Ford EV Drivers Will Get Free Tesla Supercharger Adapters | Hacker News Reader

Ford EV Drivers Will Get Free Tesla Supercharger Adapters

thedrive.com

23 pointsPaulHoule45 comments

Not often do you see such a pro consumer move from a big corp like this. Hopefully this will apply pressure on the other car manufactures who signed deals with Tesla to do the same.

I’m not sure they’d be doing this if Ford EVs were flying off the lot (they’re not).

Probably true! Looked up the totals to see how many cars this would likely cover. Looks like total EV sales for Ford since 2021 are 135k. Tesla has sold 3.1mil in that same time period.

The A2Z Typhoon ships for ~ $200, so this move will probably cost Ford around $27 million.

I suggest not buying any adapter unless it's been endorsed by your vehicle manufacturer. A2Z claims they're working with OEMs, but haven't said which ones.

Props to Tesla for adopting the CCS1 signalling protocol. Adapters would be more expensive if they required a microcontroller.

Since they have identical signaling, why would you avoid a non approved adapter?

Not the parent. You could be passing 150kW or more through an adapter. I think it’s a very bad idea to risk your life/car/safety on a non-approved adapter.

The L3 EV charging setup dumps 200-900 volt at up to 100 amps into the car. People charge their car in the rain.

I don't want an adapter that makes Big Clive say "oh, that's even better. That's very interesting."

The CCS spec allows for 500A and 1000V, so even more. Tesla gets around their 400V battery by using 620A+

The charging networks are "banning" them:

https://insideevs.com/news/682634/electrify-america-evgo-ban...

So if anything goes wrong, you're probably in a worse position from a liability/compensation standpoint.

Might void your warranty and there’s no guarantee on quality for components. There’s a lot of juice flowing across it.

There's also the impact from telling everyone that future cars will all use NACS. Buying a non-Tesla for the next two years means dealing with adapters more and more often.

Buying a Tesla already results in adapters if you want to use the previous standard of nacs or j1772.

There are plenty of places in the country that’s the only option.

Previous standard of NACS? NACS is the Tesla charger.

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

> In response, in November 2022, Tesla supplanted its previous proprietary charging connector,[10] sometimes informally called the Tesla proprietary connector,[11][12] with a new "North American Charging Standard" (NACS) and opened the standard to make the specifications available to other EV manufacturers. Unlike the Tesla proprietary connector which uses CAN bus to communicate, NACS uses power-line communication (PLC).[13] Like CCS, NACS uses the ISO 15118 protocol, making any CCS vehicle electrically compatible with NACS.[14] Only a simple pass-through adapter is needed to make CCS vehicles compatible with NACS. On the other hand, Tesla vehicles built prior to 2021 are incompatible with CCS and require an ECU retrofit to become compatible with CCS.

From the link at citation [10] in your Wikipedia quote:

>One aspect of the news that seems to have flown below the radar is that the so-called NACS is effectively the next generation of Tesla connector and protocols. The connector itself is slightly modified, but backward-compatible with older Teslas.

CCS*

A significant part of this is probably the switch to the tesla connector as the standard for the US (and not wanting folks who already have a ford EV to complain about needing to buy one once that starts to roll out)

One of the strangest things I saw like this was from Best Buy. I had bought a HD DVD player (I'm still pissed that it lost out to Blu Ray), and then a month or so later, they were discontinued.

Best Buy sent me and everyone who bought them within a certain period before discontinuing a $100 gift voucher.

I saw an HD DVD player at the reuse center for $25 last year and almost bought it but if it was a minidisc player I'd buy it immediately at twice that price.

Awesome. There should be standards for EV chargers, so anyone can charge their EV of choice at the charger of their choice. It those standards were developed by Tesla, or anyone else, I don't care - I just care that the needs of the overall market are addressed.

> There should be standards for EV chargers, so anyone can charge their EV of choice at the charger of their choice.

In north america, essentially everyone has agreed on the NACS [1] (starting in 2025). In Europe they use a "Type 2" aka CCS2[2], and in China they use GB/T[3]. So we're getting there in north america, it'll just be another couple years.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Charging_Standa...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_2_connector

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GB/T_charging_standard

Ah, I love the automotive world adopting the tech industry habits. Now, with dongles!

Akin to our USB to USB C adapters.

Good ol' ports and adapters.

How long until these Chinese adapters are manufactured with WiFi and become part of a botnet?

I wonder if they will retrofit the current CCS connector to the NACS when that time comes.

I doubt it, this seems to be the move.

An optional retrofit would be great. But I don’t think it’s going to happen.

I'm so glad that NACS has won.

I love my Model 3, but I already decided that my next car would not be a Tesla because I don't like the direction the design of the cars have been going, and I don't want to give more money to Elon Musk, but I'm still going to remain an EV driver.

I have a Tesla wall charger in my garage. By everyone switching to NACS, it means I don't need to replace it.

Still praying the Corvette EV impresses, and praying that I won't have to be on a 12+ month waitlist to get one.

I’m glad it won, I’m heavily annoyed by the process.

Tesla could have won at any point, but they waited until a ton of cars were sold and a ton of infrastructure was built just to obsolete it all.

I don't think Tesla could have predicted that everyone but them would have sucked at charging infrastructure. EA turned into a huge bust, VW just didn't have their heart into it.

EA was a penalty for VW's Dieselgate. They didn't have their heart in it because they didn't think EVs were going to win. Oops.

Tesla's sales depended on the Supercharger network to soothe consumer range anxiety for long distance travel. It was existential to build it, so might as well save nothing for the swim back (>$1B investment globally). It is now an asset that legacy auto needs access to in order to sell EVs they must build and sell to survive.

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

Yeah, Tesla understood that charging infrastructure and selling EVs is a chicken-and-egg problem. Very few people will buy an EV without a large charging infrastructure. Nobody would build a charging infrastructure if there weren't enough EVs sold to use them. So Tesla did both: Sold EVs and built a huge charging infrastructure.

The Tesla Supercharger network is an under-advertised feature.

The third party networks are just so half-assed. Slow (The 19.2 kW J-1772 plug should have never existed, and it took too long for CCS to catch on), expensive, and half the time not even working.

how do I get one for my Chevy Bolt?

Elsewhere in this thread, this was mentioned: https://a2zevshop.com/products/nacs-ccs1?variant=43186507579... ($197 USD)

Or cross your fingers and hope GM's bean counters authorize buying you one, but I would not hold your breath.

I’m sure there will be Ford drivers who will resell theirs

Recent freeze in US Midwest exposed a lot of literally frozen Superchargers and long, looong lines of Teslas hoping to charge before already cold the battery drops to 0. Some people ended up stranded in the cold, so bad it made the news.

How could a Supercharger freeze? I don't know all details, but some connectors would report as NO LATCH and Tesla would refuse to charge.

Apparently it's about some moisture freezing in the connector and preventing proper mating with the port. Literally, some ice in the 'needle' holes. Maybe some other issues.

I'm not sure if this is a design problem or maybe some improvements are due if this type to become standard.

Don't believe the clickbait. The solution is straightforward: more charging stations (to mitigate stalls or entire stations being down), a bit more user education (cold batteries charge slower, and if the vehicle has enough battery charge, will improve pack temp on the way to the fast dc charger so the battery is warm on arrival, to optimize for optimal charge curve), and probably a bit of software tweaking (don't route to down fast dc chargers, improved polling rate of stations for health to communicate to the fleet availability for nav). Perhaps some improvement for cold weather chargers is needed as well, to route cable coolant (which keeps conductors thinner for UX and cost) to other key components to keep them at operating temp. Tesla should be able to figure this out, considering how they use a heat pump and motor stalling to warm the vehicle battery pack when needed.

Tesla is on version 4 of their Supercharger, and many improvements have been made since v1. Iteration is progress, expect it to continue. We're only at the beginning of a historical mobility transformation.

https://insideevs.com/news/705075/uber-lyft-rideshare-electr...

https://insideevs.com/news/705057/chicago-tesla-stranded-ev-...

https://supercharge.info/map

https://supercharge.info/map?siteID=7341 (52 stall station Tesla is building by ORD in Chicago)

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

(own several Teslas, in 6 years have never arrived at a down station in over ~200k aggregate miles traveled long distance in the US; one of my residences is in the greater Chicago area, so I am very familiar with the charger network there)

Gas stations screw up too.

There was a case where they hadn’t properly desulpherized gas down south so the fuel contained an acid that damaged the fuel gauge so the gauge would always read “full” and you’d drive till you ran out of gas.

There was another case where gas got contaminated with water in NJ which led to the strange spectacle of people noticing a lot of broken down cars as they approached the gas station, then they drove a block and broke down

https://archive.ph/2024.02.07-190857/https://www.nytimes.com...

This just in: https://www.thedrive.com/news/fuel-shipping-company-charged-...

> ...Don't believe the clickbait.

Frozen Supercharger connector is not a clickbait. It's a reality of -9F over 3-day weekend.

At some stations snow drift would be up to the charger so that cable may accidentally fall into the snow when putting it back.

I can see how such connector would be then put upright and the moisture would end up in the mating holes.

Also, waiting in the line at the charger (some waits were over 1hr) would likely cool the battery, unless driver would manually keep the battery conditioning on, which eats the charge too!

Then it goes to slow charge due to cold battery. Which increases the wait time to the others in the line...

Dismissing these issues on personal experience does little to improving the infrastructure and charger design.

The US Midwest is massive. The issue was localized to the Chicago area:

https://www.reddit.com/r/electricvehicles/comments/198g0o5/t...

The reporting was localized, not the freeze.

The Tesla connector latch issues in freezing temps are likely common as well.

EVs are popular in Norway. NORWAY.

I had rented a Tesla that weekend, first time driving an EV since I drove a a 90s EV conversion Geo Metro and here is my understanding from talking to people and charging myself.

That was a windy and wet storm, lots of deep drifts, road signage covered, etc. now there are quite a few Tesla drivers who are not enthusiasts and don’t know everything about the tech.

Issue one: if you don’t precondition the battery it’s going to take a while to warm up before charging, and if you are unfamiliar you may think something is broken, and tell other people a charger is broke when it isn’t. In fact you might even leave the charger hanging to indicate it isn’t working instead of putting it back in its receptacle, causing it to ice over.

Issue two: some chargers iced over even when returned to their receptacles properly. Superchargers aren’t new to the Midwest and this was a nasty storm but not something we hadn’t seen before, I don’t think there is some fatal flaw, but idk what the stats are for how many ice up.

Issue three: non preconditioned batteries take way longer to charge, lowering the throughput of the chargers that were not (mistakenly or otherwise) broken.

Issue four, that I didn’t see anyone on the news talking about: you have to back into superchargers. Snow had drifted against the chargers and backing up into them with a RWD version of a Tesla was real hard. I saw several people struggling with this. My rental was AWD and had no problems.

Overall, I’d say I didn’t love the vehicle (AWD model Y) but DC charging was the one thing that really worked well for me, regardless of storm. Before the storm I went 20% to 50% at like 230 kW. That’s fast. I didn’t get that sort of speed during the cold (but I was also on the slower part of the charging curve above 50%) but it still worked well for me.

Battery preconditioning is automatic, when a Supercharger is picked through the Navigation map. Whether it will be sufficient, that depends on the temp and distance to the charger.

Latch problems in freezing temps is not new. Some drivers even work around the frozen connectors by parking sideways (!) to the charger then bringing the connector indoors just to warm it up enough for the moisture to thaw out. Don't know how long this could take.

Perhaps, some heated receptacles on the charger or some antifreeze laced cradle could deal with that. Again, this is the reality of wider EV adoption, extension of field-test. So some adjustments are due.

But there is really no reason to use navigation where you live or work unless you realize this triggers preconditioning.

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