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Comment by pathartl | Hacker News Reader

I'm not an EV user, so I need some clarification. Is NACS actually a better connector? Or is it just more abundant at the moment? Technology Connections did a deep dive on CCS and it seems like it's a more flexible connector with a truly open standard. The argument for NACS I've seen is that it's a little sleeker (does this really matter all that much?) and it's already on Tesla's supercharger network.

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The physical shape of Tesla/NACS is way better: it's more compact, and easier to plug in. The CCS connector OTOH is a lazy retrofit of a design-by-committee plug.

The wire protocol of CCS is a bit overengineered, but it's a standard, and it's a sunk cost (all cars, including current Teslas, are already compatible with it). So physical NACS + CCS protocol seems like the best of both.

It's also worth pointing out that the US uses CCS1, while Europe standardized on a slightly improved CCS2. So the US is alone in its (non)standard connector either way.

Not all Tesla's can speak CCS. Older Teslas need a $400 retrofit to be able to use the Tesla CCS1 adapter. https://shop.tesla.com/en_ca/product/ccs-combo-1-adapter

Not much of a practical problem until some other charging network builds out enough NACS chargers that a Tesla driver would try using anything other than a Supercharger.

Looks like the cutoff for this is vehicles before May 1, 2019.

It’s more like may 2020. I don’t know anyone who got a car delivered in 2019 ( mine included) that has support for ccs

Were these vehicles _built_ after May 1, 2019 or just delivered after that date?

Once you have the retrofit, you can use existing CCS fast charger with an adapter. So it is useful in that sense..

I had the retrofit done on my 2018 MS. Have never once successfully charged at a non-Tesla charger. I'm not sure if it's me or the charging stations, which are somewhat known to be less reliable in general than Tesla's.

I bought the adapter off the gray market when it was only being sold in Korea, and promptly ran to my local EA station to try it out. Of the four plugs, only two worked, and one of those was loose and would glitch out if I didn't hold it against the car by hand.

I haven't charged via CCS since. It lives in the car as an emergency backup, but frankly I wouldn't plan a road trip stop at a CCS station if you paid me.

FWIIW that is the experience of using an EA station with a car that came with a CCS plug.

I got the $450 adapter for my 2016; There's one charger I really wanted to use and otherwise I think it'll waste space in my trunk. I still haven't used it at that charger but I did test it at a CCS1 charger; it worked though it was a terrible experience - the CCS1 plug is silly huge, the payment processing was terrible, and it charged pretty slowly.

I think they're retrofitting the existing supercharger network to speak both "NACS" (really CCS1) and the OG supercharger protocol. My car, with the retrofit, will be able to (HA! good luck believing it'll actually work) charge at an EA or other DC Fast charger setup, possibly. Non-updated OG S/X cars will just get an error (probably I will also, because these other DC Fast chargers simply don't have skin in the game -- they're malicious compliance).

L2 will be nice -- I'll not have to use the dongle to charge at public chargers.

Yeah, only ~80% of Teslas in the US support it without modification.

Fast-charging CCS is the Micro-USB 3.0 of car chargers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_hardware#Connectors

CCS uses different wires for AC charging than for DC charging. This is why the CCS connector is so big. Tesla lets a single pair do double duty. That's why the NACS connector is sleeker.

CCS current spec/design can deliver up to 350kW (although few if any cars can take advantage of that today).

NACS claims it can provide up to 1MW (1000A @ 1000V). I think it will be a while before we see cars able to charge anywhere near this, but there is a trend right now of big EV pickups with massive batteries. Higher power chargers means faster charge times.

The only downside I see with NACS is you can’t level 2 charge using 3-phase power. This isn’t really an issue in North America because it’s super rare to see 3 phase power at someone’s home. In most of Europe homes do have 3-phase power and large loads like an EV are required to use it. This is one reason why Tesla uses CCS2 in Europe. The NACS connect doesn’t have the space for a 3rd power pin.

CCS1 already doesn't support 3-phase power, so it's not like switching from CCS1 to NACS in the US is losing anything there.

It wouldn't work as-is for Europe because of that, but they're so far into CCS2 adoption that they wouldn't consider it regardless.

To clarify:

3-phase power is irrelevant when it comes to CCS. The point of the Combined Charging System is the "combined". It is the signalling pins in the upper part of the Mennekes or J1772 connector and the large DC connectors in the bottom part.

For slow charging, 3-phase power is relevant (the IEC Type 2 / Mennekes connector in this case).

He was saying that CCS1 in the US uses J1772 which does not support 3-phase power.

And referring to Europe

I'm a little confused by fast charging standards, to be honest.

1MW is 20x the maximum draw of a standard house, and 800x the average draw of a US house. The hydro plant down the road generates 5MW.

It just sounds crazy to plan to pull that much power charging a car at a time.

It is indeed totally insane, but this is what is being worked on, not necessairly for cars but trucks and semi trucks for example that have much larger batteries than a car. Already to achieve 250+ kW charging stations have to have huge cables and watercooled connectors, here's one such installation I saw some years ago https://i.imgur.com/BpG4QAa.jpg and an example of a cooled connector for 0.5 MW https://www.phoenixcontact.com/en-ca/products/dc-charging-ca...

I assume the next jump in power will come from voltage. A Model 3 pulls ~600A when charging at 250kW, because it's relatively low voltage. If they alter the charging design to accept 800 or 1000V we could see over half a MW without a change in cable design. But I'd guess at this point that would be moot because the cell charging rate is the real limit anyway.

