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

Opening the North American charging standard

tesla.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 192 posts

Re: Opening the North American charging standard

#101

Post by hedora »

stetrain wrote: post #30
kgermino wrote: post #14

I don't see anything new here (other than the name). For those who don't know there are two charging connecters used for new electric cars in the US: Tesla (now called NACS and only used on Teslas) and CCS (used by everyone else). There's nothing here to indicate that that's changing and it feels like a move by Tesla to try turning around the momentum in a format war they're losing, even if they have a wider installe…

There’s an actual set of specification documents available to download. That’s an improvement. Previously the only public info was their patent filings. It also sounds like they are offering specific parts (inlets and connector cables) for sale since they are providing datasheets on them.

I wonder if that means we'll soon have cheap dongles to charge CCS cars at supercharger stations. I'd pay (maybe) $200 for such a thing, mostly because sometimes the CCS chargers are busy.

Re: Opening the North American charging standard

#102

Post by politician »

kelnos wrote: post #97
akozak wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't really matter even if it's slightly technically better. We are WAY too late in the game here (US is already deploying federal funds!), and they should have engaged with open standards a decade ago.

Yup, I don't think it matters which one is technically better. They both get the job done, and one is an actual standard that many car makers have agreed upon -- "many" meaning "every single one except Tesla". If Tesla wanted theirs to be standard, they should have made this move years ago. They missed the boat, and are now scrambling to avoid having to change their own sockets.

Looks at Apple.

Re: Opening the North American charging standard

#103

Post by Dylan16807 »

morio wrote: post #87
xxpor wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ccs1 vs 2 comes down to the fact that the base plug (the ac part) has to be different between the two. Europe supports 3 phase because it's common there, while the NA plug doesn't, because 3 phase is unheard of in residential installations, and it has to support 120 level 1 charging.

Huh? CCS1, CCS2 and NACS are DC. You are probably thinking Type 2 (Europe) which is indeed 3 phase and j1772 (US) which is single phase.

Your distinction doesn't matter. They're talking about the plug/socket shape, which is shared between DC and AC standards.

Re: Opening the North American charging standard

#104

Post by AlanSE »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #83
mertd wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and allowing CCS cars to charge at Superchargers. I'm reading the announcement differently. They are saying future non Teslas who adopt NACS can use the Tesla chargers. It doesn't say anything about current CCS cars being able to use Tesla charging.

Tesla announced a plan to open superchargers to non-Tesla EVs earlier this year; Musk announced that they would be adding CCS to US superchargers back in May. Unfortunately Musk is both the official Press contact for Tesla and also a guy who says a lot of random half-baked things, so it's impossible to determine if this was an official policy or just an idea he had one morning. [1] Even after this move I don't see an…

My thoughts as well, this is their business advantage to lose.

> NACS is the most common charging standard in North America: NACS vehicles outnumber CCS two-to-one, and Tesla's Supercharging network has 60% more NACS posts than all the CCS-equipped networks combined.

Yet, in your link it's complained about that the Supercharging network capacity is already strained. Bottom line is that the vast majority of the charging stations that will exist 10 years from now are still yet to be built.

Tesla may still be hoping for a regional break, as their standard wins in some geographies but not for others. This would be a loss for all of us all collectively.

Certainly feels like they should have known better. Past greed will leave them (and their customers) with a massive writeoff in the future if your prediction comes to pass.

Re: Opening the North American charging standard

#105

Post by Dylan16807 »

zzzeek wrote: post #65
kortilla wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re confusing the CCS chargers outside of North America. The ones in NA are absolute trash and Tesla is right to try to kill them off as fast as possible before electric car volume that uses them becomes significant. Tesla is well over half of the electric cars. There’s no reason for them to accommodate the absolute worst standard at their stations.

> You’re confusing the CCS chargers outside of North America. The ones in NA are absolute trash and Tesla is right to try to kill them off as fast as possible before electric car volume that uses them becomes significant. noting that you appear to agree with my assessment that they want to kill off CCS and force all carmakers to use their ports as a means of avoiding having to change their own supercahrgers, otherwis…

> I'd prefer my car not be "killed off".

> trashed

This level of hyperbole makes it hard to take you seriously.

Even if it was true, I think that would mean you're advocating for all the Teslas to be killed off, which I think would mean you're more wrong than they are!

Re: Opening the North American charging standard

#106

Post by hedora »

mike_d wrote: post #96
gibolt wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla is still >70% of EVs in the U.S. and Aptera has already adopted their plug (hopefully shipping soon). We are still within bounds of choosing the superior connector. It isn't too late like in Europe, especially since US bound vehicles are already using a different plug than their European counterparts

"Our forecasts suggest that Tesla’s market share will decline from 70% in 2021 to (an estimated) 11% by 2025" -Bank of America The major auto manufactures are on track to have 60% of all new cars EVs by 2026. Tesla just can't compete with that volume. They need to start getting ready for the new standard now, not pulling this nonsense.

Tesla is claiming 66% now that it is 2022 (down 4%), so BofA's projections are in the correct direction, at least.

Re: Opening the North American charging standard

#107

Post by akozak »

gibolt wrote: post #95
akozak wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't really matter even if it's slightly technically better. We are WAY too late in the game here (US is already deploying federal funds!), and they should have engaged with open standards a decade ago.

This implies they didn't, which is false. CCS was released slightly before the Model S (first to use Tesla's connector). Both were developed at the same time. At the time, there was no viable alternative for Tesla. Now, there is no reason to revert to a significantly subpar option.

Yes there is - because their proprietary (until today) plug is not the industry standard.

Re: Opening the North American charging standard

#108

Post by hedora »

chrisseaton wrote: post #3

Why is CCS so absolutely enormous and so technically limited? What's the story behind how it got so bad? There must be some kind of trade-off Tesla took that CCS didn't?

Is bigger actually worse in this case?

At least in theory, it should be possible to make it mechanically stronger than a smaller connector.

I've heard of charge station cable connectors failing do repeated bending stress, and my car has multiple warning stickers saying not to plug into a charging cable that is under tension.

Re: Opening the North American charging standard

#109

Post by margalabargala »

nomel wrote: post #99
akozak wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't really matter even if it's slightly technically better. We are WAY too late in the game here (US is already deploying federal funds!), and they should have engaged with open standards a decade ago.

What "game" are they too late for? The number of ports is the game, and the reason my next EV will be a Tesla. It's very difficult to find charge stations that aren't Tesla, and when you do, they're often used for general parking.

Out of curiosity, where in the US are you?

Where I am (Oregon), public CCS charger locations outnumber Tesla chargers several times over. There are huge areas of the state that have CCS chargers, but no Tesla charging capacity.

My next EV will certainly not be a Tesla, for that reason.

Re: Opening the North American charging standard

#110

Post by Dylan16807 »

stetrain wrote: post #37
zaptrem wrote: post #33

Awesome. This should be a world-wide standard. NACS (Tesla) VS CCS is like USB-A 1.0 vs USB-C with Power Delivery: CCS is unbelievably slow and clunky to the point where it might turn people off wanting an EV once they experience the slow and clunkiness.

Tesla’s connector has zero marketshare in Europe and doesn’t support 3-phase AC charging. I don’t think there is that much benefit in a global standard given that adapters exist.

I think you'd have to make yet another new connector if you wanted a really good global standard, which makes it even less worth attempting.
Post reply on HN