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Transportation Power

Second-Largest US EV Fast-Charging Network Will Also Add Tesla Connectors (apnews.com) 121

Posted by EditorDavid from the charging-ahead dept.
Earlier this week the Society of Automotive Engineers, a U.S.-based standards organization, announced plans to support Tesla's EV "North American Charging Standard" (or NCAS). The Verge reported Tuesday that "With SAE supporting NACS, larger EV charging company holdouts like the Volkswagen-owned Electrify America may have an easier time making the jump."

And two days later, they did. The Associated Press reports: The second-largest electric vehicle fast-charging network in the U.S. says it will add Tesla's connector to its charging stations, another step toward adopting Tesla's plug as the industry standard. Electrify America, with 800 direct-current fast-charging stations and more than 3,600 plugs nationwide, said Thursday it will work to add Tesla's connector to existing and future chargers by 2025.

The Volkswagen subsidiary, formed as part of the settlement to the company's diesel emissions-cheating scandal, is second only to Tesla in number of fast-charging plugs in the U.S. "We look forward to continuing to support industrywide standards that increase vehicle interoperability and streamline public charging," Electrify America CEO Robert Barrosa said in a statement. The company also will keep the Combined Charging System, or CCS, connector at its stations. At present most electric vehicle models in the U.S. use the CCS connector.

But Ford, General Motors, Rivian and Volvo have said they would join Tesla's large Supercharger network and adopt its North American Charging Standard connector in new versions of their electric vehicles. Others such as Stellantis and Hyundai are considering joining Tesla's network. Also, ChargePoint, which has the most charging stations of any U.S. network, said it will start offering Tesla connectors for use by charging site hosts later this year... Others, such as Blink Charging also have announced plans to add the Tesla connector.
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Second-Largest US EV Fast-Charging Network Will Also Add Tesla Connectors More

Second-Largest US EV Fast-Charging Network Will Also Add Tesla Connectors

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  • And never made much sense, anyway.

    • Re:Resistance is futile (Score:4, Funny)

      by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Sunday July 02, 2023 @04:08AM (#63650444)

      Not really, it interferes with current events. #electrical-joke

      [Sorry, got a bit too amped up.]

      • Re:Resistance is futile (Score:5, Funny)

        by echo123 ( 1266692 ) on Sunday July 02, 2023 @05:10AM (#63650498)
        That reminds me of when I visited a friend on the eighth floor of her old government office building in Washington. There were hundreds of pigeons sitting on the ledge along the building outside the windows, making noise and pooping, two inches deep in some places. They were really annoying. I asked her if they'd tried getting rid of them. She said, "See those wires along the ledge? They are carrying 1000 volts. We thought that would get rid of them, but it didn't phase them a bit." I told her "I'm not surprised. That's AC current, and these are DC pigeons."
      • In New Orleans there lived a man named Charlie. Ever since Charlie was a young boy he wanted to grow up to be a street car conductor. When he finally became old enough, he applied for the job and he got it. Now Charlie was the friendliest street conductor that the city has ever seen. Not only did he never complain about his job, but also he greeted everyone who boarded his street car and treated them like family. Everything in his life was perfect for Charlie until one day he decided to operate the street c

    • Re:Resistance is futile (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Sunday July 02, 2023 @05:18AM (#63650510) Journal
      In this case it kind of does. The rest of the world seems to have settled on CCS (even Tesla has, in Europe at least). Tesla chargers operate at 480V and up to 250kW, CCS can go up to 1000V and 400kW. There's already several cars running on 800V batteries, and chargers are being rolled out as well (FastNed is replacing chargers at many of their locations with 350kW ones). By adopting the Tesla plug, the USA might end up locking itself into an obsolete standard.

      • Re:Resistance is futile (Score:5, Informative)

        by Smidge204 ( 605297 ) on Sunday July 02, 2023 @05:43AM (#63650536) Journal

        > (even Tesla has, in Europe at least)

        The EU created a law forcing everyone to use CCS. This is the ONLY reason Tesla uses it, and consequently the only reason Tesla vehicles and chargers made after 2019 support CCS at all (including those sold in North America). Make no mistake about it, Tesla has not done this willingly.