Migrating to higher voltage doesn't do anything to charge batteries faster. The only advantage is that you can decrease the size of the cabling since current goes down. On the other side though, you need to move all drive circuitry, motors, etc, to handle higher voltage architecture, which may end of costing more overall.

Not necessarily. Ford uses a 400V-based architecture, but it can charge at 800V by connected two sections of the battery in series.

So, you add the complexity of having to have a way to switch between 400V and 800V safely, which costs some amount of money, and the only advantage then is the cabling from the battery to the charging port can be thinner? That really doesn't seem like much savings, and if anything might cost more. The run from the charging port to the battery should already be really short.

800V for charging allows faster charging on CCS, because the existing stations are mainly current-limited. It won't be necessary on NACS.

I think that Ford just wants to switch to 800V anyway, and 400V is just a stopgap.

Yes Porsche has started with this, they have ~800 V batteries, as you said batteries themselves are the practical limit at the moment but both larger batteries (as with trucks) and new battery technology can help to lift that limit. There are enough engineering challenges at 1000 A I don't think we will see higher currents than that for a while!

All indication point to that the Cybertruck will be the first new architecture with a 1000V architecture.

Many others have standardized on 800V, for example the Koreans.

DC charging stations sometimes have batteries on site so that they can charge up from the grid and then deliver bursts of power from the batteries during charging. Apparently this is often worth it to avoid the high demand fees that utilities charge when you draw a lot of power at once.

I assume this will become more ubiquitous as charging speeds continue to increase.

(You're right that a megawatt is a high power draw in the context of normal household electricity usage, but keep in mind that if you can pump ten gallons of gas in a minute you're effectively drawing the equivalent of something like 20MW, so in the context of vehicle refueling it's not so crazy.)

> but keep in mind that if you can pump ten gallons of gas in a minute you're effectively drawing the equivalent of something like 20MW, so in the context of vehicle refueling it's not so crazy

If 15 Teslas pass through a stretch of road per minute with full 100kWh battery packs, you could also describe that as 90MW of current, but it's also not really.

I always forget just how energy dense petroleum and its derivatives are..

When charging, the Tesla shows you a little miles per hour figure (how many miles of range you gain per hour of charging) and it can often reach 1000 or so on the super chargers I use frequently. It’s fun to calculate the miles per hour of gas (around 12,000).

This is true. Though the electric batteries do have the advantage of having already paid the "thermodynamics tax". Some of the energy in gas will go towards heat losses; energy that cannot be converted to movement.

And they are very efficient over a much larger rpm band. But the real win is the energy recovery from regenerative breaking.

But that thermodynamic tax is a negative in very cold climates where the electric vehicle will see a major change in total travel distance compared to ICE.

Heat pumps make it more efficient to convert the fuel to electricity at a big, efficient power plant, and then to heat, than to burn the fuel itself for heat in an internal combustion engine (or at home for that matter)

It’s overall a net positive.

Yes, but note that this type of 'overall thinking' sometimes has interesting consequences. Eg overall globalization raises wages, but it decimated rural economies in the west and caused a lot of social harm leading to the rise of populism.

The odometer shock that will start hitting low wage earners forced to migrate to EV may have less important but similarly surprising unintended consequences.

Yes. One of the usual YT channels had this interesting picture. Gas mileage is miles per gallon. Or in this case, do it the European way: l/100km. The unit of that is an area. Typically a rather small one, ca 0.1mm^2.

That's the area of a trench you have to dig along your path if you want to supply your car from the trench instead of your gas tank.

That doesn’t make any sense to me. The amount of fuel a trench can hold is its volume, not its area.

Probably means cross-sectional area.

The problem is obvious though, isn't it? Our current infrastructure simply cannot handle a ton of EV's all wanting to charge up all day long - as is done currently with gas stations all over the country.

It'll take decades to bring our infrastructure up to where it needs to be to support this - yet people act like we're already there. Some states still struggle just to keep the lights on during major parts of the year...

The load is spread out in a completely different way than gas, because 100% of gas cars get gas at a station, while 80% of people with EVs slow-charge at home (or work or whatever). Fast chargers are for road-trips only.

Obviously, if we're going to move to cleaner energy we will need infrastructure investment. Worrying that it's not already there makes no sense. The demand for improved electrical infrastructure will be a forcing function. There's no need to wait for it. But again, most charging isn't fast charging and likely never will be.

(Charging for apartments and stuff still has a bit of a way to go, so sometimes those people use fast chargers as part of their regular routine, but the solution to that is easy and underway: just put chargers in the apartment parking lot and/or on the streets.)

> Obviously, if we're going to move to cleaner energy

It is very unclear whether electric vehicles actually are more environmentally friendly. They sound great - but if you dig into where all the materials come from, it's shocking how externalized we've made that problem. It might be cleaner by time you get to drive it... but it's not cleaner to produce and operate, and in fact may be worse in some cases. Emissions aren't just from the tailpipe after all - yet that appears to be what most people focus on.

> Worrying that it's not already there makes no sense

It makes a lot of sense when the government (both state and federal) are pushing initiatives and incentives to force EV's into commonplace. Our infra just cannot handle it, even with trickle chargers like you've claimed. Which means it will be a net-worse experience for people, and they will resist future clean energy pushes as being disingenuous.

> It is very unclear whether electric vehicles actually are more environmentally friendly.

