We are all better off just biting the bullet now and changing everything over to the Tesla plug.
Compare that to the Supercharger network, where providing a great experience is a huge selling point for Teslas.
I might despise Musk, and I'm not a fan of Tesla lately, but you do really have to hand it to them: they were prescient and put in all the hard work of building out the best fast charging network, so good for them for reaping the benefits.
I didn't know that. Do you have some documentation about that. Would be fun reading material for the holidays
> I might despise Musk, and I'm not a fan of Tesla lately, but you do really have to hand it to them: they were prescient and put in all the hard work of building out the best fast charging network, so good for them for reaping the benefits.
Same boat club.
I’m getting sick of this tiptoeing in every thread that mentions Tesla. No ones going to come to your house and beat you if you say something positive, un-hedged, about Tesla
You should probably thank the government, too. When the feds decided they were going to put billions in subsidies to a national charging network, the original regulations basically required CCS, because that was really the only cross-platform game in town - Tesla was proprietary and not open to other automakers. In a brilliant bit of chutzpah, in response Tesla renamed their charging system the "North American Charging Standard" and started coaxing other auto companies to get on board, which most other companies were OK with because Tesla has by far the best fast charging network. But it was really the government subsidies, and the threat that Tesla would be left behind if everyone else went with CCS, that sparked the opening up of NACS in the first place.
Google has absolutely none of the expertise required to put such a connector together. It requires a very specific set of skills in chip design, signal integrity, and connector design which Google has none of.
But 9to5 Mac did some sleuthing and it seems that, in the case of Apple, it’s not entirely truthful: https://9to5mac.com/2015/03/14/apple-invent-usb-type-c/
Google also doesn’t seem to have fulfilled a bigger role than Apple did.
Connector design like this is a delicate balance between signal integrity (wants biggger) and mechanical integrity (wants bigger) and size (always smaller).
As for signal integrity: A lot of the signal integrity was papered over by having complex interface chips. This is why there is so much training and negotiation in USB-C.
As for mechanicals: The whole point of USB-C was to take failure-mode data from the previous generations and design a connector that avoided those. USB-C, in spite of how many people bitch about it, was designed so that the the most probable failure modes (which they learned from prior things like mini and micro USB) occur in the cable--ie the replaceable part.
None of this design expertise is inside Google.
I have never encountered an iPhone with a dead lightning port, it’s always the cable that wears out. There’s tons of laptops and android phones with worn out USB-C ports
Intel had the most, as well as the editor position.
All the Comms should have been done via an OFDM-like scheme rather than just a binary sequence over a twisted pair, giving far more throughput and allowing for compensating for conductive dirt in the plug causing crosstalk.
Overall, I believe such a design would have reduced costs, since there is no longer a need for such precision on cable and plug manufacture, which more than compensates for a tiny OFDM 'modem' inside the USB phy.
Maybe in another 30 years we’ll get a properly symmetrical design with something approaching lighting’s durability.
A combined CCS2 plug is chunkier and might be a bit heavier, but not compared to, say, using a fuel pump.
Really? I don't doubt that Tesla's plugs are smaller and lighter, but it always seemed a bit caricature-ist about people saying how horrible the CCS plugs are and that they weigh like a million pounds or something. They certainly never seemed heavier or harder to manipulate to me compared to a gas pump, so I just never understood this complaint.
Parking lot style EV chargers mean that I'm frequently pulling the charging cable across the front of my car and trying to plug the cable in straight while the tension on the cable is pulling it sideways. It frequently means it's a two hand job, one on the cable to keep in straight and the other guiding the plug in to the port.
I recently tried the ones at Esso in Canada, it literally feels like 4x the weight.
I've never needed 2 handles to manipulate a gas pump or Tesla charger, but with the CCS I had to use both hands and my body weight to sorta force it around. It was wild.
I’ll take my chunky connector with 22kW over your sleek one with 7kW :)
I submit a counterexample of the huge network of Tesla superchargers that can do the job quite well with the NACS connector.
maximum power output of 600 kW and a maximum current of 615A at 1,000V
The practical limits are based on the cars and their batteries, not the charge port.
What was the problem again?
You want to charge as slow as possible for your need, but needs do vary.
> What was the problem again
Why would I want to wait for more than I have to? e.g. I forgot to charge during the night and need to go on a trip in a few hours. Now I need to find a fasts charger and pay for it instead of charging at home, why exactly?
You're referring to DC fast charging. For AC charging the NACS is limited to single phase. This is a charge port thing, not the car or battery.
Which doesn't matter much in the US, but it does in Europe.
That does make it useful to charge it in a few hours in the afternoon, instead of having to wiat the night.
All houses have triphasic power (usually 35A per phase, sometimes 63A), and all apartment buildings with electrics from the last 2-3 decades provide triphasic power to each apartment as well.
Our ovens and cooktops expect triphasic power, with a two-phase downgraded configuration for backup.
Same for Sweden I believe.
I have a 22kW CCS charger at home and it is seems perfectly fine.
The cost of the supercharger isn't really relevant either, most US homes are gonna max out at 200 amp service which is a max of 48kw, but realistically probably half that due to your house needing electricity and a single custom circuit unlikely to be over 100 amps.
If you get the DC cable, you have conductors on the pilot pins and the DC pins, and the AC pin positions are just empty.
If you get the AC cable, you have conductors on the pilot pins and the AC pins, and the DC part of the connector isn't there at all.
I have to admit I haven't used Tesla plugs, but there is already a slight difference between the cable from a 50kW charger and a 350kW charger.
Esso in Canada has free DC charging for a while through their Journie app.
It is like manhandling a pressurized firehose, and I'm a 30 year old male who works out. I had to actually put my phone away and use both hands to force it around, I'm accustomed to the Tesla connector I easily one-hand.
And despite how big and thick it was, it was still so weirdly heavy I had to double check it wasn't somehow secured to the ground as well.
There is a 0% chance either of my elderly parents would be able to get that plugged in.