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Opening the North American charging standard

tesla.com

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Re: Opening the North American charging standard

#21

Post by ip26 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #5
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?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27907051 TLDR CCS wanted to be backwards compatible, while Tesla planned fast charging to be first class with their standard. At the time, no one was doing fast charging at Supercharger currents (150kw). CCS was bolted on to J1772.

That really doesn’t explain all of it, J1772 is not really that big. CCS adds a ton of bulk on top of J1772.

Re: Opening the North American charging standard

#24

Post by Lendal »

kgermino wrote: post #7
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #2

Wow. Awesome! I hope Ford and other EV Manufacturers make retrofit kits though - and similar for the charging stations already deployed. Lugging an adapter for all non-Tesla EVs before the, what, 2024 model year would be irritating. Assuming, of course, they are on board and this doesn't turn into Betamax/VHS, Blu-ray/HD-DVD, or HDR10+/Dolby Vision again.

I don't see anything here indicating that other manufacturers will start using the Tesla connector. Unfortunately we're already well into the format war with two standards: Tesla and Everyone Else (CCS). Honestly this feels more like a desperate attempt by Tesla to push back on the trend towards CCS instead of a substantive announcement

They might be trying to get ahead of a possible push to mandate CCS, and they don't want to get pushed around like Apple did.

I for one am fine with it. The "NACS" is objectively better by almost every available measure, and if the despised Elon Musk wants to give his stuff away, hey I'll take it. Any good reasons why we should reject this proposal?

Re: Opening the North American charging standard

#25

Post by _joel »

thevoiceless wrote: post #18

Tesla said in May that it would be adding CCS adapters to its Supercharger stations, already used in Europe: https://electrek.co/2022/05/10/tesla-add-ccs-connectors-supe... Now they're trying to declare their own charger as a "standard", after launching a $250 adapter in September to use the actual standard plug? Also, obligatory Technology Connections video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZOuz_laH9I

The T.C. video is very thorough and worth a watch for all EV related shennanigans.

Re: Opening the North American charging standard

#26

Post by Hamuko »

wilg wrote: post #23
ryukafalz wrote: post #20

Hilarious to call their thing the "North American Charging Standard" when every other manufacturer in North America has already standardized on something else.

Try plugging a Nissan Leaf into a CCS charger.

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.

Re: Opening the North American charging standard

#27

Post by sigmar »

What legal guarantee is there that Tesla won't reverse course in the future? Say a charging station or car manufacturer adopts this connector and then in 5 years Tesla says "well actually, we've got these patents and we're going to start charging you to sell cars/charging stations"? Publishing the specs and saying "we won't enforce patents" isn't a legally binding guarantee

Re: Opening the North American charging standard

#28

Post by wilg »

thevoiceless wrote: post #18

Tesla said in May that it would be adding CCS adapters to its Supercharger stations, already used in Europe: https://electrek.co/2022/05/10/tesla-add-ccs-connectors-supe... Now they're trying to declare their own charger as a "standard", after launching a $250 adapter in September to use the actual standard plug? Also, obligatory Technology Connections video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZOuz_laH9I

I think it's a good strategy given how people are standardizing on CCS1 in NA. They're embracing CCS1 to a large degree, offering adapters for plugging your car into a CCS charger and allowing CCS cars to charge at Superchargers.

But the connector is definitely better, so they may as well open it up in the hopes that people adopt the nicer plug and then they won't have to change it after all. Basically no reason not to given how things are going with CCS1. I certainly think from a usability perspective it would be preferable if "NACS" was the winner. CCS is not a great design.

Re: Opening the North American charging standard

#29

Post by xxpor »

wilg wrote: post #9

For context, North America's current "standard" is CCS1, which is not the same as Europe, which uses CCS2. So North America already has its own weird plug. The Tesla plug is definitely better from a usability perspective. Very curious to see if there is a major technical advantage for one or the other.

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.

Re: Opening the North American charging standard

#30

Post by stetrain »

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.

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