now required to collect and report information to the Canada Revenue Agency on sellers who live in Canada or in countries that have implemented the same rules, and who sell to people in Canada or those countries, according to the CRA. This information may include identifying details like names and addresses, platform fees, property locations (if applicable) and payment details.
“What pre-empted this is obviously the rise of e-commerce, digital, the digital transaction community,” said Ricchio.
“They know that they have been missing transactions that have gone unknown to the CRA … so this is now the mechanism to help them capture it, to ensure that everyone is paying tax where they should be on that income.”
Sellers may be asked for additional information so the platform can fulfil these obligations, the agency added.
If a seller doesn’t provide their tax identification information to the platform, they can be fined $500, the CRA said.
Certain sellers are excluded from these obligations, including those with “less than 30 relevant activities for the sale of goods” and for whom the total amount paid or credited was below $2,800 during the reportable period, according to the CRA.
Sellers need to make sure they do their due diligence and comply with all their reporting requirements, said Goudy, as what they file has to match what the platform reports.
Non-compliance can result in penalties, he said, as well as any penalties or interest on unpaid taxes.
“The CRA is going to be able to cross-check this information readily available,” he said.
“If the sellers were not compliant before … then it’s going to be pretty obvious.”
Another change this year is that if you operate a short-term rental in a designated province or municipality where you’re not allowed to do so, the CRA will disqualify your business deductions, said Ricchio.
If you’re earning digital platform income on top of your regular employment income, Ricchio said the extra money could potentially push you into a higher tax bracket.
This will not only affect your rate of taxation but could also hit any benefits you’re used to receiving, such as the Canada Child Benefit or the GST/HST credit, she said. “That’s also sometimes a shock for people.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.
BURNABY, B.C. – Interfor Corp. is selling its three manufacturing facilities in Quebec and closing its corporate office in Montreal as the lumber producer plans to leave the province and focus on other parts of the company.
Interfor chief executive Ian Fillinger says the decision to exit its Quebec operations was influenced by recent developments that have restricted the availability of economic fibre, including record forest fires in 2023.
The company says it has signed a deal to sell its sawmills in Val-d’Or and Matagami as well as its Sullivan remanufacturing plant in Val-d’Or, along with all associated forestry and business operations, to Chantiers Chibougamau Ltée (CCL) for $30 million in cash.
Interfor and CCL will also enter into a multi-year contract for the supply of machine stress rated lumber to Interfor’s I-Joist engineered wood products facility in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.
Interfor says it expects to take an impairment charge in its third quarter associated with the announcement.
The sale does not include any countervailing or anti-dumping duty deposits related to the ongoing U.S.-Canada softwood lumber trade dispute.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 16, 2024.
TORONTO – TD Bank Group says The Charles Schwab Corp.’s third-quarter results are expected to translate into about $178 million of reported equity in net income for the Canadian bank’s fourth quarter.
TD says that excluding about $2 million after-tax in acquisition-related charges and $27 million after-tax in amortization of acquired intangibles, its adjusted equity in net income from its investment in Schwab will be $207 million.
TD is expected to release its full fourth-quarter results on Dec. 5.
Schwab, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported Tuesday a third-quarter profit of US$1.41 billion, up from US$1.13 billion a year earlier.
On an adjusted basis, Schwab says it earned US$1.53 billion in its latest quarter compared with US$1.52 billion in the same quarter last year.
TD announced in August that it had sold 40.5 million Schwab shares. The sale reduced its interest in Schwab to 10.1 per cent from 12.3 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 16, 2024.
