Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Rivian embraces Tesla's charging standard for EVs

ev-edition.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 761 posts

Re: Rivian embraces Tesla's charging standard for EVs

#81

Post by alistairSH »

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!…

Title case is distinct from sentence case...

"For Whom the Bell Tolls"

vs

"For whom the bell tolls"

The former is correct for titles. The latter is correct for ordinary sentences.

Re: Rivian embraces Tesla's charging standard for EVs

#82

Post by kotaKat »

zlsa wrote: post #65
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, al…

I have had a colleague describe to me the lingering smell of ozone when he was able to unplug CCS1 while charging. The charger and car dutifully stopped charging and the charger nagged to Not Do That but it certainly left that ozone wafting...

Re: Rivian embraces Tesla's charging standard for EVs

#83

Post by bryanlarsen »

pornel wrote: post #27
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.

The physical shape of Tesla/NACS is way better: it's more compact, and easier to plug in. The CCS connector OTOH is a lazy retrofit of a design-by-committee plug. The wire protocol of CCS is a bit overengineered, but it's a standard, and it's a sunk cost (all cars, including current Teslas, are already compatible with it). So physical NACS + CCS protocol seems like the best of both. It's also worth pointing out that…

Not all Tesla's can speak CCS. Older Teslas need a $400 retrofit to be able to use the Tesla CCS1 adapter. https://shop.tesla.com/en_ca/product/ccs-combo-1-adapter

Re: Rivian embraces Tesla's charging standard for EVs

#84

Post by KallDrexx »

vel0city wrote: post #14
toomuchtodo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who else is going to invest in a fast DC network? The closest competitor was Electrify America, and they can't make the economics work. Tesla made it work by subsidizing their $1B+ global fast DC charging network cost out of robust vehicle margins. Most EV users will charge at home, some at their place of work and businesses, with fast DC charging filling the remaining gap (people who can't charge at home or people o…

There are many brands of DCFC around me. EA obviously, EVGo, blink, 7Eleven, Road Ranger, Francis, and Volta. There's a few other travel centers on the routes I take which have their own branded chargers as well The earlier non-Tesla charging stations definitely had a rough start as there was practically zero market at all for them. The economics will change as more EVs are on the road. I do agree most early EV owner…

Since EvGO and Chargepoint seem to be public companies, I looked up their financial statements. It's not pretty. They are all bleeding money and that's with machines that people complain are down a lot. Chargepoint is in a slightly better spot because their Level 2 chargers seem to be somewhat better in the profitability department, but still losing tons of money.

And that's not really surprising. If you look around at quotes, installing a single DCFC charging stall of 150Kw or better looks to run about $100k per stall plus significant installation costs almost matching that.

At $100k for the stall itself, and if we assume $.50/kwh (a bit higher than most EVGO stations I see around here) and we assume $0.16/kwh electricity (residential rate here), that means each kwh sent to a car has a profit of $0.34. So the stall would need to dispense 294,117kwh of energy to pay for the stall itself. If the average rate of dispensing to a car is 100kw (which is probably high even without leafs and bolts due to charging curves) in 15 minute intervals, that's 11,765 cars that need to charge for 15 minute intervals to break even on the equipment itself, so an average of 32 cars charging per day (assuming my math is right, which it may not be).

32 cars per day at 15 minute average charge times means the stall has to be utilized 33% of the day. That paypack doesn't count maintenance, install fees, repairs (they are always breaking down), kickbacks to the land/building owners, etc... And many areas of North America doesn't get electricity for $0.16/kwh (though some are cheaper)

The math definitely feels to me like it's really hard to make DCFC stations profitable in much of the US, especially until EVs become more prevalent.

Re: Rivian embraces Tesla's charging standard for EVs

#85

Post by panick21_ »

amluto wrote: post #60
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.

I think it’s incentives. If Tesla chargers break and stay broken, then Tesla owners get mad. (And Tesla chargers seem to break or malfunction with some regularity — they’re not indestructible. But they get fixed, and there are always more than one or two chargers at a site.) The third party chargers don’t seem to act like they have a reputation to uphold. Also, I’m not convinced they’re even really motivated to have…

> The third party chargers don’t seem to act like they have a reputation to uphold. Also, I’m not convinced they’re even really motivated to have people use their stations.

They do care but technology is unforgiving. Tesla is many iterations into improving their station reliability, they are vertically integrated and their station are very simple. The production volume is far, far higher leading to improve quality.

The competitors like EA, in their effort to scale simply have 3-4 different providers put into the same box. Different hardware, different software and so on. And then also a NextGen version from all these providers.

Their stations are much more complex, with screens and so on. So the failure rate is far higher and repair is much more difficult.

