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Opening the North American charging standard
- gjsman-1000 4y agoWow. Awesome! I hope Ford and other EV Manufacturers make retrofit kits though - and similar for the charging stations already deployed. Lugging an adapter for all non-Tesla EVs before the, what, 2024 model year would be irritating. Assuming, of course, they are on board and this doesn't turn into Betamax/VHS, Blu-ray/HD-DVD, or HDR10+/Dolby Vision again.
- kgermino 4y agoI don't see anything here indicating that other manufacturers will start using the Tesla connector. Unfortunately we're already well into the format war with two standards: Tesla and Everyone Else (CCS). Honestly this feels more like a desperate attempt by Tesla to push back on the trend towards CCS instead of a substantive announcement
- Lendal 4y agoThey might be trying to get ahead of a possible push to mandate CCS, and they don't want to get pushed around like Apple did. I for one am fine with it. The "NACS" is objectively better by almost every available measure, and if the despised Elon Musk wants to give his stuff away, hey I'll take it. Any good reasons why we should reject this proposal?
- Hamuko 4y ago>They might be trying to get ahead of a possible push to mandate CCS, and they don't want to get pushed around like Apple did. Waaaaaay too late for that. It'd be like Apple telling that they'll open the Lightning connector and that other phone manufacturers should switch to it, if Apple had done that in like 2019. Sure, nice try, but maybe you should've taken this position about a decade earlier.
- kgermino 4y ago> Any good reasons why we should reject this proposal? No idea here. The 1 MW charging claim feels weird since faster charging was definitely a touted benefit of CCS in the recent past. I'm not sure if something changed. To me, it doesn't really matter one way or another. The CCS connector is bulky, but so is a gas station nozzle and I've never had a problem using one of those. Plus you'll use the CCS connector less often since most charging is done at home with a connector comparable to the NACS one. I'd probably lean towards CCS because it's effectively the same as international standards, it's already the standard, and separating the AC and DC pins probably simplifies engineering on the car side but I don't actually care as long as we all use one connector with an open spec.
- kortilla 4y ago>it's already the standard, Not sure how you’re defining “standard” but given that Tesla has the major majority here, its connector is the standard most people are familiar with. If you just mean, it’s something not proprietary that other manufacturers agreed on, then sure.
- kgermino 4y agoI mean it's something not proprietary that _every_ other manufacturer and _the federal government_ agreed on. You can't reasonably say that e.g. USB is a standard and CCS is not
- kortilla 4y agoBut that’s an empty gesture when the size is so irrelevant. >You can't reasonably say that e.g. USB is a standard and CCS is not CCS is “a standard” but Tesla is “the standard” from a consumer perspective. The same thing happened with apple lightning early on. It was far better and dominated micro usb. If they had opened it early during usb-c it would have just killed usb-c and been the new standard.
- chroma 4y agoNorth America's CCS[1] isn't compatible with Europe's CCS[2]. They're physically different connectors. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:J1772_(CCS1).svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:J1772_(CCS1).svg 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IEC_62196_Type_2_(M,_DC,_CCS_Combo_2).svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IEC_62196_Type_2_(M,_DC,_...
- JonathonW 4y agoThis won't turn into Betamax/VHS or Blu-ray/HD-DVD because CCS has already won-- every EV sold in the US except Tesla (and maybe still the Nissan Leaf; they may still be on CHAdeMO) has CCS Type 1. This is probably too little, too late for Tesla.
- bombcar 4y agoDoes Tesla still sell more EVs in the US than the rest combined? Though if most of the bulk/plug is on the charger side, than this is all a non-issue.
- InTheArena 4y agoPeople seem deep in denial about Tesla market share. Tesla is 80% of all EVs sold and still 65% of current vehicles sold last quarter - even with some dramatically cheaper EVs available. As Gigafactories in Austin, Berlin and Shanghai continue to ramp, that's unlikely to change.
- hedora 4y agoThey dropped to 70% of vehicles on the road last year, and are only claiming >66% in this press release. BofA projects an 11% market share for Tesla by 2025. Also, their order backlog is dropping, even though we are in the middle of a gasoline crisis, and all (?) other EV manufacturers are seeing unprecedented demand. This suggests current factories can meet Tesla's future steady state demand, so ramping will only help a bit: https://insideevs.com/news/615583/estimated-tesla-order-backlog-september21-2022/ https://insideevs.com/news/615583/estimated-tesla-order-back... I think the root cause is that they only have a few models, especially compared to the combined model lines of their competition. Also, many people on the coasts are uncomfortable supporting Musk, thanks to the Twitter thing and Tesla labor violations. For that crowd, Tesla may as well be welding truck balls to their back bumpers.
