Opening the North American charging standard • Hacker News Board

Re: Opening the North American charging standard

#171

Post by margalabargala » Sat, Nov 12, 2022, 6:40 AM UTC

chroma wrote: post #158

margalabargala wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm not thinking of J1772 chargers. I'm thinking of CCS chargers. We're talking about two different things. You are talking about the count of chargers. Tesla has a higher quantity of chargers, yes. However, their chargers are concentrated; a single charging location has 30+ chargers. This drives their high charger count numbers. CCS chargers are more geographically widespread. There are more locations with CCS c…

The supercharger network is now dense enough that you can drive anywhere in the US without worry. The largest gap in the nation is between Coeur d'Alene, ID and Superior, MT, and that's 100 miles. I've gone to rural Montana and Idaho in the winter and I've never had to worry about charging. Also while Plugshare may show more dots on a map, that doesn't correspond to useful charging. Non-Tesla charging stations are no…

> Non-Tesla charging stations are notoriously inconvenient, unreliable, and slow to charge

All my arguments are geographically based. In Oregon, this is not the case. In the last three years, I've never pulled up to a CCS charger and had all chargers be out of service or sub-50kw. Rarely have I ever had to wait in line for such a charger. As no adapter is necessary, I consider this superior to Tesla. There are towns we frequent on the Oregon coast that are far from any Tesla chargers, but are dotted with CCS chargers. When my friend comes with us and brings his Model 3, he has to take at least one detour that's over a half hour each way so that he can charge for the trip home. We do not have to do this.

Adapters are a good stopgap but not everyone has one, because they're somehow not stock with the car.

Re: Opening the North American charging standard

#172

Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, Nov 12, 2022, 6:48 AM UTC

gwbas1c wrote: post #169

Dylan16807 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

J1772 can't carry enough amps through those pins. So it needs two more huge pins in a separate compartment. CCS isn't the absolute smallest way to add two more huge pins, but it's pretty close.

Why keep the J1772 connector? Only the data pins are used. I'm sure there's a way to make a connector that's just the CCS part and fudge the data pins into it. Then supporting the old cars just happens with a dongle.

Don't ask me that, I'm just answering why the decision to keep it caused such a huge connector.

Re: Opening the North American charging standard

#173

Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, Nov 12, 2022, 6:50 AM UTC

chroma wrote: post #120

criddell wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s still early days and certainly not too late to change it.

That's true for the US, but the EU mandates that all vehicle charging stations support CCS Combo 2.[1] They'd have to undo their mandate to allow better chargers, and I don't think that'll happen any time soon. 1. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...

CCS 2 is a different discussion, because at least it supports something the Tesla connector doesn't, 3 phase charging.

Re: Opening the North American charging standard

#174

Post by chrisseaton » Sat, Nov 12, 2022, 8:31 AM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #168

chrisseaton wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Says 1 MW?

2500 amps? I don't think liquid cooling is enough to allow for that. You are probably thinking of the megawatt charger for the semi, which is different. A regular V3 supercharger caps out at 250kW. There are rumors that the V4 might get closer to 400kW, but as far as I know those remain rumors. There's also a rumor of an upgrade of V3 superchargers to about 325kW, which would at least be getting close to CCS1.

Only going on what the article says "the Tesla charging connector is the most proven in North America, offering AC charging and up to 1 MW DC charging in one slim package".

Re: Opening the North American charging standard

#175

Post by Hamuko » Sat, Nov 12, 2022, 2:17 PM UTC

pseudosavant wrote: post #59

Hamuko wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nissan Ariya has a CCS port, so even Nissan has standardised on the CCS. The Nissan Leaf is the iPad with the Lightning port of the EV world.

Lightning? Maybe the OG 30-pin iPod/iPhone connector.

Apple doesn't sell anything with a 30-pin connector.