No, it is extremely clear. Including manufacturing they are cleaner than gas cars. And they will get better over time as the grid greens and as batteries become made out of more recycled materials. The batteries are 99% recyclable into new batteries and so there is a point where new materials never need to come out of the ground. Also, if you only focus on the most pressing thing, greenhouse emissions, the story is even better.

> Our infra just cannot handle it

Yes it can. There have been ~zero issues with the grid as a result of EV adoption.

This is some very optimistic thinking. I'm afraid it just doesn't match with the realities though.

The reality of the cleanliness of these cars is accurate. Future projections are educated guesses.

Popular media focuses on emissions. Researchers consider the entire lifecycle:

https://electrek.co/2022/03/04/light-duty-evs-have-64-lower-...

EVs still win.

Short sighted and painfully false.

The major points have already been refuted by another poster. I want to just add that I can't comprehend how anyone could think taking a dump on all our lungs at every road is a good idea. In the future, people will look at it like the middle ages dumping all their human waste on the streets out their windows. In that same future, lung-related problems will nearly disappear as these toxic emissions cease to exist.

Centralizing dirty energy generation allows better regulation and control of it. It also allows converting that dirty energy to clean energy without any friction from consumers. You can power an EV using coal. You can also power it using nuclear or solar. What options to power a gasoline car do you have?

EVs also force the improvement of the power grid to be more resilient and modernized, instead of stagnant and lazy, to be sucked dry.

It is shocking how externalized the costs are with our reliance on oil -- technological stagnation, toxic fumes everywhere, literally heating of the entire planet, funding of backwards authoritarian governments, and the NOISE! Only a fool would support the continued usage of oil when EVs exist now.

>It is very unclear whether electric vehicles actually are more environmentally friendly.

No, it really isn't. Google it, and ignore right-wing sources, which are more often than not complete garbage these days.

So previous commenters have presented some facts for you. But since human brains tend to reject facts when they don't match their world view, I am curious - have you changed your stance, or continue to believe what you said?

> while 80% of people with EVs slow-charge at home

Suure... because 80% of people own a home where they can do heavy electrical modifications, and can afford the permits and the work.

Not sure where you think that is, but in USA that it not even remotely true.

What you just said is very false.

Do you have a 120v outlet? Congrats, you can charge at home in ~40 hours for a full charge.

Do you have a 240v outlet? Congrats, you can charge at home in ~7 hours for a full charge (otherwise know as while sleeping).

Sure is difficult to get around town waking up with ~300 miles of range everyday!

Majority of US homes do not have an abundance of 240v outlets - meaning your 40 hour charge is a non-starter for everyone but those in high income brackets and ability to modify their homes (ie. non-renters).

My parents added a 50amp, 240v plug for me to charge when I visit for a whopping $250. That would surely break most Americans bank!

> because 80% of people own a home where they can do heavy electrical modifications, and can afford the permits and the work.

Probably not. The modifications aren't that heavy, and aren't even always necessary.

But 80% of EV owners probably do.

It's only the highest peaks of demand that cause problems for the grid. EV charging, on average, is one of the least time sensitive loads there is. People charge in the middle of the night when its cheap.

> People charge in the middle of the night when its cheap.

Why is it cheap in the middle of the night? Because there's near zero demand.

Fast forward 10 years and everyone has 1-2 EV's to charge each night. Is there zero demand still? No... and now it's expensive to charge at night.

People really need to be realistic about these things. Pretending these issues do not exist only harms EV adoption. People buy expensive EV's and find out it's a major PITA to keep it running, it's expensive to charge, it takes forever to charge, etc.

> People buy expensive EV's and find out it's a major PITA to keep it running, it's expensive to charge, it takes forever to charge, etc.

Very few people have done this. After people buy EVs, most of them learn how easy it is in comparison to ICE cars.

You're very optimistic if you think "everyone will have 1 or 2 EVs" in 10 years time. New ICE cars will still be available until at least 2035. Not accounting for non-new cars.

You'll never need that much power at home. Level 2 AC 240V 30-50A is fine for overnight charging.

The way Tesla Supercharging works is by using a large bank of batteries for the heavy bursts of power draw (>100kW) during the initial periods of charging when the battery is warm and at a low percent. The batteries at the station are backfilled with less current from the grid in the background during periods of low use. At least that is how I understand it.

but yeah, maybe trucks with huge batteries may be able to take advantage of it down the road.

I don't know about the NA, but that is definitively not the case for most superchargers (or any other brand of fast chargers, for that matter) in Europe. Batteries are expensive so this is only done in very special cases. I know they've used battery banks at some of the electrical ferries in Norway, simply because the cost of running new high-voltage power lines was deemed more expensive and the schedule of the ferries makes it very easy to model.

Power grids are quite large, so any fluctuations across the grid is going to be minimal. They are quite good at modeling these things, otherwise we'd have rolling blackouts quite often. For homes it's the last mile that's usually the biggest limiting factor.

But I agree with what you said, for /most/ people anything more than 2kW (so 240V/10A) is more than enough to charge up overnight. A perk with CCS2 is the support for 3-phase power delivery. With very simple wiring and some smart(-ish) electronics you can opportunistically deliver around 11kW to a single car, or divide it with other house appliances or other cars. It's fairly common with 400V TN-system in some parts of Europe, which makes the support of 3-phase in CCS2 very handy.

Just a nit pick: 10A @ 240V isn't enough to charge my Tesla Model Y overnight from empty - but 30A @ 240V (7.2kW) is.

Most people don't drive 500km per day, the average is closer to 50 or so. So on average, you could easily top of your battery pack on 240V/10A circuit. That would be around 10kWh, which you'll do in 5 hours. Double the average and you'll still be topped up next morning.

Many people often travel regularly, like I do to visit family 150mi away. It would sure be nice to be able to charge while I'm at their house at a rate that would fill me back up. Range and charging speed matters, y'all shouldn't be just hand waving it away.

It's not being hand waved away. You're just constructing scenarios that most people owning an electric vehicle will agree is such a non-issue that it's not really worth debating. There are plenty of fast chargers to fill the gaps.

Many people travel regularly. Many people don't. That's how we ended up on the average being 50km.

> There are plenty of fast chargers to fill the gaps.

Definitely not on the route to where my family lives. I checked last year when I was looking at EV, there's like a single L2 charger at a hotel on the whole route. I expect it will be several more years before the millions of us with family in the country can reasonably buy an EV.

I don't think I've ever claimed that EVs are suitable for everyone right now or that the infrastructure is there to fully replace every single scenario. The point is still that most people can have most of their needs met by a simple wall plug for charging.

Chances are that you don't even need to charge on your 150 miles trip. Most modern BEVs will be able to take you anywhere from 300-350 miles on a single charge. In your scenario you could literally do a round trip and have a comfortable level of charge when you get home again.

As a new Model 3 owner, I've been looking into how to do this.

The solutions aren't particularly nice, there's the Quick220, a device which does all the safety checks of manually combining 2 circuits on opposite phases so you can actually get 12A at 240V. But it requires 2 circuits on opposite phases, neither with GFCI (which most outdoor outlets have).

Second option is a NEMA14-50 extension cable, which obviously carries it's own risks but if there's a dryer outlet on a 30A breaker, that gets you 24A at 240V.

But yes, either solution requires a bunch of bulky cords running out the door, and the assumption that the houses' electrical wiring was done properly and is in good condition.

So far the only less-invasive alternative is hoping they have a 20A circuit somewhere convenient, rather than just the kitchen plugs, then you can get an extra 33% charging speed (16A @ 120V) with the proper 5-20 adapter.

I think the more practical solution will be private plug-sharing, there's already a few apps and startups advertising I can earn money by allowing others to book my home charger, and a proper home install can do 11kw.

I don't think most NA superchargers have batteries either, though some definitely do, but I believe going forward they are likely to have "powerpacks" to support pickup and semi truck charging.

It could also be useful at homes to regulate power (assuming the grid connections/solar/batteries were all available), allowing you to charge faster when power is cheap, and pull way back (or even backfeed) when power is expensive.

But it's mainly to try to get EV fillups to be gas-station like. If you can recharge a Tesla to 80% in 5 minutes, you've won.

> It just sounds crazy to plan to pull that much power charging a car at a time.

For comparison, a normal gas station pump is like about 4MW of power (fuel).

Electric cars are almost 4X as efficient as a gas car, so 1MW of electricy and 4MW of gasoline are roughly equivalent in miles added per minute.

OTOH the only batteries that can absorb 1MW of electricity are those in some Class 8 trucks, and Class 8 diesel trucks are usually filled with pumps a lot faster than a standard gas station pump.

It's a useful comparison for how long it takes to refuel a vehicle, but "moving a liquid storing chemical potential energy through a tube" and "move electricity through a wire [and re-store it as electro-chemical potential energy]" are two such radically different activities that it glosses over a lot to equate the two.

For a comparison the other way, high speed trains in Europe are around 10-16MW.

Typical railway locomotives used for freight trains in Britain can draw a maximum of around 5MW.

Ordinary-speed electric trains (for commuters, regional trains etc) with a limit of about 180km/h (110mph) draw 1.5-2MW.

Presumably the full power is only needed when starting off on a hill.

Actually NACS doesn't claim anything regarding current, see the spec[0]. It only claims 1000 volts, and the current is left implementation-defined citing that 900A with a non-liquid cooled inlet.

[0]: https://tesla-cdn.thron.com/static/HXVNIC_North_American_Cha...

>In most of Europe homes do have 3-phase power and large loads like an EV are required to use it.

Yes and no, distribution is usually 3-phase so the 3 phases do arrive to the building, but in a number of countries in Europe inside the home only 1 phase is used and the amount of available power (by contract) is a fraction of what the US are used to (of course depending by country, but it is rare that a house has a contract in excess of 3 or 6 kW).

Most detached homes (the small subset that have a garage) won't likely be upgraded to more than 12 kW or so, still 1 phase, leaving not that much for charging.

Possibly larger buildings with common parking space may be able to take advantage of the 3-phases distribution, still, particularly in cities, the big problem (once the EV's will be more common) will be the low voltage distribution lines and the transformers/cabins from medium to low voltage.

EDIT: replaced "usually" with "in a number of countries in Europe" did not want to generalize

Please don't generalize "Europe" when you aren't sure. (Also goes for the GP.)

I have three-phase power in an 80m² apartment, as that's standard in Denmark.

I never saw three-phase power in a house or flat in Britain, but part of the terrible plumbing is 7-9kW electric showers. (Cheaper to install than a shower connected to hot water, landlord doesn't care about the price to run it.)

> Please don't generalize "Europe" when you aren't sure. (Also goes for the GP.) I have three-phase power in an 80m² apartment, as that's standard in Denmark.

Now now kids, play nicely. ;-)

I think the underlying question we should really be asking here is not willy-waving over whether you have a three-phase supply or not, but rather how large your main fuse is (there's a euphemism for you !).

