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Anyone who follows Jeff will know he's US-based, but I still really felt he could've highlighted that fact more in that charging port standards section.

The fact that both J1772 & CCS2 are 100% universal in Europe is huge. So much so even Tesla switched to CCS2. This doesn't help Jeff but certainly one less problem for many readers of his article.

It's IEC 62196-2 Type 2 (Mennekes) and CCS2 in Europe. J1772 is the North American standard that is used in CCS1.

> Anyone who follows Jeff will know he's US-based

That was obvious from the article but given they specifically mentioned CCS2 bundled with the mess that is US charging I thought important to point that (anecdotally) the situations are quite distinct. Both in terms of charging hardware and payment.

Go to your local Mitsubishi dealership in Europe and you will find the 2025 Outlander PHEV with a CHAdeMO plug. And I believe if you buy a pre-2019 Tesla Model S or Model X, you will have to deal with Tesla's own plug.

I'm guessing it skirts regulations by being a PHEV, since CCS2 is mandatory for DCFC otherwise. Skirting regulations is quite fitting for a PHEV, of course, as that is their raison d'etre.

The outgoing Nissan Leaf also has CHAdeMO and that's a full BEV.

I assume that's grandfathered in by being originally homologated in 2010.

The incoming Leaf has CCS2

the regulations mandate the CCS2 on the charging point, not on the car

> The fact that both J1772 & CCS2 are 100% universal in Europe is huge.

Funnily enough, not for the Leaf! Though it will be on the third generation that's coming out this year. The second-gen Leaf (a ten year old design, at this point) that the author of the article bought doesn't have it. The EU only mandates CCS2 in _charging points_; manufacturers can still sell cars without it, though I think Nissan may be the only remaining one who _does_.

> The EU only mandates CCS2 in _charging points_

Right but that’s the most important one. If you have a leaf it means you know you need an adapter always, so while it’s a bit of a hassle to waste space on that there’s no question whether you’ll get a compatible charging plug.

Euro Leaf owner here. No CCS is indeed tiresome, but not a deal breaker. Chademo is still widely available - I haven't bothered buying an adapter.

It depends on your location.

In my country chademo is rarely available, I know only two networks that provide it (and they are smaller ones).

I was more referring to J1772. We don't have NACS in Europe so if you have J1772 you can always charge anywhere.

This does mean Jeff's Leaf would be limited to AC without an adapter, which isn't perfectly ideal, but still better.

The form factor of NACS is the old Tesla plug from before the EU mandated Tesla switch to CCS2. So there is still some "NACS" in Europe, kind of, but it is mostly phased out I hear.

In North America it's attempt at a CCS plug was awful and ugly and so much worse than CCS2 and made J17772 almost look preferable. The marketplace winner (by almost a landslide) was Tesla's plug and NACS is CCS protocols over Tesla plugs. All of the car companies at this point are mostly agreed that NACS is the present and future in North America.

I have a 2nd gen 2019 Leaf in Europe and it came with Type 2 and another one I've never ever used which looks like J1772, both next to each other in the front of the car. No CCS2 here, indeed.

I was under the impression Type 2 was the only European standard.

Sorry for being pedantic, but since this thread is full of pedantry...

Europe actually doesn't use J1772 either. They use type 2 mennekes which has an additional AC conductor relative to US J1772 and CCS1.

Yeah, the US is in the slow market-based processes of standardizing towards NACS (which is CCS2 protocols over what used to be just Tesla's plug). It's not as standard as the EU has committed to, but with Tesla's charging network having a big first mover advantage in North America, it sometimes feels close.

> And that the rental company (AVIS) does not provide an AC adapter

Here in Norway, new EVs are no longer allowed to be sold with AC adapters, due to the potential fire hazard. At least that's the reason I got when I purchased my current EV.

Perhaps a EU thing, wouldn't surprise me.

This surprises me, given that almost every country has safer electric plugs than the US. Heat is a function of current and car chargers limit themselves to less than the current the plug is rated for. "Less than" equals 80% in the US.

It might be that the average euro is less aware of continuous draw limitations since there’s so much more power normally (compared to US residential power).