        > Tesla chargers operate at 480V and up to 250kW

        On paper they're only rated for 200KW peak, 100KW continuous.

        > By adopting the Tesla plug, the USA might end up locking itself into an obsolete standard.

        The plug is just the plug, and to their credit there is a 1000V rated version of it. The contacts they currently use are only rated for 200A (400A peak) so, again on paper, that's 400KW peak. Tesla skirts this rating by overloading it and monitoring the temperature, throttling power to keep the connector from melting. It's unclear to me how underwriters and safety code enforcement feels about this now that third party manufacturers get involved.

        People complain about the CCS connector and cable being bulky, but it's like that mostly because it's compliant with its ratings and not being deliberately overloaded. If third party manufacturers are made to comply with ratings, then either the 'elegance' of the Tesla cable goes away or charging power will be limited. We'll have to see how it goes.
        =Smidge=

        • To be fair, the elegance of the NACS connector is not due to them skimping on the lower amps rating, it's just a better design. The same terminals are used for both AC and DC, whereas CCS is basically just a Mennekes AC connector with a separate DC connector bolted on (when using a home AC charger, you'll plug a Mennekes connector into half the charge port). CCS does allow for 3 phase charging though.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dfghjk ( 711126 )

            "To be fair, the elegance of the NACS connector is not due to them skimping on the lower amps rating, it's just a better design."

            It's not, it's just a less capable and smaller design, and skimping on the contacts and cable sizes was not done for elegance, it was done for cost savings.

            "The same terminals are used for both AC and DC, whereas CCS is basically just a Mennekes AC connector with a separate DC connector bolted on"

            And this was not done because they wanted inelegance or were bad engineers, it was do

            • To be fair, the Tesla connector was rolled out >2 years before the first CCS spec was ratified. It was CharIN that introduced the incompatible connector.

            • And this was not done because they wanted inelegance or were bad engineers, it was done so that CCS targets can use J1772 chargers as well. This is the feature that Tesla does not have because Tesla didn't have a vested interest in having its customers to use 3rd party charging infrastructure. Tesla made an incompatible connector to exclude the capability of its customers to have options. You call that "elegant". Now we are supposed to institutionalize this bullshit by making an industry standard? Certainly

              • Tesla made an incompatible connector to exclude the capability of its customers to have options.

                That makes no sense. First, it makes no sense that Tesla would want their customers have fewer options. And Tesla made their connector at a time when the charging station infrastructure in the US was nearly non-existent, so for most of the US there didn't even exist that "capability" to be excluded.

                In any case, Tesla provided an adaptor free with each car sold to use the other type of charger if you wanted. If their goal was to exclude the capability to use other chargers, that made no sense.

                More like, they

              • Re: (Score:3)

                by dgatwood ( 11270 )

                While I consider the NACS connector an improvement over the Yakazi connector, one significant flaw both have is a lack of support for three-phase AC power, limiting their usefulness for commercial fleets that have access to high-capacity 3480VAC or 3600VAC power.

                I keep hearing this, but it makes little sense to me. If you have access to three-phase power, you can use HVDC charging.

                Realistically, IMO, there is no real need for three-phase AC input to an electric vehicle. Consumers really don't need such fast charging at home, where their cars will sit for hours at a time, and commercial fleets that need faster charging would probably be better served by HVDC chargers.

                Heck, Tesla stopped even offering an option for high-current chargers beyond 48A a few years back,

                • Realistically, IMO, there is no real need for three-phase AC input to an electric vehicle.

                  It's good for public chargers in the city. 22 kW AC chargers are cheaper to build and faster to deploy than DC chargers. They put decent kilowatt hours in your battery when the car's there for a couple of hours.

