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hedora

The US CCS standard that is being abandoned is not the same as the EU standard.

Also, the problem with the CCS network isn’t the connectors or charging standard.

It’s other stuff, like payment processing and equipment maintenance.

There’s no reason to expect non-tesla NACS stations to be any better than the current CCS stations.

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The connectors are much bulkier and the cables are stiffer (not sure if the second thing is a design flaw or an implementation flaw).

Since all the manufactures want to use superchargers they will be forced to handle payments properly (certificates on the car not a flaky payment terminal on the charger). Should help for third party chargers also.

Slimmer cables on superchargers are Tesla being clever and pushing more amps over the cable than the cable is rated for, and monitors when the cable overheats. Everyone else seems to do it by the book and has cables thick enough for their max amperage.

BTW, CSS2 supports 3-phase AC charging, which is common in Europe, but not in the US. In this regard NACS would be a downgrade for Europeans.

Maybe it’s just me but that sounds like a fire/problem waiting to happen if the temperature sensors fail?

Supercharger v1 and v2 cool passively. The v3 and v4 cables are actively liquid cooled. They’re designed to just stop if the sensors fail.

Maybe, but over billions of charging hours I have not heard of any stories about chargers catching on fire yet. I have to assume that if one of them did catch on fire it would be all over the news, the media is starving for anti-EV stories.

Your just not looking. 2 min google https://electrek.co/2019/11/18/tesla-supercharger-station-fi...

Not to say they are unsafe or anything but it’s not unheard of

Assuming it's true, then probably the sensors are fail-safe.

But I'm not totally convinced Tesla is going over the cable rating. A lot goes into the rating of a particular cable -- everything from conductor material and size to the insulation around the conductors, proximity of conductors, etc. Not to mention the liquid cooling. It's plausible that supercharger cables are rated for more than 600A.

If you’ve ever been at a Tesla charging station in the EU you’d know the cables are, in fact, not stiffer :).

Likely what will ship in the US is similar to the EU non-Tesla solution, where you just use their app.

> The US CCS standard that is being abandoned is not the same as the EU standard.

No. NACS is CCS chargers with Tesla's plug on the end. The plug will become CCS Type 3.

Older Teslas (2019 and earlier) won't work on NACS chargers without a CCS retrofit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY69-yYPH5c

Are you saying older teslas won’t be able to charge at Tesla super chargers?

Tesla will support both protocols at their chargers.

But if you have an older (pre-2020) Tesla you may not be able to charge at a non-Tesla NACS charger, since those older Teslas do not natively support the CCS communication protocol.

Tesla has promised to offer retrofits for older cars. I went the DIY route for mine (replacing an ECU in the trunk area) for a cost of around $200 in eBay parts.

No, Tesla's chargers will still support their proprietary charging protocol for now.

Longer term Tesla may drop support for it. Might as well use the one protocol everywhere, even when the plugs are different in passenger vehicles and in heavy vehicles:

https://www.charin.global/technology/mcs/

Have you ever used either of the connectors? The advantage of NACS with water cooled cables is very obvious.

Tesla's CCS cables in Europe don't seem significantly larger than equivalent NACS cables.

https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/attachments/screen-shot-2022...

Tesla definitely seems to build thinner nicer cables and has reliable chargers and cable cooling, but I'm not sure that's inherent to NACS vs CCS.

Most CCS cables are water cooled.

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