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Comment by fredsmith219 | Hacker News Reader

The have a charger very near to where I go in Michigan, and 30 miles from the nearest supercharger. They announced earlier this year that they would open up the RAN “near the end of the year” so I’ve been waiting for this announcement. The fact that they will only gradually modify existing chargers to work with other vehicles is a disappointment. It’s all CCS so it should just be a software update. I am really looking forward to charging my model Y at the Rivian charger. I’m guessing that that will be a long time coming now. Oh well, I guess the Red E charger gets my business for the foreseeable future. They have excellent customer service and they just upgraded the charger to be much faster.

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I've only used the RAN chargers once, but IIRC, they don't really have an interface for allowing third-party transactions (i.e., paying with a credit card).

You have to register your vehicle through their app, which may also make this a bit more difficult.

Hopefully they allow web-based registration of your car for plug and charge.

> It’s all CCS so it should just be a software update.

Nope.

CCS has to negotiate voltages with the attached vehicle. Unfortunately there isn't a standardized pack voltage and the range of what it can be is anywhere from 400 -> 900V.

That can mean new inverter hardware at a location to handle the varying range of voltages that come in. For a single manufacturer, it's easier as the cars and charging stations are more aligned on the supported voltages.

All CCS cars support 400V charging, though. Just some of them do it much more slowly compared to an 800V charger.

This is why Tesla is able to work with CCS, despite superchargers not supporting 800V.

> Unfortunately there isn't a standardized pack voltage and the range of what it can be is anywhere from 400 -> 900V.

The CCS spec supports up to 1000 volts. All chargers support variable voltages.

A car's pack voltage also changes continuously across the charge curve as the battery's state of charge increases. The pack is at its lowest voltage at 0% state of charge and at its highest at 100%.

Here's an example of four cars charging, three at 400 volts and one at 800 volts. You can see how the voltage and amperage change across the charge curve:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-Cil3seCHM

Sorry to be pedantic but there are cars on the road where the voltages go below even 300 and the Lucid Air Grand Touring is over 900 when it gets near full. So chargers actually need to be able to handle more like 200-1000.

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