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Comment by guardiangod | Hacker News Reader

What's awful about the deal?

1. Tesla already opened up the NACS connector for others to use. We don't know the detail yet but the license fee is probably minimal if Ford and GM agree to join.

2. the CSS1 connector is monstrous compare to NACS, with design deficiencies that are more or less not fixable.

3. Your USB example would be more like manufacturers sticking with Serial port (with manual configuration and payment done by the user) vs plug-and-play USB 1.0 (still a pain but it's a huge improvement.)

4. Tesla has a larger and better charging infrastructure than EA etc. What's wrong with giving infrastructure subsidies to companies who proved they have a superior product? Or do you think that everyone deserves a piece of the pie, regardless of their technical competency?

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> Tesla already opened up the NACS connector for others to use. We don't know the detail yet but the license fee is probably minimal if Ford and GM agree to join.

Any licensing fee paid to a single company is unacceptable for what is described as an "open standard."

> the CSS1 connector is monstrous compare to NACS

Sure, it's bigger, but how is that a problem? It's not like you carry it with you. Nobody I know has ever had an issue physically working with it, including people 70+ years old.

> Tesla has a larger and better charging infrastructure than EA etc. What's wrong with giving infrastructure subsidies to companies who proved they have a superior product? Or do you think that everyone deserves a piece of the pie, regardless of their technical competency?

I have a big problem with companies getting infrastructure subsidies that they then use to rent-seek in the market and force other companies to pay them fees for access to publicly-funded infrastructure, yes.

I'm not saying subsidies have to be given equally, but subsidies should absolutely not be given to companies that limit the product of that subsidy (charging) based on licensing for profit.

Not sure if you've driven EVs, but I have had a Tesla and non-Tesla .. the charging situation is night & day. I say this as someone who left Tesla in spite of the CCS networks.

The plug is huge, the cables are heavy.. there is a poorly implemented locking mechanism that frequently breaks.. some people end up propping up the cable to support it so it doesn't trip that failure mode.

The CCS network companies in US are a joke, they are more than 5 year behind Tesla and building out slower than Tesla's current expansion.

On the east coast they are in less convenient locations, with fewer overall stations, with fewer stalls per station, with way higher failure rates, with much longer repair times.. and if you do happen to use it, the interface to activate charging is slower, error prone, and sometimes requires calling them.

I can go on and on.

CCS in US, lead by EA, has truly and utterly failed. I am less happy with them continuing to be propped up by government subsidies and carmaker bulk purchases, than I am to see Tesla get a little more money to support their incredible charging network.

I am an EV proponent and would never pressure any family member to buy a non-Tesla because I do not want to be responsible for their CCS experience. I say this, again, as a non-Tesla EV owner who is happier with my car than with my old Tesla.

There is no successful EV transition in the US in which we rely on the likes of the Electrify America, EVGo and Chargepoint.

None of this is actually a problem with the standard, just typical American companies being mediocre.

I have a Ford. The CCS connector sucks big time. I can't wait to be on the tesla network. I'll even pay ASAP to change my charging outlet.

What makes you think they’re swapping charging outlets for existing customers? We’re all getting adapters friend (well, maybe my Kona will, otherwise we’re just screwed outside of Ford/GM).

Tesla is an American company, and their chargers work. Further- many of the EA chargers are made in Europe :-) .

Typical doesn't mean "all" though. I guess it would be more fair to say typical companies being mediocre.

utterly failed? we’ve just started mass consumer adoption. this reads like the typical “only elon can save the world” shtick.

i have a non tesla ev and it’s totally fine.

I have a non-tesla EV, and ea and evgo are unacceptably bad. There’s at least a 25% chance they will fail to process my credit card or their stupid apps will break.

For EA, there’s also a 10% chance it’ll flip my car’s “oh my god you are trying to make me explode with bad voltage, abort! abort!” alarm/circuit breaker.

At home, there is no problem. For a given evgo charger, there is no problem (so I know it isn’t my car).

Also, the flaky data connection stuff from above is documented in the ea UI (and only seems to apply to them… they really suck).

I’ll begrudgingly admit that chargepoint generally works, but screw them for having an app (and they’re mostly only level 2 anyway).

Also, there are a half dozen smaller networks, each of which is also a fractal snowflake of bullshit like this.