Could also be that for historical reasons you could have a house wired for 10 or 13 A and not be aware if it.

‘Course you can manage that by having the chargers limit themselves to 8A default (or even always), at 1800W that’s a very slow trickle but it’s something, and even if it does not fully cover your commute it spaces out carger stops or helps condition the battery on cold mornings.

Standard circuits are either 8A or 10A.

That's a little more power than a US 15A, or the same as a US 20A.

There is often 3 phase power to the home in Europe, however. That allows 415V phase to phase and also 3-phase synchronous motors.

> Standard circuits are either 8A or 10A.

Both type E and F plugs are rated for 16, and afaik that’s generally the rating in countries which use them.

I’m sure there are others but Switzerland is the only country I know of in Europe were plugs are limited to 10 and you have to hard-wire 16.

My mistake extrapolating from the Swiss :)

Most camping places in France/spain that do have cee or type e/f might limit to 6a/10a. Fyi. It’s mostly to limit power draw since you pay a flat fee.

Dunno if it's the case here, but the charger doesn't know if it's plugged into an extension cord that isn't rated for 3kW or whatever EU plugs put out

Concern over people using extension cords or splitters is a frequently cited reason, like in this news article[1].

[1]: https://www.ba.no/lader-du-elbilen-din-i-stikkontakt-det-bor...

IMO it should be illegal to sell an unfused extension-cord. That would solve like 95% of the issues that get blamed on extension cords.

This is the case in the UK, another win for our bulky plug socket

You can fit a fuse in the body of a NEMA 1-15 connector; outdoor Christmas lights, for example do this.

Norway is not in the EU.

As a Norwegian I am well aware of that. However, we're part of the European Economic Area[1], and as such import a lot of EU regulation and standards. Mostly because we're required per the EEA terms, but also because some of those make sense.

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

This seems like the kind of regulation that causes more harm than it saves in anyone's house actually burning down. I did a cursory search and didn't find any EU reports of a house fire caused by a L1 charger.

Sure you might burn a house down if you find one that has a plug which isn't correctly installed with loose connectors but the fire risk here wasn't the EV. Its the incorrectly installed wiring.

You don't tell people to get rid of their fridges because some people might have forgetten to plug theirs in and therefore they could get food poisoning from spoiled food inside.

It could also lead to people buying cheap, potentially defective chargers online instead of getting a more reliable manufacturer-included one.

I haven't been able to find concrete stories either, though these[1] statistics might be an indication. It shows there's a few EVs per year that lead to a building fire, though sadly nothing further about source. So could be something else like battery.

That said there's been a campaign for several years trying to get rid of sockets for high current or permanent installations. I recently replaced both an electric water heater and mini split AC, and in both cases the previous appliance had used a socket and that was not allowed anymore.

Could well be they're just being proactive.

[1]: https://brannstatistikk.no/search?searchId=6EB5433C-AC28-4F6...

I really like the AU tri-prong system for this - high-current plugs/sockets have a physically larger ground connector.

This means you can put a low-current plug (small ground pin) into a high-current socket (large ground slot), but not the other way around.

Only downside I've found so far is that you can't use a high-current-rated extension cord to plug a low-current appliance into a low-current socket.

We’re not talking about high current anything, we’re talking about standard mains electricity.

By “high” I mean plugs rated for 240v16A, which is higher than normal Australian sockets (usually 8A).

In most of Europe high current would be 32A, 16A is generally the standard (though I know Switzerland uses 10A and I believe UK plugs are rated for 13).

There has been plenty of local news about minor fires caused by EV charging in recent years. Usually neither the house nor the car burn to the ground, so won't make national news.

Typical cause seems to be old, worn-out installations or improperly done installations.

Perhaps 999/1000 outlets being able to function safely at rated longterm maximum draw (when there is no obviously visible damage) used to be an acceptable ratio. Doing anything close to maximum draw for long periods and unsupervised was less common.

With EV-charging becoming more common the old standard is no longer good enough. There is too little margin for error and too high likelihood of a situation where error leads to damage.

norway is in the EU? did i miss something?

