Hacker News Reader

Comment by prdonahue | Hacker News Reader

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

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*

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com