> i have a non tesla ev and it’s totally fine

It really isn’t. Driving my Leaf or i3 beyond 70 miles round trip is absolute Russian roulette. Will the charger be in service? Will it accept payment? Will it accept payment and then, for unknowable reasons, just not initiate charging?

Contrast that with driving 2000 miles round trip in a Tesla. There’s not going to be any trouble charging, ever.

What does this have to do with the CSS connector standard?

Stockholm

Well good news then since Tesla is "The design and specification files are available for download, and we are actively working with relevant standards bodies to codify Tesla’s charging connector as a public standard. Enjoy."

https://www.tesla.com/blog/opening-north-american-charging-s...

I do agree that the connector needs to be a public standard and the licensing fee needs to be kept to a minimal.

(I am against free solely to cover the cost of standard validation similar to WiFi. As we see from USB-C, having 1000 companies of various quality developing charging cable is a disaster, but now it's 400V 500Amp connector.)

Just a cautionary note: Steve Jobs made the same "we're working on a standard" promise for FaceTime when he announced the iPhone 4. We're up to the iPhone 14 and it hasn't happened.

That was because they got sued by some patent troll: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-20236114

Why does that affect their ability to open it up?

I assume they changed facetime to not infringe the patent (which was later found invalid anyway) in response so couldn't they just have opened up the changed version?

If that lawsuit affected their ability to go forward with facetime, facetime surely wouldn't exist at all so I don't understand why it explains facetime continuing to exist but not being open.

Actually, the legal battle between Apple and VirnetX is ongoing to this very day, over a decade later.

The latest event: https://www.reuters.com/legal/apple-wins-reversal-502-mln-vi...

It's since exploded into things beyond just FaceTime. The FaceTime one though, Apple ultimately lost their appeal in 2019 and paid out $440M for FaceTime infringement (so, yes, legally speaking, VirnetX won). It's now over VPN patents which had some patents cancelled.

With FaceTime being legally infringing... hard to make an open standard. Plus, why would they now? Not only would it primarily benefit the competition; but it would also undermine FaceTime's security. The beauty of FaceTime is that it is very much tied to physical devices, making it very expensive and difficult to spam call without detection. An open standard would likely lose that ability, causing spam video calls everywhere.

This isn't a promise. It is a freely available spec for the connector. It uses CCS signalling underneath.

Noone has to pay Tesla to build vehicles that support this.

They might have to pay to get the level of app integration that they want, but that is a different thing.

I agree this is a good thing, but what would be fantastic is if EA could start making chargers with NACS. Until that's possible, it's not going to be comfortable. I admit, I don't know if that's possible now or not.

From the linked article:

> Network operators already have plans in motion to incorporate NACS at their chargers, so Tesla owners can look forward to charging at other networks without adapters.

EA is likely the last one to add it. They've been actively moving to single cable designs to try to force CCS1 as the standard.

With GM now on board with NACS as well, single-cable designs make a lot of sense: that single cable should just be NACS in North America. The writing is on the wall for EA to see.

Like VHS vs Beta, the real answer is "just pick one already!"

To be fair he died. Jobs was known for personally seeing things through sometimes but it required ultimately him to make sure it got done

For the record this is because they got sued, and Steve didn’t vet that enough before hand.

If that is the case, why will the Tesla to CCS adapter work only on Ford and GM vehicles? It's very clear from the press releases that other companies cars are left out until they pay up.

Are you confusing the charging network with the plug standard?

None of the major problems with the other charging networks are related to the connector standard.

It’s all bad software, poor maintenance, and bullshit silicon valley social networking stuff.

For instance, EA’s and evgo’s tap to pay terminals will fail to work regardless of whether you’re trying to charge with a tesla cord or a ccs cord.

Who cares if it’s a standard if the network is not open?

Because the OP here was actually mistaking things. For all we know there won't be a Tesla to CCS adapter that works on existing Ford/GM vehicles, it could be that only Ford/GM vehicles with the NACS connector will get to use all superchargers.

And Tesla has already opened up charging to all EVs on some superchargers via the Magic Dock, but the situation isn't amazing, especially with many new cars using an 800 volt architecture and thus not charging super fast on Tesla's 400 volt superchargers. https://youtu.be/pUYqDNCIFD8

Combine this with how many charge port doors aren't on the back left or front right, and you have a really messy charging situation with blocked spots and slow charging cars.