Well you missed the earlier response[1] where I address this.

TL/DR: no but kinda yes

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45143835

Norway is not in the EU but like Switzerland they copy a lot of sensible legislation.

It is a Norway thing, I read it some time ago that they forbid chargin using AC adapters.

Tesla on the other hand doesn't include AC adapter in newly sold cars (since about a year).

Might be - also, in the UK at least where most houses are on a TN-C-S electric supply (earth and neutral are the same conductor) if there's a break on the neutral and you don't have an earthing rod (PEN fault) the car can be at high voltage compared to true earth, and you can get a lethal shock if you touch it. There are roughly 500 of these faults a year across the UK.

Level 2 chargers here either need PEN fault protection built in, or you need a correctly sized earthing rod installed.

I can confirm that, here in Greece, everything is CCS2. There are also CHAdeMO ports here and there, but I don't know what car uses those.

However, I haven't seen a station that takes card yet (or they don't advertise it). They all have their own app, which is inconvenient and a hassle.

> but I don't know what car uses those

It is exactly this kind of Nissan Leaf. Japanese older generation cars. Enough around to still be available, but I think it is slowly disappearing. After that only 6kW (32A/single phase) charging will be available for these cars.

There are fast charging adapters from CCS2 (and CCS1) to CHAdeMO:

https://www.electway-charger.com/CCS2_to_CHAdeMO_adapter.htm...

Quite pricey though. That one is $1000 on Alibaba.

The problem is the CCS and CHAdeMO is different protocols so an adapter has to be an active adapter.

With CCS to CHAdeMO you need something to power the active electronics in the adapter. I've heard of some that do this by having a cable and plug on the adapter that plug into the car's 12 V port. I've heard of others that have a battery in the adapter.

Compare to adapters between NACS and CCS. NACS and CCS do use the same protocol. They just have a different pinout. The adapters are passive and so can be a lot cheaper.

I also rented a Jeep Avenger EV a few weeks back in the UK, several smaller, out of the way vendors still required their specific App and where contactless payments were an option it more expensive at around 80 to 90 pence per KWH. A week into the hire I found I could use my Tesla app and the supercharger network to charge my rental and the max there is only 51 pence per KWH and the supercharger network is expansive just works. An EV is a good option for the UK if you prefer automatics or EV's I will certainly hire one again.

I understand how the US and EU have different electrical outlets, voltages and frequencies. The systems developed independently, standardized on compatible versions locally, and standardizing globally would be very expensive and almost impossible to do safely.

I don't understand how North America and Europe settled on different EV charging plugs.

I don't know how it is in the US but there is no one standard charging port here in Europe.

CCS2 is mandatory in europe

I don't drive a RV, I just charge my campers batteries sometimes. I have 3 different connector cables from the common connectors I found in Switzerland, France and Italy only.

Are you talking about shore power? Because that has nothing to do with EV charging.

No.

Then what are you talking about?

We are talking about electric vehicle charging, as in, cars that have electric motors and are powered by a battery.

In my area according to Google maps I see J1772, CCS1, CCS2, Typ 2, CHAdeMO, NACS next to schuko (landline) (in Austria right now).

As said not all stations provide all the standards, not every station has CCS2, hence why I carry multiple cable adapters. That's all I know really. As said I don't drive an electric car.

I think you confused everyone by saying RV instead of EV previously.

Google Maps is misleading, as two of those are not approved in Europe, and two others are synonyms.

It's still unclear what you are talking about. Either way, the point still stands, all legal charging station in the EU have CCS cables.

Three-phase power is ubiquitous in Europe, my oven and stove are connected to it yet this is a small apartment. The slightly larger plug (to fit the extra pins) and extra cables are worthwhile for the higher power and balanced consumption.

CCS1/2 (DC Fast charging) and J1772 (AC "Slow" charging) share a port on most cars. That is, the CCS plug uses the entire plug and the J1772 part uses just the upper portion of the plug.

The AC "slow" charging in the US only needs to support two-phase power (residential power is two phase) and the EU (and others?) generally need to support three-phase power.

