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Comment by amluto | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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?

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