This must be one of those 4D chess things I hear about...
What's happening in North America is that everyone will use CCS with Tesla's plug on the end. It's CCS type 3.
Older Teslas will need a retrofit to be able to talk CCS. Tesla chargers will still support Tesla's now dead protocol.
You are making things up and as part of that you are giving an industry standard name a new meaning.
How do you think it works?
Instead the NACS is the proprietary Tesla plug but using the CCS protocol instead of a CAN-based one. Practically this means that all superchargers remain compatible and it also means that all cars with the CCS plug are not compatible (unless the plug is changed or an adapter is used). Therefore your statement is misleading in addition to being plain wrong about „Type 3“. Tesla has, of course, always also supported the CCS outside of the United States, both inside the superchargers and inside the cars.
The Tesla plug is no longer proprietary. It's been standardized as SAE J3400.
CCS won.
> The Tesla plug is no longer proprietary. It's been standardized as SAE J3400.
Of course, that‘s the very meaning of opening up the plug.
But they'll still be using CCS, as you yourself admit.
Tesla's protocol is dead.
And I‘ll leave the „discussion“ at that.
NACS is CCS. It's how it works. It's the third CCS plug whether you like it or not. It's the practical reality.
It's a bizarre hill for you to choose to die on.
CCS doesn't exist as a standards body in and of itself. It's a joint effort by the North American SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) and the European-based IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission). The CCS standard is actually sets of interoperable standards defined by both the SAE and the IEC built to work in tandem. There is no actual "CCS standards document" there are only SAE standards and IEC standards, but if the joint CCS work does its job they interlock to form one worldwide mega-standard which we call CCS because it useful to name the combined Voltron form.
The NACS plug is in the final drafting process of becoming a recognized SAE standard. In that SAE standards (help) define the CCS standard, NACS is being standardized as a part of CCS, or at least the part that SAE controls/owns. Whether or not you can name it "CCS" depends on what you think the name CCS stands for. SAE and IEC always had different plug standards, so in that regard NACS isn't new to CCS and is a normal part of CCS because whatever SAE says is the North American standard plug is the CCS plug in North America. On the flipside with naming, is branding and NACS clearly has its own brand name and development history. It was developed for Tesla initially. It was opened under the brand name "NACS" to help sell it to the rest of manufacturing. "North American Charging Standard" was an intentional PR move. Because it wasn't intentionally developed for being called "CCS" and because it has a strong brand name of its own, does that mean you can't call it "CCS"? (A rose by any other name, right?)
When that standard is finalized it will be the third type of plug that has a practical rollout. Does that make it the real "Type 3" as opposed to the older prototype that didn't make it past standards processes? Do we want that to call it "CCS Type 3" in the long run to reduce confusion? If "CCS Type 1" is truly dead, but is also the standardized name for "Plug that North America uses and is SAE standardized" should we refer to it as "CCS Type 1 2.0" or something like that?
Names are one of the hardest problems to solve. But to recap the facts: NACS will be as close to a part of the CCS standard as it gets (because it will be an SAE standard), and is a new type of plug now directly related to the CCS standard. Whether you want to call NACS a part of CCS is a matter of perspective and branding as much as "standards" on the ground.
It's going to be easy for everyone to support it because they support CCS already. Charger manufacturers like that. Charging networks like that. Car manufacturers like that.
All they're changing is the plug.
The CCS support was already there so it won out.
Surely the superchargers can be made to be self sufficient with rates and advertising etc.
Still, I can't see the 4D chess behind this move. It's far beyond my limited understanding.
When I hear about Tesla and the Supercharger network what I hear about most is how easy it was to plan long trips. A road trip on gas is easy, there's a gas station in every town with a few thousand people, fast EV chargers aren't yet as common. So if your routing system understood its range, and where the charging stations where it was pretty seamless. Much better than the stuff from other EV makers.
Less often I'd hear about the chargers working more often. e.g. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/07/electric-cars-are-doome...
The other is probably just scale of the parent company in terms of being able to build out and service the network. They tend to have more prominent, nicer locations for their stations.
Standardizing NACS was an interesting win for Tesla because their hardware design won out, but it was also a massive breach in their "moat" putting the other charging networks and other manufacturers on a much more equal footing with the charging story.
On the one hand it makes direct dumb "bottom line" business sense why Tesla would stop investing in its own network with such a massive breach in their "moat" about to spill out and maybe equalize the playing field. Perhaps especially if you think you've already earned enough recognition for your brand that you don't need to maintain it long term, just maintain the facade and PR spin of it. On the other hand, with such a huge first mover advantage and what everyone knows was a respectably huge "moat", you'd think there would be pivots to take advantage of to bulwark other parts of the same moat and still maintain some other advantage along the way to the old adage that "Teslas are the easiest to charge". Gutting the department may truly be a short term gain for shareholder quarterly results traded for a long term mistake and the risk of the loss of that first mover advantage they worked so hard to earn.
It's certainly fascinating to armchair quarterback what other options were in play here.
That's the advantage
The reliability is terrible and perhaps forcing VW to operate a charging network as a punishment does not lead to a good customer experience
Tesla and Rivian network charger locations are usually in better spots than a Walmart. The chargers work the first time, at full speed and availability is always correct in the vehicle display.
Of the dozens of issues that I've had across a few different cities, I think the problem was related to the connector once.
If they'd simply put standard vending machine credit card readers on them and not bothered with apps, they'd have cut their downtime by at least 75%.
For anyone curious, this will be SAE J3400 when finalized:
* https://www.sae.org/standards/content/j3400/
* https://driveelectric.gov/charging-connector
Previously the open standard was SAE J1772 / IEC 62196 Type 2:
It's very useful to note that the North American SAE Type 1 "Combo" connector and the European IEC Type 2 connector have surprisingly different form factors with the SAE one being bulkier by quite a bit. That too was a factor in NACS getting fast tracked for standardization. (It's the least bulky of the three hardware designs.)
Essentially the ploy was for Tesla to use the charging network as a loss leader to make Tesla the only/most viable EV brand, and because both roads and electricity grids are well regulated utilities that failed so from here on the only source of money for Tesla is going to be the company revenue/profit, as it's phase as a buy an monopoly startup is over.
Additionally, EV Charging is not going to be a high-margin, disruptive industry that is a darling of wall street. Can you imagine investors getting excited about investing in the largest operator of Gas Stations? I don't think so. It's going to end up being a tight, competitive business where people pick where to charge based on prices down to the penny. No one's going to end up as a billionaire running that business.
A chess board is 2D. But, you could technically say it's 4D (3 dimensions + time). You could also technically say it's 1D (a string) if you play by just writing the chess notation.