This is a case of corporate stubbornness which I'd like to study and teach one day!

You might have heard that Tesla is going to let other EV cars be charged at its extensive network of Tesla Supercharger stations. Tesla use their own proprietary car charging port called "North America Charging Standard" or NACS while other EVs often use something called "Combined Charging System" or CCS.

If you own a Tesla in Pennsylvania, you have access to 78 Tesla Supercharger stations:

While if you own a non-Tesla car, you can charge it at any of the 1,271 charging stations (For California, this number is a whopping 14,040 stations!)

While the numbers are indeed in favor or non-Tesla EVs, it’s the charging quality that ultimately makes them a subpar experience compared to Tesla’s Superchargers. For example, Tesla chargers respect the nominal charging power (e.g., 150 kWh) while the non-Tesla chargers often don’t, so you end up getting less power (e.g., 80 kWh), meaning that your EV charges much slower.

Therefore, Tesla’s partnership with other EV manufacturers to is a good example of firms keeping their proprietary features while opening them up for the competition. It's a win-win for Tesla and its competition because:

1. This partnership generates additional revenue for Tesla.
2. The NACS charging port becomes essentially the standard in the North America.
3. EV sales of the competition goes up, which is good for Tesla too because the EV market is still at an early stage. The sooner it becomes the norm to purchase EVs instead of gas cars, the sooner Tesla's revenue increases.

This is fascinating as it illustrates what Apple could have been. When Apple introduced their proprietary charging port for the iPhone and iPad, I was instantly sold. The Lightning port is sturdier than USB-C. It stays firmly plugged in, unlike the wobbly USB-C ports, and lacks a slit in the middle that can attract dust and dirt, leading to malfunctions. Compared to USB-C, Lightning needs less maintenance, has a superior design, and offers much faster transfer speeds.

Left: A Lightning cable. Right: A USB-C cable.

Apple spent a decade protecting their proprietary port only to lose the battle to USB-C, thanks to the recent EU regulation. Lightning could have been the standard of charging handheld gadgets all around the world, but now it’s just history. We expect more of Apple’s devices to switch to USB-C, including the AirPods (Max and regular), Magic Keyboard, Magic Mouse, and Magic TrackPad.

We saw this coming, of course. Apple’s double-standard (pun intended) of putting USB-C ports on the iPad Pros but not the regular iPads and iPhones was already hinting at the fact that even Apple knew the Lightning years were over. In the end, standards can be good for consumers—imagine not having to worry about carrying a USB-Lightning adapter while on travel, not having to carry two cables—one for the iPad Pro and Mac and one for the iPhone and AirPods.

iPad Pro with USB-C

This is not the first time Apple “pulls an Apple” like this. Their insistence on “design over function” lead to a poorly designed 12-inch MacBook with only one USB-C port. Consumers had to purchase USB dongles separately. I suppose it was a good sales boost for accessories manufacturers.

12-inch MacBook with only one USB-C port.

Obviously, Apple soon realized this was a mistake—Johny Ive (the head of design) left the company and Apple went back to multiple ports on MacBooks. But cases like this hint at a deeper issue at Apple: