I am an EV user. My connection is not Tesla compatible. I wish the government would prod manufacturers to create a common connection for all EVs the same way there is a common gas intake for all gas powered vehicles.
That is exactly why this is happening. Tesla is expanding their network and opening it to more manufacturers in pursuit of a $7.5bn federal funding program.[0]
>the new rules, issued after nearly eight months of debate...seeks to give consumers unfettered access to a growing coast-to-coast network of EV charging stations, including Tesla's Superchargers.
>Companies that hope to tap $7.5 billion in federal funding for this network must also adopt the dominant U.S. standard for charging connectors, known as "Combined Charging System" or CCS; use standardized payment options; a single method of identification that works across all chargers; and work 97% of the time.
Interesting enough, Tesla is (currently) obliged to add CCS compatibility to their chargers for eligibility, but these manufacturers are adopting their connector regardless.
>The new rules would allow Tesla to keep its unique connectors, but it will have to add a permanently attached CCS connector or adapter that charges a CCS-compliant vehicle, similar to a gas pump that has a separate handle for gas versus diesel.
[0]https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/new-bi...
The fastest CCS chargers are ~360KW, and Tesla Supercharger V4 will apparently support 350KW within a year.
It's absolutely fair. These are separate statements, and they're both true. Tesla has missed "some" (only some?) deadlines. And they've also brought EVs to the public. It's completely fair to say these because they're true.
Until something is delivered, and bug-free, I don't really believe anything they say. They've done a lot, but their word is next to worthless.
I have Starlink as well - over promised, and under delivered _but_ it currently still has no competition in my area.
The difference is that Tesla now has competition, but they did still have some good ideas. If NACS really is open and free, I don't see the big deal.
This whole thing reminds me of the ancient unix story of the DoD test of TCP/IP implementations, where they were deciding between the BBN stack and the Berkley (BSD) stack. The result was something like, "The BBN stack starts off much faster, but it crashes often and the machines take so long to reboot, so on average, the BSD stack is faster". Kirk McKusick tells the story far better...
https://www.youtube.com/@OutofSpecMotoring https://www.youtube.com/@OutofSpecReviews https://www.youtube.com/@OutofSpecPodcast
> But will the CCS be as fast at charging ?
Of all the problems with CCS, speed isn't really one of them.
Tesla is supporting CCS because that's what the bureaucratic funding dictates, not because anyone believes CCS will succeed. They will (and should) do the bare minimum.
Tesla/NACs connector is just stick it in and it works... the car holds onto it until it is done or you tell it to let go.
I don't think I've ever seen a public J1772 connector that had a functional spring in the little thumbpress/lock/turn on thing which means if you don't know you need to stick a key or pen cap, or squeeze really hard to pry the little fucking plastic tab up to the lock position, it just won't work.
I'm still a little baffled that people have all these problems. I've owned an EV for the past 6 years, I charge at public charging stations all the time (primarily ChargePoint and EA), and while I've had tons of problems with the chargers themselves (e.g. the charger just not working) I have never had a problem just sticking the charging plug into the outlet in my car.
Then Tesla pulled a fast one on the morons at GM and Ford, who signed stupid deals that handed the future back to Tesla, and now the only question is whether Tesla consolidates the entire industry behind it (possible) or we end up in a world with a split between NACS and CCS (also possible, but probably less likely).
Consumers prefer NACS to CCS. And Electrify America failed, spectacularly, to deliver a working product. (As someone put it bluntly, NACS exists. CCS does not. You bet on the horse, not the unicorn.)
The auto industry is standardising around NACS because it will eventually force the standard into the open. That, in turn, enables antitrust questions about the Tesla/Supercharger tie-up. (In the meantime, everyone avoids the wastefulness of a meaningless standards battle.)
Because I could see people taking the option.
It is fair to say he is biased, but at the same time I don't see why his assessment of NACS vs CSS is wrong.
Its a plug, its bigger than NACS but apart from that its hard to notice the difference as a consumer
Superchargers wete also lagging on liquid-cooled cables, which will be included in v4.
V3 Superchargers have liquid cooled cables, that's why they are thinner than V2 cables. V4 has even crazier liquid cooling, where the conductors are directly immersed in the coolant.
Plus, if the concern is the port then I don't necessarily mind that fast charging companies will have to deploy new hardware, as long as the cars don't need to get retrofitted all the time or use adapters.
It's tough to bring currently deployed chargers to CCS's defence, given most deployed chargers are Tesla's.