The partnership most likely means:

- The cars will be 400 volt architecture (or otherwise 800v and upcoming V4 superchargers will support up to 1000 volts)

- The charging port door will be either on the front right quarter of the car, or back left quarter.

In the Ford announcement, they promised an adapter.

I guess they'd only do it for maybe three model years or so, because theoretically over time even existing superchargers can be retrofitted with the magic dock (as V3s have).

TBH, a customer owned adapter is likely better than magic dock. Maybe easier to use too.

The main purpose of the magic dock seems to be enabling anyone to roll up and pay for their charging session. If there were a personal charger, the car would have to also be updated to perform the NACS handshake and communicate with Tesla's backend for payment (note that all payment and charging is handled by the car, and with some hacks you can enable free unlimited supercharging which the supercharger doesn't do any verification of).

Also, in the original announcement, I wonder if ford meant they'll give CCS to Tesla adapters[0] so that you can plug in on existing infra.

0: https://shop.tesla.com/product/ccs-combo-1-adapter

Because the Tesla supercharger network isn’t the only network using the standard. Kind of like you have to be a Costco member to buy gas at Costco but they have the same dispenser nozzles as every other gas station.

Is CCS not open, just because Rivian built a CCS charging network that is closed to other makes?

> […] with relevant standards bodies to codify Tesla’s charging connector as a public standard. Enjoy."

And who is/are the "relevant standards bodies"? SAE? IEC? Other?

I’d assume both since SAE is important for North America and IEC for Europe. The Type 2 connector references the Type 1 standard for communication, so cross referencing is also likely here.

I can download a Windows ISO, doesn't make it free and open for me to start shipping products. Just because they've got some files on a website doesn't make it an actually open standard.

> Any licensing fee paid to a single company is unacceptable for what is described as an "open standard."

... do you understand how out of touch this is? Every single recent "public standard" will absolutely require paying license fees to some company, or often a whole pool of companies. This is simply how things are done, designing things cost money and that money is recouped through licensing. The key part is that the licenses are FRAND, or Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminating.

> ... do you understand how out of touch this is? Every single recent "public standard" will absolutely require paying license fees to some company, or often a whole pool of companies.

If the fee is to one company, it is usually an industry non-profit (HDMI, Bluetooth) that doesn't itself have a stake in the outcome. If it's a pool of companies they also have to hash things out amongst themselves and no one company will have control over another.

Neither of these situations apply to Tesla and 'NACS'.

If Tesla wants to give up control of 'NACS' to SAE or IEC, then we can talk.

You might be sad to hear that the latest standard of over the air (antenna) TV utilizes ATSC 3 audio, requiring tuners to pay 70 licensing fees so you'll have sound with your TV.

I don't get audio when I use my DVR on Plex because of that.

> utilizes ATSC 3 audio

There is no such thing as ATSC 3 audio. ATSC is the transmission standard, either ATSC 1 (basically everywhere, 1080p) or ATSC 3 in some cities ("Next-Gen TV", 4K). ATSC 1 uses Dolby Digital AC-3, ATSC 3 uses Dolby AC-4 which is otherwise quite rare.

Also, that's a very light example. Look into the patent situation for H.264 / AVC, H.265 / HEVC. They are Open Standards (you can download the documentation right now), but they are patent minefields to implement, with dozens of companies and hundreds, if not thousands of patents.

Also, to reply to the comment above you:

> If the fee is to one company, it is usually an industry non-profit (HDMI, Bluetooth) that doesn't itself have a stake in the outcome. If it's a pool of companies they also have to hash things out amongst themselves and no one company will have control over another.

What? HDMI is not an open standard - you need to pay to get the documentation, pass certification, and pay a royalty fee per device (about 5-15 cents per connector). You also need to license the logo because HDMI is actually a brand. Sure, anyone can get HDMI, but it sure ain't open. And if it's a TV or a monitor, better license HDCP separately. Also, as for Bluetooth... that was a patent minefield for decades.

FWIW, this video changed my mind: https://youtu.be/zsNiupN1X7s

Part of what makes Tesla so successful is that they can make EVs cheaply. Using NACS instead of CCS seems to be one factor in keeping costs down:

because the charge door is smaller, they can make it part of the trim instead of having to match it to the body

The plumbing from the charge door to the battery also seems more cost effective

Watt for watt, dropping weight makes a small but real improvement in EV range

The latch setup also seems better, on Plugshare I see a decent # of chargers that are out of commissions because of how CCS puts the latch on the EVSE

The difference between my car with a minutely smaller charging door is like maybe an ounce or two in weight. We're not even talking pounds. On a vehicle that weighs a few thousand pounds and will vary several hundred based on how many passengers are in it.