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by dgatwood ( 11270 )

                    Realistically, IMO, there is no real need for three-phase AC input to an electric vehicle.

                    It's good for public chargers in the city. 22 kW AC chargers are cheaper to build and faster to deploy than DC chargers. They put decent kilowatt hours in your battery when the car's there for a couple of hours.

                    In the countries where such charging stations exist, Tesla uses CCS anyway, and before that, they used a Type 2 DC plug for that reason. There's not a strong reason for that in North America, because those chargers don't exist. So I'll give you backwards compatibility as a reason, but only just barely, and a much smaller plug without mechanical compatibility would still have been more reasonable.

                    When you ignore backwards compatibility, though, the difference in cost between an AC charger and a DC charger

                    • That's a lot of words to say you were wrong. You don't need to put in all that effort to save face with me.

                      the difference in cost between an AC charger and a DC charger shouldn't be *that* huge — likely single-digit thousands of dollars per station

                      DC chargers are expensive because of the grid infrastructure they need. Battery integrated DC chargers are cheap from the infrastructure point of view because you can use existing grid connections without needing to upgrade it, but the units themselves are expensive because you're paying for the battery.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

                      That's a lot of words to say you were wrong. You don't need to put in all that effort to save face with me.

                      Oh, no. You're still very close to completely wrong here. Three-phase in-vehicle AC support is still an expensive solution (for consumers) in search of a problem, and that was doubly true back when the CCS standard was developed. If they had thrown away the existing connector design and built a newer, larger five-pin connector from scratch way back then, back when three-phase AC charging stations were almost nonexistent, the AC chargers would have been quickly replaced with 22 kW DC combo chargers (or ev

                    • Three-phase in-vehicle AC support is still an expensive solution (for consumers)

                      It isn't. The Renault Zoe is a small and cheap EV which supports AC charging at 22 kW. Everything you're premising your theories on is wrong.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

                      Three-phase in-vehicle AC support is still an expensive solution (for consumers)

                      It isn't. The Renault Zoe is a small and cheap EV which supports AC charging at 22 kW. Everything you're premising your theories on is wrong.

                      Logic fail. Saying that a feature is expensive doesn't necessarily make the car expensive — just more expensive than it would be without the feature. The Renault Zoe with a single-phase-only charger would probably be around 28,000 Euros instead of 30,000, if the cost difference between U.S. and European Tesla Model 3 variants is any indication (but that's kind of a guess, because there are also likely some labor cost differences, and Tesla's desire to hit an even number of tens of thousands of price

                    • And yet the Zoe is cheaper than any of Tesla's offerings. It doesn't matter how many fictions you invent. Your theorizing is contradicted by the practical realities in the field.

                      Learn to accept reality.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by _merlin ( 160982 )

            Why did CCS go with these frankenconnectors, anyway? Why didn't they just have a separate socket on the car for DC charging? It never uses the AC and DC pins at the same time anyway. Duplicating the auxiliary pins for communication in two connectors is surely more practical than requiring the bulk of the unused AC portion of the connector on DC chargers.

            • A textbook example of design by committee.
              combined with sunken cost bias, and protectionism.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by _merlin ( 160982 )

                It still makes no sense. The Chinese standard [wikipedia.org] was also designed by a committee, and it uses a GB/T 20234.2 connector for AC, and a separate GB/T 20234.3 or newer ChaoJi connector for DC (adapters between the two DC connectors are available).

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dfghjk ( 711126 )

          "Make no mistake about it, Tesla has not done this willingly."

          And yet the EU no longer has to deal with the shenanigans that the US has now. The US should have mandated CCS as well.

          "People complain about the CCS connector and cable being bulky, but it's like that mostly because it's compliant with its ratings and not being deliberately overloaded. If third party manufacturers are made to comply with ratings, then either the 'elegance' of the Tesla cable goes away or charging power will be limited. We'll ha

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by shmlco ( 594907 )

            I would support a standard that used more materials, more expensive copper, is more difficult to manage (especially in the cold) and dependent on a cheap plastic clip that, should you drop the charging cable, is easily breakable?