I think you are underestimate the challenge of how difficult it is to role out such an infrastructure and maintain it specially when you are just a service provider, not an actual engineering company. Tesla just made it look easy and everybody expect that any other company could do the same, but they can't.

Re: Rivian embraces Tesla's charging standard for EVs

#86

Post by vel0city »

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…

> How to switch that to an all-electric system?

Simple, most residents of the town won't be at those stations regularly. Most of my DCFC charging sessions have been because I've been wanting to try out different locations and charging equipment, not because I needed the DCFC. In reality, the vast majority of miles my EV will do will not need any public charging infrastructure, at all.

Meanwhile, 100% of the miles on my ICE will need public fueling infrastructure. I inherently need to go to a pump sometime to get gas.

> But if you do this at scale electricity costs go through the roof and you're back to the same pricing problem as above

I don't think its as big of a deal as you're thinking it will be. Sure, some percentage of homes out there don't have >100A service at home and will probably need some kind of upgrade to their home service necessitating new equipment up the chain. But for my household to swap out an EV? About 15 feet of power cable, a circuit breaker, a double-gang box, and a NEMA 14-50 outlet was all that was needed.

My peak power usage in the house didn't change at all adding the EV. My EV uses the same amount of power as running a burner on the stove while doing my laundry (electric dryer). Meanwhile my house (and the rest of the grid up the line) was designed for me to pull enough power for me to cook in the oven, on the stove, do my laundry, run the AC, power all the lights in my house, and more. Guess what, I'm not often cooking and doing laundry at 2AM, and I probably already got my house cooled down by then so the AC isn't often cranking that hard at that time. Take a guess when my car charges.

So how much did it cost the grid to add my car? $0.

Re: Rivian embraces Tesla's charging standard for EVs

#87

Post by alistairSH »

Is Tesla planning to update Supercharger stations to accommodate non-Tesla vehicles.

Charge plug notwithstanding, the placement of Supercharger stands is usually for the left-rear charge port on all current Teslas. The stand location and cable length is a problem for vehicles with different designs.

Demonstrated here (particularly the F-150 Lightning)...

https://youtu.be/W-oaVLRH-js?t=519

Re: Rivian embraces Tesla's charging standard for EVs

#88

Post by pornel »

zodo123 wrote: post #39
bpodgursky wrote: post #17

At this point, the rate at which automakers NACS support is a good proxy for corporate malaise. Everyone sees the writing on the wall for CCS, and if an automaker takes another couple months to announce a migration it simply means the executive leadership has no clue what they are doing with regards to EVs.

I’d say that’s the case for Stellantis (Dodge etc), but I suspect the big European automakers will be slower to get onboard due to the greater investment in CCS in the EU. It’ll require a bigger mental shift, as their leadership may not have as strong a grasp on the North American situation, and will probably have a greater bias toward “standards”. (Yes I realize we’re talking about CCS1 vs CCS2, but it doesn’t pract…

Nah, Stellantis is just bad. Their EV tech is poor. They have no dedicated EV platform, and they struggle to make profit on EVs. They're not invested in CCS at all — they're still hoping EVs are a fad.

Re: Rivian embraces Tesla's charging standard for EVs

#89

Post by bryanlarsen »

snuxoll wrote: post #30
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.

AFAICT NACS (read, the "standard" and not Tesla's original release) speaks the same protocol as CCS, it just combines the AC and DC pins into, yes, a sleeker connector. So no real "benefit", and it actually adds complexity into the car itself. But theoretically one could also make a NACS -> CCS adapter, so it wouldn't end up as a CHAdeMO situation. EDIT: I forgot, the NACS connector is more or less self-aligning if y…

NACS and CCS currently use different protocols. Older Tesla's require a retrofit to support CCS1. (https://shop.tesla.com/en_ca/product/ccs-combo-1-adapter).

However, I suspect a big part of the reason why this flurry of announcements is happening now is that Tesla is upgrading their superchargers to be able to speak the CCS protocol over NACS.

Re: Rivian embraces Tesla's charging standard for EVs

#90

Post by simondotau »

tensor wrote: post #49
belval wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used both and while from a technical standpoint CCS might be superior (I have no idea), in practice NACS is sleeker and feels less clunky. Is that a good reason to adopt a standard that isn't open? Probably not. Does the average customer cares and will it have an impact on their day to day? Probably not. EDIT: Seems like NACS is open after all so I don't really understand why we would bother with CCS.

My understanding is that NACS is open: https://www.tesla.com/blog/opening-north-american-charging-s...

It's open in every respect that matters, but pedants will rightly point out that it hasn't been submitted to a classic standards body (like SAE) to formalise in the way that satisfies middle management and expensive consultants.
Post reply on HN