Shaving a few ounces isn't going to make a difference in range. With EVs, even adding a hundred pounds or two isn't changing the range that much. You get a ton of it back in regen so the vast majority of energy usage is rolling resistance (which a few pounds isn't changing) and aero drag (no weight difference at all).

The door itself and the plastic bit are a minor part of the weight savings, I think most of it would come from what's just on the other side of the connector: With NACS you can throw everything onto the 2 aluminum bus bars in the vid, whereas CCS has a whole octopus of copper (relatively heavy and expensive) cables coming out of it

It's two extra wires. Two extra wires going a few feet. Let's say those two wires are 2lb/foot (that's way heavier than actual, but let's be generous here) and they need to go 6 feet (also, probably doesn't really go six feet, let's be generous).

That's maybe 12lbs of extra stuff. On a 4,500lb car. 12/4500. 0.2% difference in mass in a car with regen braking. You think that's enough for a difference in range?

I routinely get groceries weighing more than that. There's no effective difference in my range. I don't even have a noticeable hit in range with just a solo driver or four total people with bags, a difference of probably 600lbs or so.

The Lightning range estimates don't really change much with several hundred pounds of stuff in the bed. You really only start seeing range hits towing, and that's mostly because you're adding a lot of drag and extra rolling resistance with more tires.

I don't think the charge port is making that much of an impact on the range. Motor design and placement, aero drag, suspension, tires, battery size, inverter efficiency. These things will affect range, but not 12 extra pounds.

To have specific numbers, the wires for AC charging would be 2-8 gauge depending on max speed.

So the three wires would weigh 1-3 pounds total for six feet of cable.

I don’t necessarily agree to the parent comment, but I believe the point is that it eliminates need to attach, remove, and keep the fuel door by use of a temporary fixture during painting.

All doors and bumpers on a car is attached to the body during the paint process, then the whole thing is painted, disassembled, and re-mated later to the same chassis, for better color matching.

IMO both latches are poor designs.

The NACS latch is entirely driven by the car, which is fine for the owner of the car — assuming the car is working as it ought to, the owner can disconnect a charger. But there is no intelligent logic for when someone (owner or otherwise) ought to be able to disconnect the charger without the owner’s help. In many cases, it would make sense to be able to disconnect someone else’s car once it’s fully charged, and disconnecting or connecting a charger in the owner’s garage should not require unlocking the car.

The J1772 latch is substantially more complex, and I’ve seen it get stuck. This is quite nasty when it happens.

> it would make sense to be able to disconnect someone else’s car

This seems like a bad idea for something designed by for use in public with no direct supervision. I would absolutely prefer that no one disconnect my car over having the ability to disconnect someone else's car. I can understand having some override that requires a little mechanical effort in the case of malfunction, repossession, or something like that. However, I wouldn't want any random person to be able to disconnect my car at their discretion. That is a recipe for chaos at charging stations. Plus the caveat of "once its fully charged", already means you need to let the car have at least partial control over the unlocking mechanism anyway.

There's already a two-way data flow in the standards, so the charger could just ask the car to unlock if someone requests that at the charger. It does make sense for it to be a request to the car and the car can know the driver's preference on desired charge level (should be at least 80% charged, for instance) and/or alert the driver somehow that the request has been made.

Wait what - people should be able to unplug other peoples cars? Why? The car will still be parked in the charging spot

I've seen plenty of places where there are two charging spots per charging cable. In which case it makes sense to unplug a car that's in the spot and full.

It sounds like it makes sense until someone else wants to charge their car regardless of whether yours is charged or not. That will be 99% of the use case for this. Just charge idling fees, that's a great deterrent for sitting there with your car fully charged and still plugged in. I'm not sure about all of the major networks, but Tesla and EA both charge those fees.

Does Tesla not have an option to unlock the plug when charging is done?

> Sure, it's bigger, but how is that a problem?

It actually does cause reliability issues. A common troubleshooting tip for a CCS (Type 1) charge failing to start is to lift up and push in on the handle while the charge is starting to make sure the data pins make good contact for the initial handshake.