            From my perspective, the CCS "standard" is what happens when you get a bunch of engineers in a room that can't agree on anything, so they added everything.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dgatwood ( 11270 )

            "Make no mistake about it, Tesla has not done this willingly."

            And yet the EU no longer has to deal with the shenanigans that the US has now. The US should have mandated CCS as well.

            I disagree. CCS is unnecessarily huge because of its legacy baggage. You can so easily hide the charge port for NACS, whereas CCS will pretty much always be stuck behind a giant gas-tank-sized door. I mean yes, Tesla sort of worked around the huge connector with their flip-up LED light panel approach in Europe, but I bet that's going to be fun when the wires start breaking in about ten years. Clever, yes, but advisable? Not unless you're forced to use an inferior connector by a government deciding to s

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by stooo ( 2202012 )

            >> The US should have mandated CCS as well
            Nope.
            EU was >70% CCS2, so mandating CCS2 made sense.
            US is >70% NACS, so mandating CCS2 makes sense now.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          To be fair, CCS also allows for higher power than the cable can sustain if it is monitored for overheating.

          A lot of the new 400kW chargers deployed in Europe work that way. Previously they were using water cooled cables, but those are more expensive and the vibration can damage paintwork. So for consumer vehicles that can't sustain 400kW anyway, they just allow them to deliver peak power until the temperature reaches some threshold and they back off.

          It's going to be interesting to see if this has any implic

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by shmlco ( 594907 )

            "They also don't have the really solid locking mechanism that ensures excellent contact "

            That was the cheap plastic latch I referred to earlier... Solid isn't what comes to mind when you handle it.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by _merlin ( 160982 )

          The EU created a law forcing everyone to use CCS.

          The EU made a law requiring all charging stations to provide CCS. Thereâ(TM)s nothing to prevent them providing other charging systems alongside that. It don't think there's even a law requiring cars to support CCS charging.

        • >>> The contacts they currently use are only rated for 200A (400A peak)
          So what purpose does the current rating on a connector serve? It's to keep it from getting so hot that things around it start catching on fire, or (pushed to the extreme) that it starts to melt. How can you use a connector for higher power? Keep it cool enough that none of the bad things happen, monitor it to make sure that you're coolant supply hasn't failed, and shut it down if anything looks out of the ordinary. Perfectly

      • The latest revision (published in 2022) of the CCS plug and inlet standards support up to 1,500 volts and 800 amps for DC charging [wikipedia.org]. Some charging networks are already using 400 kW CCS chargers [wikipedia.org].

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          I worry that this is going to hold the US back. Super high power chargers are important for large commercial vehicles, for example. Tesla appears to be stuck at just 250kW peak and about 100kW sustained, with years of promises to upgrade having not turned into anything actually deployed.

          It seems like it would have been better for everyone to just say all vehicles need to have CCS2 from now on. Chargers can be dual-head, like we already have in Europe for combined CCS/CHAdeMO or CCS/Tesla. We even have tripl

          • Large commercial vehicles use a different standard than cars: MCS.

            Tesla has more >150kW chargers deployed than the rest of the industry right now. There are higher power CCS chargers out there, but relatively few. Tesla v4 chargers are 500V or 1000V with 615A. Max is 307kw for 500V and 615kw for 1000V. There are a few pilot sites, but these will be the replacement for the v3. Also, Tesla will not be the only supplies of NACS charging â" you still have EA.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              Not in Europe. There is something very wrong with the roll out of chargers in the US.

            • Large commercial vehicles use a different standard than cars: MCS.

              MCS [www.charin.global] is not deployed yet. In the meantime large commercial vehicles use CCS. Here's a real world example [youtube.com] of a Volvo FM charging on an Ionity charger.

