Tesla Fans Have A Field Day Bashing Ford Over Charging-Station Design

Tesla Inc TSLA fans are having a field day slamming legacy rival Ford Motor Co’s F electric vehicle charging stations that it is deploying at the dealerships.

What Happened: Photographs of Ford’s newly installed charging station installed at one of its dealerships have been doing the rounds on Twitter and drawing snarky comments from the Elon Musk-led company’s fans.

Twitter user MarcoRPTesla, who identifies himself as "The Supercharger Updates Guy" and tweets information related to Tesla Superchargers, tweeted a picture of the Ford’s charging station, mockingly calling it a “Supercharger.”

Ford is in fact deploying Level 2 charging stations, unlike Tesla’s DC fast chargers or the Superchargers.

See Also: Ford's 160,000 Reservations Number For F-150 Lightning Doesn't Include Fleet Orders

Another user, who goes by the handle The Kilowatts and tweets on electric vehicles, shared a post with his over 18,000 followers to say Ford’s chargers are “fancy looking Level 2 AC chargers” and not the faster Level 3 DC chargers.

Another user Javier Verdura, who says he works at Tesla, replied to The Kilowatts’s post, mocking Ford’s “disingenuous, unnecessarily large, poorly executed knock-off” of the Musk-led company’s design. 

Benzinga could not verify if Verdura is an employee with Tesla.

Another user by the name Insung Hwang pointed out that Ford has “copied the shape rather than the function” as the Tesla Supercharger houses the connection cables within the hole thereby reducing clutter and entanglement. 

“The Ford version is on the outside like a gasoline pump.” the post said.

See Also: Ford Said To Be Deploying Tesla-Supercharger-Like EV Charging Stations At Dealerships

Why It Matters: Ford chargers are similar in design to those of Tesla’s Supercharger, even though the resemblance is cosmetic and not technical. Ford has partnered with Electrify America, Sunrun Inc RUN, Ionity, among other charging networks.

Tesla already has a network of over 30,000 superchargers globally, which it says can recharge for upto 200 miles in 15 minutes. 

Ford is laying the groundwork for electric charging infrastructure ahead of its upcoming F-150 Lightning electric pickup’s commercial roll out next year and as it delivers more Mustang Mach-Es.

Price Action: Ford shares closed 1.37% lower at $20.20 a share on Tuesday.