I'm not familiar with Denmark, but I suspect even your fancy 80m² apartment with its three-phase supply will still only have a (relatively) tiny main fuse.

TL;DR you're still not going to have a supercharger at home any time soon.

>TL;DR you're still not going to have a supercharger at home any time soon.

Yep, and even if you have 3 phases and a large main fuse, the issue remains when you sum all the power needed on a same street in a city.

And I apologize if I seemed to improperly generalize.

I hope I am wrong on that, but this is exactly one of the two largely unaddressed problems for a complete change to an EV fleet in countries like Germany. 1) Do you have enough power delivery available, especially with the push to electric heat-pump based heating. That seems to be a serious problem, I heard from some people that they are not allowed to connect their heat-pumps, even in newly constructed areas! Solvable, with political will, but I don't see the will. 2) Where will people charge who park on the streets. It seems there are technical solutions (electrified curbstones), but again, political will to change much infrastructure is required.

40A on each phase, so 120A total — at least as I understand it [1]. I think that's plenty to charge a car, but good luck parking on the 4th floor. The oven and hob use all three phases. I think tumble driers used to, but they're now so efficient in the EU it's no longer worthwhile.

Several ordinary 3-phase sockets have been installed by parking spaces in the basement, and are rented by residents with EVs.

[1] The main breaker: https://www.se.com/ww/en/product/A9Z61440/residual-current-c...

> TL;DR you're still not going to have a supercharger at home any time soon.

true, but a three phase CCS will do 22kw. the EU has the advantage that 240v needs half the current to get the same power as the US

Homes in most of the US get 3-phase 240v (120 0 -120) at the panel and it's split into 120v for most of the outlets. Some outlets are 240v (oven, dryer).

So it's straightforward to get a 240V charger installed.

No. US homes get split-phase power which is two phases (not three) 180 degrees apart.

3-phase power is three phases 120 degrees apart, and it's extremely rare in single-family homes in the US.

Three phase in Europe (and most of the world) means 220V @ 0°, 220V @ 120°, 220V @ 240°, 0V (neutral).

There is 220V between any phase and neutral, and 400V between any pair of phases. I'm not am electrical engineer, but I think the car charger would be using 400V in this case.

If you're ever in a datacentre or factory in Europe (including the UK), you will probably see fist-sized red plugs and sockets to provide about 60A at 220/400V.

An electric kettle can draw about 3kW, I've only once seen a home with a limit this absurdly low

As an aside, Europe/UK electric kettles are much better and faster and hotter than American ones, because they are twice the voltage.

For real, compare them. The only ones in America that can even compete are hard-wired commercial deals.

Apparently there exists even 1.5 kW in Italy: https://tariffe.segugio.it/guide-e-strumenti/domande-frequen...

Yes, though it is not used much anymore, in Italy most contracts are 3 kW, a number have been upgraded to 4.5 kW or to 6 kW, but that's it.

Due to the way contracts are currently made, there is a fixed amount you pay for the availability of power (no matter if you use it or not) so everyone is on the lower possible amount.

There is also a (relative) complication for new houses or (important) renewals, the electrical system needs to be designed, and while for systems up to 6 kW it is enough that the design is made by the technical representative of the installer/electrician, for larger power a project is needed by a certified electrical engineer, which has a cost.

But as said the real issue is that the local infrastructure is simply not dimensioned for the large increments of power that are (or will be) required by the diffusion of heat pumps and induction stoves, let alone the recharging of EV's.

I believe that the medium voltage (in Italy it is usually @12,000 or @20,000 volts) distribution can be enough or can be upgraded relatively easily, the issue is with the low voltage (the 380-400V) distribution lines and the transformers/electrical cabins in cities.

I've lived in north Italy for a while, the 3-phase 240v was uncommon but easily available if required. I guess the main issue are the southern parts of the country and the islands. Even then, most touristy housing locations were surprisingly modern in this regard though.

I would say in many places in Europe three phase power is normal inside the home. In fact electric stoves including induction usually rely on three phases.

I'm currently building a house in Germany and 34 kW was the smallest option and 86 kW the biggest option. 11 kW 3-phases is pretty much the standard for a Wallbox at your home.

In Italy I know there's usually only very few power like 3 kW

To note, the J1772 connector (the mainstream AC charging port in most cars in the US) also does not have 3 phase support. For commercial charging, the typical approach is to just use 2 phases of a 3 phase commercial supply for AC charging. This basically means commercial charging is limited to 208V (2 phases of 120V that are 120 deg out of phase).

So, there's no loss of function going from CCS in the US to NACS.

Having used both, NACS is more compact, so both the port on the car and the end of the cable are significantly smaller than CCS. The cable itself is also lighter and more "usable" than CCS. At least at the newest V3 superchargers, the NACS cable is so much more flexible and easier to manage.

Munro Live took both connectors apart and did an overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmjofPpThWU

v4 are the new Superchargers, but they're mostly being installed in Europe where everything has been CCS for ages and Tesla needs the longer cable to support cars with ports in random corners.

Unless all these other manufacturers move their charging ports around in addition to switching connectors, the short cables on all the v3 Supercharger infrastructure is going to be an issue here for a while. If your port is in the wrong spot there's no way to reach without blocking two spaces.

Note that the CCS in Europe is different than the CCS in the US. We were already on our own unique standard.

> the NACS cable is so much more flexible and easier to manage.