      • It's not like we haven't seen charger shenanigans before with Apple and Samsung. It's a tried and true moneymaker.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by chill ( 34294 )

        This isn't "insightful", it is incorrect. The electrical capabilities of NACS and CCS (J1772-2009 Combo) are not significantly different. The real difference is the EU legally mandated the use of CCS2, with Japan (CHAdeMO) and China not committing and the US encouraging CCS, but letting the market sort it out. Suck it up and buy an adapter if it bothers you that much.

        Tesla's NACS spec is here [thron.com] in PDF form.

        Page 26 gives us these two specifications:

        6.1 Voltage Rating - The North American Charging Standard exists in both a 500V rated configuration and a 1,000V rated configuration. The 1,000V version is mechanically backwards compatible (i.e. 500V inlets can mate with 1,000V connectors and 500V connectors can mate with 1,000V inlets).

        6.2 Current Rating - The North American Charging Standard shall specify no maximum current rating. The maximum current rating of the inlet or connector shall be determined by the manufacturer, provided that the temperature limits defined in section 8 are maintained.

        Tesla has successfully operated the North American Charging Standard above 900A continuously with a non-liquid cooled vehicle inlet.

        • > Tesla's NACS spec is here in PDF form.

          And here's the specs for the electrical contacts the connector actually uses [thron.com] from the same source.

          200A continuous, 400A peak.

          Saying NACS doesn't limit charging current is a bit of a joke; NACS only covers the physical form of the connector, which is made of plastic and therefore (hopefully) doesn't conduct electricity. NACS doesn't limit charging current because NACS doesn't cover charging current at all. Pure marketing wank. But the electrical contacts? 200A rated

      • I was kinda thinking that this was getting settled, great. I'm all for it coalescing. Then to hear that were getting VHS? I want my money back.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mspohr ( 589790 )

        Europe uses CCS2. The US CCS1. Different connectors and protocols.
        CCS1 is a committee brain damaged design.
        CCS2 is somewhat better but still much bulkier and more complicated than NACS.
        Good to see NACS being widely adopted in the US.

      • Re:Resistance is futile (Score:4)

        by FrankSchwab ( 675585 ) on Sunday July 02, 2023 @02:10PM (#63651302) Journal

        And V4 superchargers are expected to support up to 1000V at 1000A - a good, solid MegaWatt. And with all the pedestals and high-voltage AC electric connections already in place, upgrading a V3 supercharger installation of say 8 chargers is probably an afternoon's worth of work.

        What's that again about an obsolete standard?

        And, by the way, there is no charging standard "CCS" - there's CCS1 in North America, and CCS2 in Europe, and the two are incompatible. So it's a bit disingenuous to decry North America using a different standard than Europe, because that was going to happen in the CCSx future anyway. It's just that we'll get the sexy, slim, easy-to-use connector and Europe is gonna be stuck with the CCS2 monstrosity because of early standardization (and why didn't Europe settle on the existing ChaDeMo conector anyway?).

      • By adopting the Tesla plug, the USA might end up locking itself into an obsolete standard.

        Uhh... you are familiar with how the US works, right?

      • The rest of the world has not settled on CCS. Japan just worked with china to merge ChADEMO and gb/t. In addition, tesla EVs in China have 2 connections: GB/T and NACS. So most of Asia is based on gb/t and NACS. India, like all nations outside of the west and China, have not decided. If India ends up with NACS, then more than 2/3 of the planet population will be on NACS.

    • It actually makes a lot of sense when you realize what Teslsa did to "open" the charging standard in 2014 was really incomplete and laced with enough uncertainty and poinon pills essentially that no company with a general counsel was going to let themselves use it ever.

      From MotorTrend:

      Back in 2014, all current and future patents that Tesla relied on for building their electric vehicles were opened up to the world. The idea was to help manufacturers accelerate their entry into the EV market. The catch, howev

    • Not to mention the fact wielding and connecting the Tesla NACS plug and connector is far easier than using CCS 1 or CCS 2 with its unwieldy, complex connector. Event the CHAdeMo 3.0 (ChaoJi) connector is not as easy to use as NACS.

