Photo by Cameron Osborn / Unsplash

Before selling a single car Porsche started installing high-speed charging stations at their dealerships, now they have announced plans to build their own high-speed network of charging stations.

If this sounds familiar thats because its ripped straight Tesla's playbook and Porsche is right to copy the EV industry leader. After all Tesla has laid out the perfect blueprint on how to succeed selling EVs. Its brand loyal is by far the highest among car manufacturers and over 90% of current Tesla owners said their next car would be another Tesla.

Its easy to see that no matter what you think of Tesla, they are obviously building EVs the right way and every other manufacturer should follow their lead.

More Than A Car, An Ecosystem

Tesla holds a pretty significant advantage in coming to market first. Many companies have tried and failed with EVs, but Tesla has been wildly successful thanks to building out a comprehensive ecosystem.

When you buy a Tesla you're not just buying an amazing vehicle with massive amounts of torque you also are buying into superchargers, high-powered wall-connectors, Tesla power packs, solar roofs, and a whole host of other products that make the customer experience perfect. While you could fill-in many of those aspects with other products the experience isn't unified, its frayed, confusing, and sometimes completely non-existent.

Consider the supercharger network, a Tesla can navigate its way from Toronto to Montreal in just about 5 hours, that same drive in a Chevy Bolt EV can take up to 9 hours. This happens because while a Tesla has one unified ecosystem with standardized charging times and well thought out charging locations, Chevy has to rely on a public network. One that has been placed without thought to drive times, and has charging speeds that vary from 6.2kW all the way to 50kW (the standard supercharger station is 135kW). Simple because the charging infrastructure has no uniformity, means that Bolt EV drivers now have a far worse ownership experience.

Money Making Venture

One of the least talked about aspects of Elon Musk's electric dream is just how profitable it really is. Yes, its true that Tesla is currently burning through capital like there is no tomorrow, but thats what happens when you start building at scale. All those Superchargers aren't exactly free.

However when looking at the margin's on the Model 3 its easy to see just how much money Tesla could easily rake in once its manufacturing at capacity. As the table below shows, each fully loaded Model 3 nets Elon and Co. roughly $17,500 on every vehicle. To put that number in perspective, GM actually loses $9,000 on every Bolt they sell.