Nothing stops CCS from using smaller cables. Tesla tends to have cables which aren't rated for as long of lives with the plans on replacing them more often. Most CCS dispenser manufacturers chose beefier cables which were supposedly rated for longer lives, but environmental factors and people (ab)using the cables seems to lead to those cables not having anywhere near their rated lives.

I've seen some 50kW CCS chargers with downright flimsy cables, much smaller and thinner than most Tesla cables.

Tesla has thin cables at some superchargers. These are liquid cooled so they can get away with smaller wires. No idea if CCS1 chargers are using liquid cooling.

Electrify America cables are ones where people routinely criticize for being overly bulky and hard to deal with. They're liquid cooled as well.

CCS1 chargers can (and often do) use liquid cooling. They can also support not liquid cooling the cables as well.

If I compare it to USB-based connectors where USB-C never came along.

NACS is like a Lightning plug. From a practical/pragmatic perspective, it was clearly the best plug at the time it was created. It solved real user problems.

CCS a micro-USB 3.0 plug. Maybe you've never seen one[0], but they are a real thing. Let's take an awful plug (micro USB / J1772) and clumsily add a few more wires on to it to make it both more capable and even worse. It does what you need it to do, but nobody has ever thought it was good at it.

[0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Connecto...

IMO then let's standardize on what the replacement to NACS/CCS should be. Personally, I don't see the big deal behind a larger connector, especially if it's a bit more future proof without requiring extremely clever engineering. I mean we've dealt with huge gasoline/diesel pump handles for nearly a century.

NACS is perfectly fine. It’s open now, unlike Lightning

And for ultra-high performance applications (e.g. semi trucks, farm equipment, light aircraft) there is MCS. It has the support of Tesla, Scania, Volvo among others, making it near-certain to be a industry standard in Europe and North America.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megawatt_Charging_System

CCS1 (the variant of CCS used in the US; basically J1772 + HVDC pins) has a lot of flaws that can't easily fixed in a backwards-compatible way:

1. It's gigantic, making it a lot harder to handle and plug in [0] 2. CCS1 has a mechanical latch on the handle side (as opposed to NACS, which puts an electronic latch in the vehicle side). This results in a few problems: a. The CCS1 latch is is exposed and easily broken, allowing the vehicle to begin charging without being physically latched in (meaning it can be unplugged without pressing the lever to unlatch, while still carrying HVDC at hundreds of amps – there is protection against this but it's not great practice to rely on the control/ground pins being unplugged first, rather than making a latch that isn't so easily circumvented) b. The latch is long and requires a lot of force to unlatch (this may just be my bad experiences speaking, but I've always needed to wiggle the connector a bit to relieve the friction.)

Unrelated to the physical connector, Tesla's charging network in the US is far larger and more reliable than everyone else's CCS1 networks combined, and the only way to use the network is NACS (at the moment, anyway. Magic Dock[1] is being added to some superchargers and will most likely be rolled out wider in the near future.)

0: https://digitalassets.tesla.com/tesla-contents/image/upload/... 1: https://electrek.co/2023/02/23/tesla-supercharger-magic-dock...

I have had a colleague describe to me the lingering smell of ozone when he was able to unplug CCS1 while charging. The charger and car dutifully stopped charging and the charger nagged to Not Do That but it certainly left that ozone wafting...

> Technology Connections did a deep dive on CCS and it seems like it's a more flexible connector with a truly open standard.

He did a video on this Connextras channel about this news:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjny4u5THpU

While he thinks the Tesla physical connector is probably better, the CCS communications standard is better (AIUI). So once Telsa adopts that, it will probably be a good system.

Also: he's talking about CCS1, and not CCS2, which can do things like handle three-phase power.

Wait. CCS1 cant handle three-phase power?

I just read about it and no wonder its not that popular.

You can charge 7.4kw maximum in the US at home with CCS1.

In Europe you can charge up to 22kw without going DC.

Level 2 can charge up to 19kW (240V at 80A) but 12kW (50A) is more common.

NACS also can't do three-phase power. Three-phase power is rare in the US, it is only found in commercial locations that need it.

How does the US get to 240v if you guys don’t have multiple phases at home?

Not an electrician, but here In Europe we get to 400v by combining the three 240v phases we get.

We don't have three phase but power coming into most panels in the United States has two 120V lines that are 180 degrees out of phase so that's enough to construct the 240.

US power is really 240V with a neutral. It’s wired to most outlets and circuits as one 120V leg (against the neutral). But you can absolutely wire a 240V circuit using both legs and major appliances (air conditioners/heat pumps, electric driers) use 240V. My Tesla charger is on a 240V 60A circuit.

> Wait. CCS1 cant handle three-phase power?

CCS1 = SAE J1772 + DC.

J1772 has L1, L2/neutral, ground, control pins:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J1772

J1772 is popular where one-phase is popular in residences (i.e., US, CA). CCS2 has L1, L2, L3, and neutral+ground:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_2_connector

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J3068

Technically there was nothing stopping the use of CCS2 in the US, as the L2 and L3 pins would simply not be used at people's homes. But one-phase J1772 was already around, and it was decided to go with legacy compatibility.

I'm sure CCS2 exists in more commercial settings with heavy duty EVs, e.g., Volvo Trucks:

* https://www.volvotrucks.us/news-and-stories/press-releases/2...

Though high/er capacity (DC) plugs are being worked on:

* https://insideevs.com/news/535918/megawatt-charging-system-e...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megawatt_Charging_System

I think in the EU its CCS2 including the tesla super charger. They have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_Charging_System#/medi... the left hand plug.

