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Comment by guardiangod | Hacker News Reader

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.)

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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.

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

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!"

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?

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

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

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.

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.

> […] 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.

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