>> It's better engineered and designed. It's that simple
CCS currently supports 800V. NACS is going to support 800V. The number of extant chargers with 800V capability is, to a reasonable approximation, the same for CCS and NACS. So NACS being able to support 800V rhetorically balances CCS being able to roll out 800V chargers (or any, period), at least in my mind.
Put another way, one solution is deployed and capable of upgrading. The other is also capable of upgrading, maybe comes upgraded already, but hasn't been deployed. The first strikes me as better engineered. (The latter may have superior design, but I have trouble buying that argument given NACS can be upgraded.)
In the EU/UK they have the CCS2 plugs on them, and are compatible with any CCS2 capable car.
(source: me, I used one last week for a non tesla car)
Can you explain your reasoning? I have an EV with CCS and have never had a problem with it, so I don't know what is "objectively terrible" about it.
Basically like any design-by-committee output.
The advantages of CCS: It supports 800V today, it supports V2L/V2H/V2G today.
The advantages of NACS: It's smaller, which nobody cares about except Tesla fans.
The advantage of NACS is that it has a working network of chargers, and plugs in effortlessly.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/new-bi...
> FHWA Response: Commenters overwhelmingly supported the CCS connector standard and verified that the industry is moving to adopt CCS as a market standard; therefore, FHWA requires CCS Type 1 connectors for each DCFC port through this final rule. Although a few commenters preferred Tesla connectors, most of the Tesla products are proprietary and do not address the needs of the majority of EV makes and models available in the domestic market. However, on November 11, 2022, Tesla announced its “North American Charging Standard” (NACS), which makes its existing and previously proprietary Electric Vehicle charging port and connector available for broad and open public use, including to network operators and vehicle manufacturers. In the announcement, Tesla noted that charging providers were planning to offer NACS charging ports at public charging infrastructure. This rulemaking allows permanently attached non-proprietary connectors (such as NACS) to be provided on each charging port so long as each DCFC charging port has at least one permanently attached CCS Type 1 connector and is capable of charging a CCS-compliant vehicle.
Again, the CCS rule came out in February, and when the rule was being made it definitely did look like "the industry is moving to adopt CCS as a market standard", as prior to Nov 2022 there was no "North American Charging Standard", only Tesla's closed, proprietary tech.
It's always curious to see someone with such strong conviction that somehow they have an insight, without access to any of the information involved in negotiating this partnership, that the various folks at GM and Ford failed to see.
They're trying to sell expensive EVs, but people were buying Teslas instead because they can guarantee the chargers work and are in good locations.
I have a lot of strong criticisms of Tesla, but slowly investing billions into building a reliable charging network over the last 10 years is hardly a "fast one"
They certainly didn’t care enough to make electrify America good.
As another commenter stated, though, Volkswagen was forced to create EA as part of their Dieselgate settlement, and their behavior in the past hasn't exactly instilled confidence that they see it as something worth investing in.
I have road tripped well over 10k miles in my Telsa over the last 5 years, and I've never seen an entire supercharger site offline (like happens with EA). I'm sure it must happen after natural disasters when grid power is cut, but its not the normal state of operations like it is with EA.
The only car manufacturer with a competitive charging network or only competitor period? ChargePoint seems better than Tesla my area. Most of the Tesla stations in this area require a hotel stay to charge.
The federal government has definitely "intervened" by incentivizing interoperability through a $7.5B carrot[1] for interoperable charging networks.
Also unlikely to be coincidental is the fact that Tesla "opened up" its charging patents/specs to competitors [1] in 2014 - but only signed its first partner in 2023, a few months after billions of federal dollars were made available for interoperable charging networks.
1. IIRC, they included a mutual non-aggression clause for patents, and if a 100-year-old company with plenty of patents like Ford, you may balk at that. I'm speculating that Tesla has been offering much more generous terms than the 2014 offer
I don't doubt they'd like it to remain that way. Starving CCS charging networks of federal dollars that are be relied upon by Japanese, German and Korean manufacturers would be a win for US manufacturers; expanding a Tesla-moat into a US-manufacturer moat. Tesla gets federal dollars, control the standard and keeps its hungriest competitors at bay who most threaten its margins; Ford, GM and Rivian get access to a large network and protection from foreign competition by being invited into the fort.
Cartel-like behaviour is notoriously self-emergent.