      • How about resolving the fire risk on the car batteries so greater adoption can be done safer. Newer batteries r reducing risk. Size also matters so larger range rigs probably should b considered later, prioritize smaller vehicles devices as one option to lower fire risk at least burn shorter. Repair ability limits also push up insurance minor damage can result in large costs.

    • Resistance is futile
      It brings unnecessary losses in the charging cable :)
      Each milliohm is important.

  • "The tighter you grip, Apple Darth, the more will slip through your fingers."

    • The USB connector is already a standard with wide acceptance. ... I ... In your own words can you describe what you think is being discussed here?

      • The USB connector is already a standard with wide acceptance. ... I ... In your own words can you describe what you think is being discussed here?

        I don't think that the USB supports the 150 kW charging that I need, but yes, it sure would be impressive if electric car chargers could have standardized on USB.

        and, as a bonus, it would charge my phone in under a second (as long as the phone didn't melt).

        :)

  • It's not about the forest, it's about the wood. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ElizabethGreene ( 1185405 ) on Sunday July 02, 2023 @10:18AM (#63650920)

    The arguments about the merits or shortcomings of different EV connectors are irrelevant. It's a plug, a glorified extension cord. What really matters is the power that flows through it.

    Ford looked at the state of EV charging and said "Well damn, Tesla has this huge Supercharger Network that's bigger than any other charging network and it covers all the major EV corridors and hotspots in the US. Why shouldn't we fix it so our customers can use that?" The other-other EV manufacturers couldn't let Ford have that competitive advantage so they jumped on it too. VW and Nissan held out a smidge longer, but they don't want to be the one that has to have an adapter so they'll roll over too.

    The technical limitations or merits of the connector don't matter as long as they get the job done. Don't believe me? Can you tell me about the nozzle system on the last gas pump you used? Is the flow restricted by the breakaway? Does it induce turbulence at the overfill prevention vent? What's its maximum delivery rate? I don't care. It pumps gas at a reasonable rate and doesn't explode. That's what matters.

    • It pumps gas at a reasonable rate

      Except the standard being discussed here doesn't pump at a reasonable rate and there are faster rated systems in existence. In trying to make your point you directly pointed out the most glaring flaw here. The USA is behind, relying on Tesla to implement what is unfortunately last year's technology, largely because too many small companies were too incompetent to roll out CCS properly, and as such we are now developing a "standard" at a time when there is still very real and strong competition and technolog

      • Except the standard being discussed here doesn't pump at a reasonable rate and there are faster rated systems in existence.

        Except the "Faster rated systems" can't operate at full speed with existing cars... As the fastest rated chargers outside of the occasional unicorn, Tesla Superchargers almost by definition have to be a "reasonable rate".

        Also, most chargers in Europe, other than Tesla superchargers, charge even slower, even if their plug could theoretically ship more power.

        Hell, for that matter:

        https://www.iea.org/reports/gl... [iea.org]

        The USA is ahead of Europe as a whole, in kW of charger capacity per EV. We're a bit behind in t

        • Except the "Faster rated systems" can't operate at full speed with existing cars...

          Imagine if the interstate was built in a way that it couldn't support vehicles at 70mph simply because existing cars weren't that fast back then.

          Infrastructure should *NEVER* be designed for what is existing. EVER. That's a way of setting up really really shit infrastructure.

          • Except that we did have 70-100mph cars back when the interstate was built? I wouldn't call them safe even for the time, but we had them.

        • Also, most chargers in Europe, other than Tesla superchargers, charge even slower

          No. Plenty of 350 kW chargers exist in Europe (e.g. Ionity) and charging networks are deploying 400 kW chargers.

          Tesla's newer chargers achieve a maximum of 250 kW, but there are still many V2 Tesla chargers which are only 150 kW.

          • You have something of a point, but there's also needless overkill - 250kW is enough for ~200 miles in 15 minutes.