I'm sure Ford and GM have some real world reliability metrics around this at this point.

My understanding is this is unique to CCS Type 1 used in North America, which uses an external lever at the top of the connector to latch it to the vehicle. CCS Type 2 used in Europe and elsewhere uses internal latch points where the vehicle locks the connector to the port during charging and doesn't seem to have the same issue.

>Any licensing fee paid to a single company is unacceptable for what is described as an "open standard."

I've got bad news for you regarding USB, DisplayPort and HDMI. All those connectors require paying license fees to their respective companies.

> companies getting infrastructure subsidies that they then use to rent-seek in the market and force other companies to pay them fees for access to publicly-funded infrastructure

I was thinking AT&T as a more relatable example. Pretty much everyone uses AT&T infrastructure of some type. Whether it's the actual cables strung by the phone company, or other companies needing to string cables on the poles installed by the phone company. AT&T was so entrenched, that it's easy to overlook just how vested into them we were.

HD Radio on the other hand is just something of little interest to me personally. By the time I had a tuner with that feature, it also came with bluetooth which meant my device was doing the work and the radio was just a legacy thing that came with the device.

There are plenty of standards that require you to pay into a patent pool - including cell phones.

The EU and the US having different charging plugs, as one major issue.

Even with CCS, the EU and US have different plugs. The EU plug is much better.

Japan, Korea, and China also have different charging standards within their countries. It is probably a minor annoyance for the manufacturers but other than that, what is the problem? Vehicles can rarely be moved from one regulation zone to another and there are often remediations that need to be made.

why does it matter? very few cars drive from us to eu

It matters for car manufatctors, it's one more thing that forces them to have separate assembly lines for both regions.

Many countries have slight differences per vehicle. The charging connector seems pretty minor compared to driving on the left side of the road.

“separate assembly lines” is a bit of an exaggeration.

> 1. Tesla already opened up the NACS connector for others to use. We don't know the detail yet but the license fee is probably minimal if Ford and GM agree to join.

So if I want to purchase a NACS charger for my house, besides Tesla, what are my options?

> 2. the CSS1 connector is monstrous compare to NACS, with design deficiencies that are more or less not fixable.

Besides size apparently, what are these "design deficiencies" that you speak of?

Tesla is in the process of ratifying it as an open standard. Other manufacturers will be forthcoming, but Tesla is it at the moment.

It’s kind of the chicken and egg problem, but should work itself out since they seem adamant about making it a free, open standard.

> Tesla is in the process of ratifying it as an open standard.

What does this mean? Who is doing the ratification? SAE? IEC? Other?

> Tesla is in the process of ratifying it as an open standard.

You'll forgive me if I don't believe them, considering their last PR release pre-2021 about it being an "open standard" included the fine print of Tesla gaining permanent access to all of your IP if you used it.

The announcement is more recent than that:

https://www.tesla.com/blog/opening-north-american-charging-s...

Lectron has one, although I don't know if it's as good as Tesla's

For one, the locking component, that prevents yanking the handle out while 350kw is flowing through it (an obvious arcing and fire hazard), is on the CCS handle itself, vs NACS where the charge handle just has a small hole and the locking mechanism is part of the car.

This plastic locking mechanism on a CCS handle can break if it's abused, leaving it in an unsafe state to use

I haven't seen one made of plastic. All the ones I've handled have been metal.

The locking mechanism can also break on the car. Its way more challenging to fix. Also, I'd prefer to always be able to quickly and easily manually unlatch it, which isn't true on a Tesla. On most models the manual release is tucked pretty deep in the car.

Yes, the car part can break, but CCS1 requires a vehicle side latch too.

It has to capture the CCS latch and is often a little flipper near the top of the car's inlet.

Tesla has a larger and better charging infrastructure than EA etc. What's wrong with giving infrastructure subsidies to companies who proved they have a superior product? Or do you think that everyone deserves a piece of the pie, regardless of their technical competency?

Tesla's larger network is just classic first mover advantage and output setting. Not an indication their (charging) product is "technically superior".

They've had first mover advantage for years paving the way for the industry... for everyone else.. it's not preordained that something like this will happen and sometimes credit is due

Who said anything about credit. You were implying the Tesla connector is technically superior using flawed logic.

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