Insidiously, this arrangement might even get the US government to look the other way if it is American car companies vs. everyone else despite the original assumption being that CCS networks would get most/all of the federal funds.
> Interoperability of EV charging infrastructure. The requirements relating to interoperability similarly address less visible standardization along the national EV charging network. The FHWA is working to establish a seamless national network of EV charging infrastructure that can communicate and operate on the same software platforms from one State to another. The FHWA establishes interoperability requirements through this final rule for charger-to-EV communication, charger-to-charger network communication, and charging network-to-charging network communication to ensure that chargers are capable of the communication necessary to perform smart charge management and Plug and Charge.
And it's a sensible move if you care about e-waste, given that there are far more NACS vehicles and NACS charging stalls in than CCS1 vehicles and CCS1 charging stalls. (And that contrast becomes even more extreme if you assume that the thousands of unreliable CCS1 stalls would be getting scrapped anyway.)
Meanwhile Nissan and Mitsubishi are still selling brand new cars with CHAdeMO plugs. So much for it being a universal standard.
2. They want to sell cars, and cars with the Tesla connector have access to Tesla superchargers without a dongle.
So GM and Ford wanted to sign deals to use Tesla's charger network to remove a competitive advantage that Tesla had. Tesla apparently agreed to that, but one condition is that GM and Ford had to agree to switch future vehicles over to Tesla's previously-proprietary (and still Tesla-controlled) "NACS" standards instead of CCS. GM and Ford agreed. Rivian appears to have followed suit after GM and Ford agreed.
Other automakers are now evaluating the landscape to see where things will fall. The best alternative was always going to be that we had a unified CCS standard future, but now that GM/Ford have made that impossible, they may decide that it's better to get some leverage by unifying on NACS rather than having a split-standard future.
Considering that nearly all U.S. manufacturers are now switching off of CCS1, this requirement makes no sense since infrastructure is meant to last.
If I were to buy a car with CCS today, and then in 2024, NACS wins, and all cars going forward have NACS, and all charging stations change to NACS as a result... In the year 2030, can I get the port upgraded, are the changing stations obligated to support CCS indefinitely, is there an adapter I can just keep in my car for NACS->CCS that actually works (NACS->CCS is currently not an option... will it become an option?), or is my CCS car just unchargeable?
I'm not sure those statements are mutually exclusive. All new manufacturing produces ewaste. CCS cars will still be chargeable in one form or another until the car itself dies.
ball = dropped
So now, once again, the USA adopts a "standard" shunned by the rest of the world.
But, to be fair, the Chinese were still watching movies on CD-I well into the 2000s. So I admit to marginalizing their choice on anything.
Maybe I could have the wrong read, but this sentence structure:
> the USA… shunned by the rest of the world.
Does two things: it implies there's a standard "the rest of the world" has agreed on (there isn't, and there never is, it's one of the things that makes the world big) and it signals you as probably one of the two types of people which might be unintentional on your part, but still:
1. A European complaining about America.
2. An American complaining that we're not doing things the European way.
There are other possibilities, but those are the two most probable reads.
As far as charging standards go, we haven't settled on a standard because there's only one charging network worth a damn in the country, and until Tesla started making agreements with other automakers to sign them on, it was exclusively for use by their customers which isn't great if you're Ford or GM or another startup EV manufacturer and trying to get people to buy your electric cars instead. Right now it looks like (in my opinion, this is not settled) we'll probably settle on NACS, but as opposed to what? CCS? 1 or 2? CHAdeMO/ChaoJi? Is there a technical issue you have with NACS specifically or is it just that it's not a de jure standard somewhere else?
And there are just plain shitty standards, like ATSC's. Anyway, for adults who have lived through plenty of these standards blunders, it's even more irritating to see them not headed off by the only entity that has a chance of doing so in this instance: the federal government.
The last I heard, CCS 2 was set to be widely adopted. And sure enough, any charging connection that doesn't support DC is absurd. So yes you can argue it's good the government didn't act sooner and mandate one of those earlier short-sighted ones.
Eh, whatever. As long as something dominates the continent I guess it's OK. It's not as if I'm likely to take my car to Europe or Africa on a lark.
I just think we've all had enough of dongles.
As far as CCS2 goes, or actually CCS Types I and II, there’s already a split between continents and regions on that one; and then there’s CHAdeMO and GB/T which are in active use. CCS aspired to be a global standard but it was never going to get there, not on this planet. There’s also another standard called MCS in development.
Still a better situation than wall outlets.