- AlexandrB 4y agoTesla is still selling exclusively luxury sedans and SUVs. Cheaper cars like the Bolt or utility vehicles like the F150 Lightning serve market segments where Tesla is not even a competitor. I think it's expected that Tesla's market share will drop a lot in the coming years.
- chrisseaton 4y agoWhy is CCS so absolutely enormous and so technically limited? What's the story behind how it got so bad? There must be some kind of trade-off Tesla took that CCS didn't?
- toomuchtodo 4y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27907051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27907051 TLDR CCS wanted to be backwards compatible, while Tesla planned fast charging to be first class with their standard. At the time, no one was doing fast charging at Supercharger currents (150kw). CCS was bolted on to J1772.
- boardwaalk 4y agoConsidering how early that decision was made in the timeline of electric vehicles (how early we still even are) — getting saddled with a backwards compatibility kludge kind of sucks.
- criddell 4y agoIt’s still early days and certainly not too late to change it.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- chroma 4y agoThat's true for the US, but the EU mandates that all vehicle charging stations support CCS Combo 2.[1] They'd have to undo their mandate to allow better chargers, and I don't think that'll happen any time soon. 1. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32014L0094&from=en https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...
- Dylan16807 4y ago
- gjsman-1000 4y ago> It has no moving parts, is half the size, and twice as powerful as Combined Charging System (CCS) connectors. It's just a connector. Why did CCS have to be twice as big then? What's the tradeoff CCS took? Edit: I just looked up a size comparison of CCS vs Tesla/NACS and what the heck happened...
- bombcar 4y agoCCS was backwards compatible with existing standards, and added stuff to it. It would have been like USB-C being glued to the top of an old SCSI connector. Tesla controlled both ends (literally) on theirs and so they could optimize for size/etc.
- zzzeek 4y ago
- Hamuko 4y agoDo Tesla Superchargers even have this connector outside the US? Here all Teslas have CCS ports.
- wilg 4y agoI don't think so.
- wilg 4y agoI believe superchargers are also being upgraded to add CCS1 in North America. Not widely rolled out yet, but I think there are at least some operational. I think some have two cables, but they have some kind of design called "magic dock" that allows a single cable to use either plug. (Superchargers elsewhere use the relevant local standard.)
- zzzeek 4y agohaven't seen this. see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33565868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33565868 above.
- systemvoltage 4y agoThis seems like a bad faith argument. It is more like here is a better design that's more compact and has more adoption, we're making it open standard for anyone to adopt.
- ip26 4y agoYeah, with the standard open, if we also assume Tesla opens the supercharger network it’s kind of hard to see a great argument for CCS. Better plug, more users, more chargers. I’m biased, but I’ve also used all three plugs (CCS, J1772, NACS). NACS is the USB-C to the other two’s DVI.
- wilg 4y agoFor context, North America's current "standard" is CCS1, which is not the same as Europe, which uses CCS2. So North America already has its own weird plug. The Tesla plug is definitely better from a usability perspective. Very curious to see if there is a major technical advantage for one or the other.
- xxpor 4y agoCcs1 vs 2 comes down to the fact that the base plug (the ac part) has to be different between the two. Europe supports 3 phase because it's common there, while the NA plug doesn't, because 3 phase is unheard of in residential installations, and it has to support 120 level 1 charging.
- wilg 4y agoDoesn't seem like it has to be different, right? The Tesla/"NACS" plug supports three-phase.
- Dylan16807 4y agoHow? Are you sure? It has two big power pins, one smaller pin dedicated to ground, and two tiny pins that look completely unsuited for power. There's a "mobile connector" that can convert 3 phase, but that has an entirely different plug on the wall side.
- wilg 4y agoI think it doesn't actually, nevermind.
- mike_d 4y agoIn the US Tesla uses its own proprietary connector, in Europe they use the Mennekes plug. Hence why they are calling this the "North American charging standard."
- morio 4y agoHuh? CCS1, CCS2 and NACS are DC. You are probably thinking Type 2 (Europe) which is indeed 3 phase and j1772 (US) which is single phase.