            And a lot of Tesla's chargers are still 150kW because Tesla has been following the strategy of leaving the old chargers alone and just installing more.

            400kW sounds like it'd be better for semis.

            • Ah, so now slow chargers are a virtue. It's interesting how you compromise your rationality for something as banal as brand loyalty. You can't even remain consistent between two comments.

              • And now you're redefining "slow". While it is true that charging is something of a spectrum, I'd argue that the 11kW max for AC charging is slow charging, and anything 25kW DC and up is fast charging. 150kW and 250kW might not be the fastest chargers out there, but they can still fill up most EVs over a meal break, and still put a substantial number of miles on over a bathroom visit.

                The limits of the batteries actually slow things down more, reducing the returns for ever bigger chargers. The upcoming wav

        • The USA is ahead of Europe as a whole, in kW of charger capacity per EV.

          Your figures are old. The latest figures from IEA [iea.org] show Europe ahead of the United States in both EVs per charge point (Europe is lower) and kW per EV (Europe is higher).

    • That's nobodies fault but Tesla's though. If they were concerned about charging compliance they either would have jumped onboard CCS in NA as soon as fasible or actually released their standard free and clear where other companies would hop on board.

      Instead this is like a car company using a square gas nozzle for a decade.

    • The arguments about the merits or shortcomings of different EV connectors are irrelevant. It's a plug, a glorified extension cord. What really matters is the power that flows through it.

      While a good concern, not every wire is capable of 200 amps for a reason. I'd also argue that cost, durability, and ease of use get a say.

      That said, looking at all the specifications, NACS and CCS seem to be neck and neck. CCS is capable of shipping 3 phase, but that requires that the car be able to handle 3 phase to help with charging. On paper, NACS is currently capable of higher voltage and amperage, but again, that's on paper and requires the car be able to handle it.

      Power capability is effectively t

    • Gas nozzles are all the same. Plug and charging system is superior on NACS vs others. Heck, it is the only true plugâ(TM)nâ(TM)play system going.
  • Tesla is willing to lose money in the supercharger network so that it can sell EV. The economics of supercharging network is brutal.

    Gasoline market in USA is about half a trillion dollars. [1] .

    Cost per mile of EV is 25% of gasoline. [2]

    Total EV revenue per year when 100% of the cars are electric: 125 billion/year.

    90% of the EV miles come from overnight charging. Revenue in supercharging network: 12.5 billion a year

    On the road people will pay premium over home charging. So make it 25 billion /year.

    • Cost of parking garage is 25,000$ per space[1]. In a dense urban jungle without parking, it can probably fetch a rent of 400$ a month. Or 4,800$ per year. Nearly 20% revenue, not counting cost of the lot. The gas station code calls for 12,000 sqft minimum [2]. 180 sqft per space, 66 spaces, 33 usable spaces. Five stories, 165 spaces, 4.5 million cost for structure. Doable. Throw in overnight charging revenue to it. Very good model. I see the gas station owners in dense urban jungles ditching the gas sales

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by shmlco ( 594907 )

        As long as people keep buying oversized monstrosities like F-150s, Silverados, RAMs, Yukons, and the like I don't think gas stations have much to worry about for awhile.

        What they lose in the number of vehicles they make up in the amount of fuel each vehicle needs.

      • Within 5-10 years, EV stations will have more than Gas stations. However, it is going to take time before EVs really make a dent fossil fuel sales. As such, gas stations will continue to SLOWLY decrease until 10-15 years from now when their numbers will quickly decrease.
    • First, tesla is charging .40/kWh for our charge, but with near 24x7 uptime and decent placement for where needed. In addition, tesla is building out faster than all other charge systems. Tesla is not losing a penny on charging since at least 2020.
      Secondly, the CCS are charging .20-.30/ due to competition, but have lousy placement and horrible uptime. Worse yet, not only does having CCS charger mean only a max of 15% of market share , but because of bad placement/uptime, CCS and ChADEMO drivers do not stray

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