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Rivian embraces Tesla's charging standard for EVs

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Re: Rivian embraces Tesla's charging standard for EVs

#61

Post by shmoe »

pathartl wrote: post #22

I'm not an EV user, so I need some clarification. Is NACS actually a better connector? Or is it just more abundant at the moment? Technology Connections did a deep dive on CCS and it seems like it's a more flexible connector with a truly open standard. The argument for NACS I've seen is that it's a little sleeker (does this really matter all that much?) and it's already on Tesla's supercharger network.

So much better. Not to mention, same connector for AC (home) charging and DC fast charging (on the road at the super chargers). Whereas now with CCS you have a little cover over the fast charging pins you remove from your usual AC port to plug in the DC fast charging combo. So much nicer.

Re: Rivian embraces Tesla's charging standard for EVs

#62

Post by bushbaba »

piinbinary wrote: post #34

I wonder if Tesla is repositioning from being a Ford to being an Exxon

Tesla was always closer in vision to an energy company than auto maker.

Wouldn’t surprise me if they leverage the healthy EV competition to growing their battery, supercharger, and energy generation capabilities. With these one day overtaking car sales revenue.

Re: Rivian embraces Tesla's charging standard for EVs

#63

Post by pornel »

harshaw wrote: post #56

Is there any technical reason you can't build an adapter from NACS to CCS1? We have adapters for Tesla destination chargers (NACS without fast charging??) to J1772 and they work just fine.

The wire protocol of classic Tesla supercharging is custom, so it'd require electronic components, not just a physical adapter. It may be technically hard, e.g. ChaDeMo and CCS speak a different wire protocol, and there are no adapters for them.

However, when the charging station can use the CCS protocol, it's only a matter a of physical adapter. Tesla's "Magic Dock" is it.

Re: Rivian embraces Tesla's charging standard for EVs

#64

Post by bushbaba »

harshaw wrote: post #56

Is there any technical reason you can't build an adapter from NACS to CCS1? We have adapters for Tesla destination chargers (NACS without fast charging??) to J1772 and they work just fine.

No technical reason. But the adapter might not be “small”

Re: Rivian embraces Tesla's charging standard for EVs

#65

Post by zlsa »

pathartl wrote: post #22

I'm not an EV user, so I need some clarification. Is NACS actually a better connector? Or is it just more abundant at the moment? Technology Connections did a deep dive on CCS and it seems like it's a more flexible connector with a truly open standard. The argument for NACS I've seen is that it's a little sleeker (does this really matter all that much?) and it's already on Tesla's supercharger network.

CCS1 (the variant of CCS used in the US; basically J1772 + HVDC pins) has a lot of flaws that can't easily fixed in a backwards-compatible way:

1. It's gigantic, making it a lot harder to handle and plug in [0] 2. CCS1 has a mechanical latch on the handle side (as opposed to NACS, which puts an electronic latch in the vehicle side). This results in a few problems: a. The CCS1 latch is is exposed and easily broken, allowing the vehicle to begin charging without being physically latched in (meaning it can be unplugged without pressing the lever to unlatch, while still carrying HVDC at hundreds of amps – there is protection against this but it's not great practice to rely on the control/ground pins being unplugged first, rather than making a latch that isn't so easily circumvented) b. The latch is long and requires a lot of force to unlatch (this may just be my bad experiences speaking, but I've always needed to wiggle the connector a bit to relieve the friction.)

Unrelated to the physical connector, Tesla's charging network in the US is far larger and more reliable than everyone else's CCS1 networks combined, and the only way to use the network is NACS (at the moment, anyway. Magic Dock[1] is being added to some superchargers and will most likely be rolled out wider in the near future.)

0: https://digitalassets.tesla.com/tesla-contents/image/upload/... 1: https://electrek.co/2023/02/23/tesla-supercharger-magic-dock...

Re: Rivian embraces Tesla's charging standard for EVs

#66

Post by AntonFriberg »

kozziollek wrote: post #26

Offtopic: could people that write news titles please learn how to capitalize words? Or can we make sure that at AI will know it, when most of news are written by it? Took me 3 tries to parse the title. "Rivian Joins Forces" - is that name of an organization? - "with Tesla"... nope, that doesn't make sense. "Rivan Joins forces" (somebody to do something), syntax error got "with". "Rivan joins forces with Tesla" - yay!…

As a non-native English speaker I was confused by the need to capitalize so many words (but not all) in headers. I make frequent use of https://capitalizemytitle.com/ to make sure that I follow some type of standard.

Re: Rivian embraces Tesla's charging standard for EVs

#67

Post by shmoe »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #57
outlace wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if there are any studies on this but the perception amongst EV users that I'm aware of is that NACS is a very reliable system (low rate of charging stall breakdowns) compared to CCS chargers that seem to break down quite frequently. However, it is unclear if this is due to the technology difference between CCS and NACS or if it's just due to the poor implementation of CCS charger infrastructure.

It's both. The latch on CCS1 is particularly prone to breaking, but is responsible for only a small fraction of the CCS1 downtime.

Also as they age you have to hold the top up for the J1772 communication pins to initiate the charge and then you can let go.

Re: Rivian embraces Tesla's charging standard for EVs

#69

Post by jfengel »

pipnonsense wrote: post #42
kozziollek wrote: post #26

Offtopic: could people that write news titles please learn how to capitalize words? Or can we make sure that at AI will know it, when most of news are written by it? Took me 3 tries to parse the title. "Rivian Joins Forces" - is that name of an organization? - "with Tesla"... nope, that doesn't make sense. "Rivan Joins forces" (somebody to do something), syntax error got "with". "Rivan joins forces with Tesla" - yay!…

It is called Title Case and part of a lot of (American?) news organizations style guides. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_case It confuses me, a non-native English speaker, a lot too. I hate it.

It's often confusing to native speakers as well, especially in a domain like this where words like "join" and "force" can easily be used as buzzwords.

Title case makes a certain limited sense in newspapers. But on HN, where most articles don't use the title case even when the underlying media do use it, there is a lot of potential for confusion.

Re: Rivian embraces Tesla's charging standard for EVs

#70

Post by thrtythreeforty »

jancsika wrote: post #55

Would love to hear fast how charging stations will scale in a way that beats the current price and speed of filling up a car with gasoline. I mean, even in a small town with, say, three gas stations, there are peak times when all the spots are taken. Average fueling time is probably a few minutes. How to switch that to an all-electric system? + build a significantly higher number of fast electric charges than there a…

I have no data, but I suspect we underestimate the impact of at-home charging. Essentially, all vehicles parked at a residence start every day with a full charge. This eliminates most of the demand on fast-charge stations for around-town use.

Granted, they still consume power that the grid has to supply, so pricing may change, but I suspect gas station traffic will go way down, in aggregate, as EV adoption climbs.

One thing the government hasn't noticed yet (afaik) is that electric cars aren't taxed like gasoline cars. The per-gallon tax (which pays for important things like roads) is a substantial portion of the overall cost. Nobody factors that eventual cost in when they claim EVs are sooo much cheaper. They will probably continue to be cheaper, just less aggressively cheaper than Tesla claims.

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