- kgermino 4y agoI don't see anything new here (other than the name). For those who don't know there are two charging connecters used for new electric cars in the US: Tesla (now called NACS and only used on Teslas) and CCS (used by everyone else). There's nothing here to indicate that that's changing and it feels like a move by Tesla to try turning around the momentum in a format war they're losing, even if they have a wider installed base today
- stetrain 4y agoThere’s an actual set of specification documents available to download. That’s an improvement. Previously the only public info was their patent filings. It also sounds like they are offering specific parts (inlets and connector cables) for sale since they are providing datasheets on them.
- kgermino 4y agoInteresting thanks! I thought the specs were already published. Didn't they say they were going to do that a few years ago or am I misremembering something?
- stetrain 4y agoNope. They posted a list of patents with a pledge that basically said “We won’t sue you about our patents if you don’t sue us about yours” The connector patents were on that list but that wasn’t a real spec.
- hedora 4y agoI wonder if that means we'll soon have cheap dongles to charge CCS cars at supercharger stations. I'd pay (maybe) $200 for such a thing, mostly because sometimes the CCS chargers are busy.
- binkHN 4y agoYay—wish they did this sooner. Anyone know if this is one of those “we will give you a royalty-free license to use our patent for this if you promise never to sue us?”
- thevoiceless 4y agoTesla said in May that it would be adding CCS adapters to its Supercharger stations, already used in Europe: https://electrek.co/2022/05/10/tesla-add-ccs-connectors-supercharger-stations-us-elon-musk/ https://electrek.co/2022/05/10/tesla-add-ccs-connectors-supe... Now they're trying to declare their own charger as a "standard", after launching a $250 adapter in September to use the actual standard plug? Also, obligatory Technology Connections video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZOuz_laH9I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZOuz_laH9I
- _joel 4y agoThe T.C. video is very thorough and worth a watch for all EV related shennanigans.
- darknavi 4y agoThat's most T.C. videos I've seen. Often niche topics but I sat* through (and enjoyed) 20 minutes of why an obscure can opener is superior than the mainstream ones.
- masklinn 4y agoAlso why the best toaster was created in the 50s, how petrol lamps work, the wild story of video on discs, and dumb US. automotive standards (or less dumb ones). Followed by a speed run through the entire history of analog photography. It’s wild not just how varied Alex’s interests are, but how he’ll find interest in the most mundane subjects (christmas lamps) and how well and thoroughly he’s able to present them.
- darknavi 4y agoA bit more electrics based but Big Clive also tears down the most random pieces of technology. It's quite fun to watch him take a dollar store toy apart and see how it ticks.
- 4y ago
- ryukafalz 4y agoHilarious to call their thing the "North American Charging Standard" when every other manufacturer in North America has already standardized on something else.
- wilg 4y agoTry plugging a Nissan Leaf into a CCS charger.
- Hamuko 4y agoNissan Ariya has a CCS port, so even Nissan has standardised on the CCS. The Nissan Leaf is the iPad with the Lightning port of the EV world.
- pseudosavant 4y agoLightning? Maybe the OG 30-pin iPod/iPhone connector.
- Hamuko 4y agoApple doesn't sell anything with a 30-pin connector.
- WaxProlix 4y agoNissan for a long time has stuck to the Japanese standard (CHAdeMO) for their NA cars; some early EVs in America used CHAdeMO as well I think, but afaik only Nissan has stuck with it here. I think even they've dropped it for future stuff tho.
- pseudosavant 4y agoLet's just not talk about the Nissan Leaf. The Nissan Leaf is completely out-of-place in today's EV landscape and by current EV standards, it barely counts as a "real EV" you can live with. Speaking as a former Leaf owner. The Leaf is the only model in the U.S. that uses, or has ever used, the CHAdeMO connection that the Leaf has. Good luck finding a CHAdeMO charger now, it was already hard 4 years ago and it is just getting worse. Most places that had one were Nissan dealerships, but those are almost always broken now. Nissan dealers just don't care about it. Even when they exist and are working, that has to be the most difficult connector I've ever seen for a consumer-grade product. Their 40kW battery base model costs as much as a 60kW Chevy Bolt. Where I live, 40kW will get you only ~120 miles of range. That small of a battery also can't charge that fast. The most damning thing of all though is that the Nissan Leaf is the only EV sold today that doesn't use active cooling on their battery pack. It was a horrible oversight on the Gen1 Leaf, but it is absurd for the Gen2 after most of those Gen1 batteries cooked themselves to death (and were eventually replaced after a class-action lawsuit).