Tesla start charging much much faster. Tesla communication is perfectly fine for Tesla to Tesla connection and Tesla has no need to change that.

Teslas start charging within 5-8s, CCS often take 30s to start charging.

Tesla will follow the standard for other cars, but I hope they improve on the implementation.

Even in that video, Alec manages to slip in numerous disingenuous arguments, such as when he held up an adapter and suggested size parity between the (larger) female socket end of a complete NACS connector and the (smaller) male plug end of a AC-only J1772 connector.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjny4u5THpU&t=290s

More to the point, the debate isn't about NACS versus J1772, it's about NACS versus CCS1. If you compare CCS1 to NACS, the difference is substantial. This graphic is probably showing best case for NACS and the worst case for CCS1 but the connectors shown are dimensionally accurate:

https://digitalassets.tesla.com/tesla-contents/image/upload/...

NACS can be plugged in one handed by a child. CCS1 needs perfect alignment which can be a struggle for a large man using 2 hands in optimal conditions.

NACS cables are lighter and thinner, which really matters when it is cold and the cables harden.

This article shows some visual comparisons: https://www.motortrend.com/news/tesla-opens-charging-connect...

Most people consider NACS to be a better connector, there are even CCS1 fans who admit that.

But in reality, they are all fine and it doesn't matter that much. What really matters is that there is a standard, whatever it is.

And it seems like NACS chargers will speak the CCS protocol, so those with CCS cars will just need a passive adapter to charge with NACS.

This is for North America, Europe is fine with CCS2, and NACS doesn't intent to change that. And compatibility is not that much of a problem since cars usually don't travel between Europe and North America, plus, for these rare cases, there are adapters.

AFAICT NACS (read, the "standard" and not Tesla's original release) speaks the same protocol as CCS, it just combines the AC and DC pins into, yes, a sleeker connector.

So no real "benefit", and it actually adds complexity into the car itself. But theoretically one could also make a NACS -> CCS adapter, so it wouldn't end up as a CHAdeMO situation.

EDIT: I forgot, the NACS connector is more or less self-aligning if you get it in the right general orientation, whereas CCS is pretty particular.

NACS and CCS currently use different protocols. Older Tesla's require a retrofit to support CCS1. (https://shop.tesla.com/en_ca/product/ccs-combo-1-adapter).

However, I suspect a big part of the reason why this flurry of announcements is happening now is that Tesla is upgrading their superchargers to be able to speak the CCS protocol over NACS.

NACS uses CCS protocols, see Page 11 of https://tesla-cdn.thron.com/static/HXVNIC_North_American_Cha...

For DC charging, communication between the EV and EVSE shall be power line communication over the control pilot line as depicted in DIN 70121.

Hmmm, we need a good name for the older Tesla plugs that aren't NACS compliant. When I said "current NACS", that's what I was referring to. I should have been more explicit.

Tesla vehicles built before ~2020 do not and can not speak CCS without a retrofit.

Arguably, those are !NACS at all. It wasn't called NACS until the specs were delivered, along with the requirement to support CCS signaling.

Yeah, October 2020 is the time they started adding CCS compatible ECU. Surprised it's not a software update, it's just a new protocol. Is there a voltage difference? Or is the ECU 3rd party?

At least with Tesla's exponential sales the number of people it affects will be smaller. 1 million out of 4 million I think

Yeah, there's a different controller inside the charge port. From what I've seen, it isn't a difficult upgrade and the part is unrestricted.

I've been estimating the % of affected cars as ~20% at this point and the % that is capable is steadily increasing.

Still an annoyance if you have one of the vehicles without support, but they are no worse off than before. The supercharger network has roughly doubled since then too.

> Older Tesla's require a retrofit to support CCS1.

This is needed because CCS1 requires special communication circuitry for the control data. All Teslas can speak CCS protocols.

The initial Supercharger support used different protocols. They were simple CAN-based, without any metering or billing. In fact, supercharging support was gated by a flag on the car's side.

> EDIT: I forgot, the NACS connector is more or less self-aligning if you get it in the right general orientation, whereas CCS is pretty particular.

This last part is so useful that I'm stunned anyone designed a connector without it.

I don't know if there are any studies on this but the perception amongst EV users that I'm aware of is that NACS is a very reliable system (low rate of charging stall breakdowns) compared to CCS chargers that seem to break down quite frequently. However, it is unclear if this is due to the technology difference between CCS and NACS or if it's just due to the poor implementation of CCS charger infrastructure.

It's both. The latch on CCS1 is particularly prone to breaking, but is responsible for only a small fraction of the CCS1 downtime.

Also as they age you have to hold the top up for the J1772 communication pins to initiate the charge and then you can let go.

I think it’s incentives. If Tesla chargers break and stay broken, then Tesla owners get mad. (And Tesla chargers seem to break or malfunction with some regularity — they’re not indestructible. But they get fixed, and there are always more than one or two chargers at a site.)

The third party chargers don’t seem to act like they have a reputation to uphold. Also, I’m not convinced they’re even really motivated to have people use their stations.

Like you said, the law of numbers.. if a Tesla stall is out theres usually 7 others to choose from. Any other network may have one or no alternatives (they're all broken sometimes).

Right, and Tesla is speedy to fix broken ones usually. And an occasional bad charger isn’t a huge deal (I talked to an electrician who was servicing one of them). Gas stations regularly have non-working pumps, and I suspect those are more expensive to fix.

The Tesla approach is really another level for charging compared to everyone else. And even the mobile chargers & Level 2 destination chargers are better.

