- Lucid’s CEO claims Tesla’s charge-port design was influenced by Musk’s rental garage layout.
- If true, it means several brands are moving their charge ports ultimately for the same reason.
- The Gravity mirrors Tesla’s placement, proving Musk’s choice still has lasting influence.
You might think the location of an electric vehicle’s charge port wouldn’t be the sort of thing that sparks heated debates. But it turns out a charge port’s location isn’t just a matter of convenience; it’s actually a significant design decision that can have a real impact on the user experience. And no, this isn’t just some minor footnote in the world of electric vehicles.
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Now, let’s back up for a moment. Internal combustion cars benefit heavily from the sheer ubiquity of refueling infrastructure. It doesn’t matter too much where a gas cap sits because gas pumps are everywhere, refueling takes very little time, and the hoses are long enough to reach from practically any angle. Electric cars, however, don’t benefit from the same luxuries.
The Wild, Wild West of Charge Port Locations
And yet, despite how critical this seemingly small detail is, automakers have seemingly placed charge ports all over the place. Some are on the front, some on the rear; some are even on the side. Tesla, of course, has become the de facto standard, with most competitors eventually following suit. And if what Peter Rawlinson says is true, it’s for an almost hilarious reason.
Rawlinson is the CEO of Lucid, one of many aspiring Tesla challengers that have cropped up in recent years. Before he filled that role, he worked at Tesla under Elon Musk and the two had different ideas about charger port location. Evidently, Rawlinson believed that it should be on the driver’s side of the car ahead of the front door and behind the wheel. Musk, however, had a completely different vision, one inspired by the layout of his rented garage in Bel Air.
In an interview with PC Mag, Rawlinson claims that “He (Musk) said it wouldn’t suit the layout of his garage in Bel Air. So I (Rawlinson) said, ‘Well, where do you want it, then? What suits the layout of your garage in Bel Air?’ He said it’s going to be on the rear because he could trip over the cable. He was renting the property, and he didn’t even own the place, but we put the charge port on the Model S on the left-hand rear because of the layout of his rented garage in Bel Air!”
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If Rawlinson’s story is true, then Teslas have their charge ports exactly where they do because of one man’s concern for avoiding tripping over a cable in a Bel Air garage he didn’t even own. Hilarious, right?
But it doesn’t stop there. This also means that as several car companies move their own charge ports to align with the Tesla Supercharger network, they’re ultimately doing so because of a choice that dates back to Musk’s early days with Tesla.
To that point, even though Lucid’s first model, the Air sedan, has the charge port behind the front wheel on the fender, as Rawlinson originally envisioned, the company’s latest vehicle, the Gravity SUV, has moved the charge port to the driver’s rear quarter panel, just like every Tesla.