Re: Opening the North American charging standard

#176

Post by zzzeek » Sat, Nov 12, 2022, 4:15 PM UTC

lolc wrote: post #160

Dylan16807 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. The parent was talking about a plug not vehicles. 2. The parent of that parent was also by zzzeek, talking about trashing vehicles. And that was a top level comment.

Indeed, I should have taken my own advice and read the context more :-)

to be clear the term "killed off" was directly from kortilla's sentence "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.". I did not introduce that term and that's why I quoted it. if CCS connectors are "killed off", that renders CCS cars out in the cold, unless adapters are produced which as yet don't exist.

Re: Opening the North American charging standard

#177

Post by matthewdgreen » Sat, Nov 12, 2022, 4:40 PM UTC

ip26 wrote: post #166

matthewdgreen wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars can last 10 or more years. If you buy a car today you're making a bet that Tesla and its standard will still be dominant over all other car and charger manufacturers in the year 2032+. That is an extraordinarily foolish bet. My bet is that within two years Tesla standardizes on CCS for its US cars (thus getting rid of an annoying upgrade/adapter/retrofit problem) and then what'll be left is the sad minority (AKA…

Since good adapters exist, it's not really a deeply committing bet.

Adapters remove the benefits of having a "superior" charging standard. It may be that the Tesla connector is better than CCS, but Tesla+CCS_adapter is going to be obviously worse. (This is something you're going to use every day, even a slightly worse ergonomic experience adds up.)

Re: Opening the North American charging standard

#178

Post by zzzeek » Sat, Nov 12, 2022, 4:48 PM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #148

lolc wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were reacting to the terms being used, not introducing them. Read the parent.

1. The parent was talking about a plug not vehicles. 2. The parent of that parent was also by zzzeek, talking about trashing vehicles. And that was a top level comment.

the socket in my car can't be changed unless the vendor produced an upgrade kit, which is very unlikely to ever occur. it would be "use an inconvenient $250 adapter (that doesnt yet exist) every time you charge at a DC station"

Re: Opening the North American charging standard

#179

Post by DannyBee » Sat, Nov 12, 2022, 6:38 PM UTC

chroma wrote: post #161

DannyBee wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At one point that number was probably 100% or very close to it. Now it's 60%. It has nowhere to go but now, and is almost certainly dropping fast. The number is also a feint. It's true that NACS outnumbers CCS, but that's because they are only comparing fast-charging spots, which they outnumber. If you included the J1772 part, tesla is outnumbered at this point in the US. Going by ports (because that's what tesla is…

It's great that J1772 is ubiquitous, but it charges too slowly to be useful for road trips. It's meant for "destination charging" such as hotels and homes, where the car will be sitting around for hours. It can't substitute for fast DC charging, so it shouldn't be counted.

You are sort of missing the point, i think.

Tesla is claiming that now is a good time to move to NACS because they already have 60% more NACS ports than CCS.

But this is not really right, because all those cars/charge stations also have J1772 connectors they are using and would no longer work.

So

1. Tesla is a lot less ubiquitous than they are claiming. J1772 + CCS is far more ubiquitous - by a factor of 3x.

2. You'd either have to retrofit or use adapters for all the J1772 stations as well (Yes, tesla ships an adapter, i know).

3. Nobody is going to do that.

Re: Opening the North American charging standard

#180

Post by DannyBee » Sat, Nov 12, 2022, 6:39 PM UTC

novok wrote: post #165

DannyBee wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At one point that number was probably 100% or very close to it. Now it's 60%. It has nowhere to go but now, and is almost certainly dropping fast. The number is also a feint. It's true that NACS outnumbers CCS, but that's because they are only comparing fast-charging spots, which they outnumber. If you included the J1772 part, tesla is outnumbered at this point in the US. Going by ports (because that's what tesla is…

Those metrics are deceptive, because tesla has consistently working chargers while the other ones tend to be broken at a way higher rate.

I have no idea where your data is coming from, and doesn't match my tesla or non-tesla experience, but this actually would change nothing even if true.