NACS is just better in North America (versus CCS1) because it's smaller and much easier to physically handle, but the AC "slow" charging pinning only supports two phase power.

It's funny he mentions Buc-ees, as on the last couple of road trips with my non-Tesla EV buc-ees was a common charging stop where it was just pull up, plug in, and tap my credit card.

In fact, I haven't had to use an app for a DCFC in several years. They either work with plug and charge or take payment directly on the dispenser.

It's not a lack of standards, it was an early proliferation of standards.

Chademo is still standard in Japan.

Also, given his comparison to the ease of the old way, in Europe at least it's fairly standard to know someone who has filled their hire car with diesel (or not diesel) by mistake. They have warning stickers on the filler flap because it happens so often.

Meanwhile knowing someone who uses the inexplicably more expensive premium fuel option also offered is maybe rarer.

Maybe EV-owning car reviewers should counter the FUD by pretending to be confused by these, always using the most expensive one in price comparisons and then breaking the car completely by using the wrong one during their test drive, like the many propaganda pieces put out about EVs.

A big difference is that if you go to a gas station you’ll have both (and possibly more). At least in Europe. So while you need to fill with the right fuel unless the pump is broken or the tanks are empty the fuel you need will be available.

In the US, if you roll up to a random charging station you may or may not find a plug matching your car’s port.

I think the common mistake they’re alluding to is Europe and north America having conflicting standards for colour-coding the pumps. So here green is unleaded and black is diesel, which can catch American tourists unaware. (Especially so with language barriers, “sans plomb” in French is not intuitively petrol/gas/benzo)

As someone who has gone on many EV road trips over the years, I've never had an issue of rolling into a random charging station and not having the right kind of plug. All I've had to do is avoid Tesla stations, all the other brands have worked with my car. And now that I got a Tesla DC adapter that I keep in my trunk, I can do fast charging at a decent chunk of the Tesla stations.

NACS should help change that eventually (hopefully on the sooner side of eventually), as it wins the marketplace and chargers get slowly updated.

You can’t easily/accidentally fill a petrol car with diesel. The diesel nozzle is too wide. Other way around is easier. But this is the drawback of ancient standards grandfathered in over a century. EVs don’t have this legacy to carry around.

In many countries charging a car in a wallplug is a fire hazard (they are not rated for the heat).

This doesn't make sense. Wall plugs (like circuit breakers) are designed for a particular max amperage draw. If I have a 10A 120V circuit and wall plug, I can't charge my car at 8A?

I have wall ovens that connect via a 50A circuit. Do I need to worry about fire hazards when I bake something for hours and hours?

Not an electrician, consult a real one for any actual electrical work or questions.

It's complicated. Heat builds up over time. So for example your standard 15 amp breaker on a 14 gauge wire in the US is rated for 15 amps of intermittent use, but if you draw that continuously without letting the heat dissipate it becomes a fire hazard. IIRC circuits are generally rated for ~80% of their max load for continuous use, so that 15 amp circuit is considered good for 12 continuous. Or in your 10 amp example 8 should be ok.

Your oven and circuit should be sized such that your long cooks aren't a concern, if you look at it's label you'll probably find it has a max draw of well below 50amps, but if you have actual doubts ask a professional.

Also not an electrician.

A concern for high current outlets in the US, such as NEMA 14-50, is that they weren't necessarily designed for a large number of plug/unplug cycles. Typically you'd plug your stove in and leave it there for years to decades.

If you use the same 14-50 outlet for car charging, which is not uncommon, the contacts can lose their grip over time. End users may want to take their mobile EVSE with them and incur cycles on the outlet. Properly installed but worn 14-50s have been known to melt or even catch fire under these conditions.

End users should prefer to have their EVSE(s) hardwired or installed with a higher grade outlet like Hubbell or Bryant.

Having charged 2 EVs on wall sockets for years, I've not seen them go over 12 amps, so that checks out.

One of those was a leaf

i'm always surprised how people here downvote correct information. This is 100% correct because heat in electrical wiring is a function of power (current) and time. The vast majority of electrical devices in a typical home use under 80% of their rated power. The few that do use their full power, like a resistive heater, often do not run continuously.