- gjsman-1000 4y agoThis is starting to feel like... the XKCD meme about too many standards. Everyone in North America that isn't Tesla: CCS1 Telsa in North America: NACS Everyone including Tesla in Europe: CCS2 Everyone in Japan: CHAdeMO Everyone in China: GB/T
- alden5 4y agoalthough the XKCD meme talks about making a new standard, NACS is already everywhere, tesla is just trying to ensure its ubiquity.
- kortilla 4y agoNot really. Tesla is already the vast majority in the US. They are just opening up to try to kill of an already existing worse standard.
- robin_reala 4y agoWhat is the percentage split of Tesla vs everyone else in NA?
- Dylan16807 4y agoGB/T should probably be ignored as China being different on purpose. And CHAdeMO just seems bad compared to the competition. If you exclude those it becomes a lot simpler.
- reindeerer 4y agoCHAdeMO / GB/T were harmonized into a new connector ( CHAdeMO 3.0 aka ChaoJi )
- sigmar 4y agoWhat legal guarantee is there that Tesla won't reverse course in the future? Say a charging station or car manufacturer adopts this connector and then in 5 years Tesla says "well actually, we've got these patents and we're going to start charging you to sell cars/charging stations"? Publishing the specs and saying "we won't enforce patents" isn't a legally binding guarantee
- otterley 4y agoGoogle “promissory estoppel”
- karaterobot 4y agoI Googled it, and learned a new concept. Thanks!
- Symmetry 4y agoI'm not a lawyer but that sure sounds like it would be a case of promissory estoppel to me. That is, if someone relies on Tesla's word and makes investments based on it they'd have a legal case to prevent Tesla from trying to exercise those patents against them. But I do hope there's an actual legal grant of rights as well.
- sigmar 4y agoHaven't heard the term and I'm googling it to understand better. Is there case law where this was tested in the context of patents on ports? I'm thinking Tesla could say, "we changed our minds but you can keep selling any of the Toyota 2023 models, you just can't make a new car model with the port. therefore we aren't causing you financial harm or injury by relying on our promise"
- Dylan16807 4y agoYou're asking for a very specific citation there. But it doesn't matter, they could give everyone who asks a 20 year license for $1. Also courts aren't stupid.
- zaptrem 4y agoAwesome. This should be a world-wide standard. NACS (Tesla) VS CCS is like USB-A 1.0 vs USB-C with Power Delivery: CCS is unbelievably slow and clunky to the point where it might turn people off wanting an EV once they experience the slow and clunkiness.
- stetrain 4y agoTesla’s connector has zero marketshare in Europe and doesn’t support 3-phase AC charging. I don’t think there is that much benefit in a global standard given that adapters exist.
- gibolt 4y agoTeslas (and their Superchargers) shipped there before ~2019 had the same plug, before they switched to CCS. I'm not sure how 3-phase fits in, but it didn't prevent being at least as useful as in the U.S.
- stetrain 4y agoNo, in Europe Tesla originally used the Type 2 connector, which Europe uses for AC charging and includes pins for 3-phase. The proprietary part was they did pin switching to enable the same connector to do DC Supercharging as well. Now they have switched to CCS Type 2 in Europe which is the Type 2 connector plus additional pins for DC charging and the CCS communication protocols.
- Symbiote 4y agoThree phase power is very common in Europe. I have three phase sockets (for the oven etc) in my 80m² apartment.
- Dylan16807 4y agoI think you'd have to make yet another new connector if you wanted a really good global standard, which makes it even less worth attempting.
- gibolt 4y ago
- modeless 4y agoI wish they had gotten more serious about this sooner. They had talked about offering the plug and network to other manufacturers before but there wasn't any movement on it. I expect that now it's too late and we'll be stuck with terrible CCS forever, but I'd be happy to be wrong.
- gibolt 4y agoTesla is still >70% of EVs in the U.S. and Aptera has already adopted their plug (hopefully shipping soon). We are still within bounds of choosing the superior connector. It isn't too late like in Europe, especially since US bound vehicles are already using a different plug than their European counterparts
- mike_d 4y ago"Our forecasts suggest that Tesla’s market share will decline from 70% in 2021 to (an estimated) 11% by 2025" -Bank of America The major auto manufactures are on track to have 60% of all new cars EVs by 2026. Tesla just can't compete with that volume. They need to start getting ready for the new standard now, not pulling this nonsense.