Yup, this is a huge win for electrification all around. The future is bright(er).

> The third party chargers don’t seem to act like they have a reputation to uphold. Also, I’m not convinced they’re even really motivated to have people use their stations.

They do care but technology is unforgiving. Tesla is many iterations into improving their station reliability, they are vertically integrated and their station are very simple. The production volume is far, far higher leading to improve quality.

The competitors like EA, in their effort to scale simply have 3-4 different providers put into the same box. Different hardware, different software and so on. And then also a NextGen version from all these providers.

Their stations are much more complex, with screens and so on. So the failure rate is far higher and repair is much more difficult.

I think you are underestimate the challenge of how difficult it is to role out such an infrastructure and maintain it specially when you are just a service provider, not an actual engineering company. Tesla just made it look easy and everybody expect that any other company could do the same, but they can't.

> Their stations are much more complex, with screens and so on. So the failure rate is far higher and repair is much more difficult.

Gas stations are far more complex, and they manage just fine, with substantially higher utilization (cycles per day) and abuse than level 3 chargers.

Tesla spent the money to do this, and they pulled it off. Go them.

This is anecdotal but:

1. Whenever I’ve been on road trips, Tesla chargers outnumber CCS chargers by at-least 5:1 and are in much more convenient locations

2. Tesla is much better about repairing their chargers. You’ll still find busted ones but because there are so many, it’s easy to go to the next stall. With CCS, there’s often not a next stall at all nearby.

If you watch YouTube review channels in Canada like The Straight Pipes, the number one issue they have with CCS EVs is that they can never find working charging stations.

I believe NACS can do everything CCS can do (same number of pins) but in a smaller and easier to handle format. As an EV users I much prefer the NACS connector over the CCS connector especially in the winter when the cables are much stiffer.

NACS doesn't have a standard for vehicle-to-home (or vehicle-to-grid) charging. When they opened up the standard, Tesla said that it was allowed, but they didn't specify any standard way to do it. So it might happen, but there's potential for incompatibilities between car manufacturers and charging systems.

Adopting NACS won't prevent Ford from supporting vehicle-to-grid, since they build both the truck and the charger, and the connector itself doesn't care what direction the electrons are flowing.

But it would be really nice if it was standardized for interoperability reasons.

The Ford F150 Lightning does V2L through the 9.6kW of on-board inverters. Fairly sure it's not capable of sending that back through J1772 / CCS2 unless I'm mistaken?

Chademo supports bidirectional charging. But bidirectional charging means you basically need a DC fast charger, and those are like $10k. (Hard to find an actual number online besides Alibaba… it’s always an “inquire for price” email quote button… which tells you it’s gonna be like $10k.)

By far the easiest way to pull power from an EV is from the 12V subsystem. The DC-DC converter for EVs usually is like 2kW, so it’s substantial power. …although older Teslas make it hard to access this much as I think they were worried about people abusing free Supercharging… there’s a 12 Amp fuse for the cigarette lighter port and a 50 Amp fuse for the jump posts accessible in the front, even 12V and 12A is enough to power a fridge for weeks if you buffer it through one of those “solar generator” things. That’s what I did during a recent power outage for my 2013 Model S. My 2013 Nissan Leaf has a 12V battery that’s easier to access, and I could pull about 1.2kW from that (have to keep the car on so the high voltage battery is connected to the DC-DC converter, keeping the 12V subsystem charged) using a couple inverters.

Cheapest Chademo bidirectional V2H equipment for home in Japan costs 500k JPY https://etex.jpn.com/info/v2hhojyo/ https://www.nichicon.co.jp/products/v2h/about/specs/

What's the price of the inverter on the other end? Installation?

This "EV power station" integrates inverter. Don't need additional inverter for other end. Installation is 300k from prev article, maybe discounted a bit when I get real quote.

As Tesla moves to replace the 12 volt subsystem with 48 volts, it would seem even more plausible to do V2L by routing outgoing power through the 48 volt system.

The Ford F150 Lightning does V2L through the 9.6kW of on-board inverters. Fairly sure it's not capable of sending that back through J1772 / CCS2 unless I'm mistaken?

The F150 Lightning does V2L via the CCS port. It's supported, just the only car that I'm aware of that does this is the F150 Lightning.

Ioniq 5 does it too

Ah right, via the weird dongle they have. It's not integrated into a home backup setup like the F150L, though.

To do power-to-grid you simply need to connect to the car's HVDC bus and tell the car "please don't panic if you see current flowing out, not in".

NACS handles the HVDC connection just fine, and simply lacks the second part. But it's just software, it can be standardized later.

My perception is that CCS2 is better egineering than NACS but both are improvements over CCS1 so any alternate adoption is a market improvement. Having the pure "best design" is very rarely the deciding factor to market adoption.

CCS2 is... ok. It's not better engineered than NACS, but it's adequate.

In particular, it doesn't have the mechanical latch on top and has slightly larger DC conductors.

So much better. Not to mention, same connector for AC (home) charging and DC fast charging (on the road at the super chargers). Whereas now with CCS you have a little cover over the fast charging pins you remove from your usual AC port to plug in the DC fast charging combo. So much nicer.

It's not just the connector. It's the whole charging experience. NACS + Supercharger network is 10x better than the alternatives both in speed of charging and ease of use.

See Sandy Munro's rant:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VBCpAHvOpQ

yes. just look up photos (to scale) of different connectors on the web. All others are UX abominations

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