In contrast, it is completely normal to charge an EV at a socket's maximum power for over ten hours straight. This time component is why charging EVs from a regular AC outlet can be a fire risk.

https://aminacharging.com/articles/can-i-charge-my-car-in-a-...

That still didn't explain anything. Surely the car could limit itself to 80% of standard socket rated output for continuous draw, like they do in other countries. Are Norwegian outlets commonly installed so far below spec that that will cause them to catch fire? What was the impetus for this regulation?

I don’t know exactly for Norway as that was the best English article I could find. A standard danish outlet (they are crap) is 16A but is not rated for more than 6A if the load is continuous for more than 2 hours.

Then use a 6A charger? Assuming it's 2x the voltage of the US that's the same power as a 12A charger would be in the US, and I get plenty of charging at 16A (which is the maximum continuous load on a 20A circuit)

FWIW, oven/range circuits are notoriously overspecified.

Code in the US is 220V/50A. Your wall oven will get the same, despite having a much lower max draw than the usual oven/cooktop combination.

50A (upgraded from 30A several years ago) is specified for having the oven plus all cooktop elements ON. Maximum instantaneous draw will be below 50A. There's also the standard 20% headroom allotment, and some additional safety margin to account for the heat generated by all of the above being ON (or high duty cycle) for an extended period.

Source?

https://aminacharging.com/articles/can-i-charge-my-car-in-a-...

> And since your car needs so much power stored in its battery to drive, it will probably pull more power than any other electrical appliance in your home.

Probably? No, it pulls less than my dryer which runs at 240V15A I think but also just the same as my 1500W space heater. You can totally control how much power the charger should draw.

> With that much power, there’s a risk of overheating and fire. Unlike a dedicated EV charger, a socket is simply not equipped to handle the amount of electricity needed to charge a car battery.

Wrong assumption leads to wrong conclusion. Any charger you can physically plug in will work in a house that's wired up to standard.

Your dryer will load the socket for far less time than a car charger and will probably not use 15A for the entire drying cycle.

It’s the long charge time that leads to heat buildup, not the max amp.

Where I am from standard outlets can deliver 16A but are not rated for more than 6A if the load is longer than 2 hours.

Here it's 15A and the charger itself actually tops out at 12A as is common. Perhaps that being common is how to avoid fires. I'm actually not sure now if that's a law or just best practice here.

I have a dryer outlet that caught fire charging our little i3. I'm not sure why GP said "some countries" -- I'm in the US. The heat warped the plastic just enough to bridge one leg of the power socket to ground. It got pretty melty before the house breaker stopped things.

The torched outlet was installed specifically to charge prior homeowner's EV and was only 3 years old.

I moved to an EV-rated 50A outlet which can handle the duty cycle. We have charged two EVs off of it and so far so good. It has a cute little green logo on it and costs 5x as much as a typical NEMA plug. :) Weighs about 5x as much too and grips the grizzl-e plug very tightly and with much larger contact areas.

I'm a believer.

What was the specific connector for that "dryer outlet"? Was it an L6-30 30A receptacle that was constantly getting nearly 30A of load, or a cheaply made 14-50 outlet?

The youtube channel 'State of Charge' has a number of videos talking about cheap connectors and/or lower spec connectors catching fire. Happens even on setups where people had a dedicated level 2 ev charger outlet (NEMA 14-50 , aka dryer outlet) but the installer used a connector not rated for enough current. See https://youtu.be/fzgxKChqjtc to start.

One needs to do one or possibly a combination of:

- Set the pin setting on a home charger for a lower current output. Theres also portable chargers with programmable current limiting, which I find more flexible.

- Replace with a better outlet/wiring setup. Many advocate for a hardwired setup over using an outlet.

> NEMA 14-50 , aka dryer outlet

The reason why I was asking for the outlet is precisely because "dryer outlet" can mean a lot of different things. Dryers in the US usually don't even come with cords out of the box because people may have a few different plugs. Does it have a neutral? Is it 30A or 50A? All possibilities for a "dryer outlet".