- hedora 4y agoTesla is claiming 66% now that it is 2022 (down 4%), so BofA's projections are in the correct direction, at least.
- rootusrootus 4y ago> Tesla is still >70% of EVs Only by strict volume of cars on the road. Looking at manufacturers and models, they are just a tiny fraction of the market. And judging from how fast their market share is slipping, we're probably only a year or so from them being in the strict minority by any metric.
- 1970-01-01 4y agoHow much cheaper is it to build a vehicle with the NACS port vs J1772 port? If the build savings are enough, I foresee manufactures making the switch.
- rootusrootus 4y agoWhy would they switch? Then their customers couldn't access CCS chargers OR the supercharger network. That's not exactly a selling point, no matter how much money they save on the connector.
- advisedwang 4y agoIt sounds like folks are assuming this will be free for implementors and license universally with little restriction. Nothing in this press release says it's free. "open" could just mean "open to apply", for example. " We invite charging network operators and vehicle manufacturers to put the Tesla charging connector..." could be read as an invitation to negotiate. I expect licensing terms to be announced, and I bet you large users will have to pay.
- jsmith45 4y agoThe specification is posted publicly, with no listed restrictions, so the only method Tesla has of licensing this is via enforcing their patents. While I expect car manufacturers would want to negotiate a custom patent license, others interesting in using the patents (like say EVSE manufacturers) could technically just utilize the Tesla patent pledge. Of course if they do so they cannot later sue Tesla for any form of IP infringement, without getting countersued over the patents. Thus if you use tesla's patents under the license, you can sue them for copyright, patent, trademark, trade-secret or any other right, without getting countersued. This would mean Tesla could openly make full blown counterfeits of your companies products, and you cannot sue them without getting countersued for patent violation. So I'm doubting terribly many will want to take up this offer, but they technically could.
- advisedwang 4y agoThe risk that Tesla sues over patent infringement stands alone of any tit-for-tat infringement. Realistically, it's much more likely Tesla will just sue for $ rather than try and make a counterfeit of an infringer's product. No sane counsel would let their company knowingly and openly infringe on major patents like this. The spec being open put up on a website does practically nothing. Patent's are public and it'd be trivial to reverse engineer a charging standard anyway.
- akozak 4y agoTesla is at least 5 years late here, maybe more like 10. All of the US federal funds will likely go to CCS now because they stuck to the proprietary network strategy, despite the OBVIOUS and natural social utility from an open industry-wide standard and charging networks open to all. For reference here is the DOT's NPRM from June laying out the proposed requirements for states to receive federal funds from the infrastructure package: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/06/22/2022-12704/national-electric-vehicle-infrastructure-formula-program https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/06/22/2022-12...
- sneak 4y agoFrom the article: > NACS vehicles outnumber CCS two-to-one, and Tesla's Supercharging network has 60% more NACS posts than all the CCS-equipped networks combined. This suggests to me it’s not Tesla that’s late. If anything is a society-wide EV standard in North America, it’s the Tesla plug.
- rnk 4y agoTesla has been the defacto standard, yes. But their lead has been declining. All the other ev car drivers would have been better off if they could use tesla charging stations, since the entire industry is basically terrible except for tesla superchargers. With tesla saying they'll finally support ccs cars in the us I think ccs will win. You have to point to the clever infrastructure bills in congress, I think that money is what pulled tesla through to supporting ccs (eventually).
- hedora 4y agoThe way I read the "two to one" number is that Tesla's market share in NA is collapsing. Even if competitors decide to use the Tesla standard, it'll be a few years before they ship it. By then, Tesla's current 66% share of deployed vehicles will almost certainly have dropped to less than 50%. Also, Musk said they're opening up superchargers to CCS soon, so car buyers like me don't think the Tesla connector is a differentiator any more. Having said that, I have a CCS car, and charge station availability is totally fine, at least in the parts of California where superchargers exist.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y agoI have to admit, taking your own closed, proprietary standard, then opening it up while single handedly declaring it the "North America Charging Standard" takes a level of chutzpah that would make, well, Elon Musk blush.