[Pictor]

Originally Posted by FultonMDUSA

I used to think so too. So what if the CCS charger is a bit larger and heavier?

I've changed my mind. Anyone, even a small teen, can lift a Supercharger NACS plug/cable with one hand, press the button on the handle to open the car's charging port door, and plug it in with minimal force required. Charging begins. No app required.

What you're describing is plug and charge (aka ISO 15118) which I believe EA and others support and BMW doesn't in the US -- yet. The weight of the cable is something else entirely as is the auto opening port door. None of which is fixed by going with NACS.

[FultonMDUSA]

Munro Live does a teardown of a NACS port and Ford CCS port, and they come to some interesting conclusions. The NACS port provides for some significant manufacturing efficiencies, in addition to the greatly improved user experience.

Bottom line: the CCS port on our iX is a dinosaur.

[darylp310]

Does anyone know the difference between the CCS we use in the North America and the CCS2 that is used in the rest of the world? Even Tesla uses CCS2 in Europe/OZ/NZ, so I wonder if it's better in the long to switch to NACS to just upgrade/improve CCS?

[Pictor]

Originally Posted by darylp310

Does anyone know the difference between the CCS we use in the North America and the CCS2 that is used in the rest of the world? Even Tesla uses CCS2 in Europe/OZ/NZ, so I wonder if it's better in the long to switch to NACS to just upgrade/improve CCS?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_Charging_System

Physically, CCS2 is larger but both are similar. The plugs have a physical component and then there is the communication component. The CCS1 plug also has a latch design that I think is a weak point but not the cause of all our woes. Communication is similar between the two.

If you change the connector but all else stays the same you change nothing in terms of reliability. That’s a failure of the service provider or CPO (Electrify America and EVGo for example). The example in EU is a good one. CCS2 seems to work reliably because the operators do a good job.

Another way to think about it, India has frequent power outages, mostly due to load shedding. Putting in a NEMA 5-15 plug into a home in India won’t improve reliability.

Let’s ask our EU friends on here who live in a country that has Tesla SuperChargers open to CCS2 cars, how often do you use a Supercharger?

[NomoTesla]

Tesla's connector rolled out in 2012. Now, 11 years later, it is still the best designed, highest output, most user friendly connector in the world. ALL manufacturers should have adopted this as well as joined the supercharger network 9 years ago when Elon open-sourced the patents.

Sadly, the hubris and insecurity of other vehicle makers to not join Tesla has only hurt the consumer. Tesla's network is the superior network in every single metric, hands down. To not join this network, therefore, foisting customers onto the crappy networks (everyone else), puts their brand before doing what is best for their customers.

[ggalanis]

Originally Posted by NomoTesla

ALL manufacturers should have adopted this as well as joined the supercharger network 9 years ago when Elon open-sourced the patents.

So long as only one company offers fast charging through the Tesla connector, I disagree with the statement above.

[mcl]

Originally Posted by Pictor

The connector is not that determines reliability. In fact, using the magic dock will limit charging speeds. For many high voltage cars because Tesla SC's (in the US at least) are limited to 500v. The next generation SC's will address that. However, the v3 SC's with the magic doc are also amperage limited when using the magic doc.

More on reliability, this is more of an issue of site design and detection and response of failed components. Using EA (or EVGo) as an example, there are dispensers in my area that have been broken for weeks and months. EA even has some of the dispensers marked as "unavailable" for several weeks. There are three reasons for the broken dispensers:

1. The CPO (EA/EVGo) is unaware the hardware is broken.
2. The CPO is aware but the turn around time to roll a truck is very long.
3. The CPO doesn't care or isn't motivated to fix the site.

The only penalty that I'm aware of right now for EA to not fix a site is that there isn't much monetary incentive. Most cars rolling up to these dispensers are using their "free" charging. In some cases they clearly know the site is broken as indicated by their app. The sites not showing as "unavailable" in the app could fall into #1 or #2 but a good portion of what I see is either #2 or #3.

Supporting large scale cloud infrastructure and networks is what I do. There are lots of parallels to this industry in terms of site availability and from what I've seen from US charge point operators, I'm not impressed and these guys have quite a bit to learn - if they give a $hi7. I suspect some of the EU member countries have more regulation in this space that incentives higher availability.

The reality of any piece of hardware is that it will fail. The only question is how and when. Then a decision needs to be made of how do you handle the failure. That can range from rapid response to letting it die on the vine.

I think you hit the nail on the head and I think your point #3 is the overwhelming reason for broken dispensers. Based on my understanding, EA (and probably EVGo) chargers in the US are heavily built using government subsidies. So their incentive structures are completely misaligned; their customer is the government who is incentivizing building as many stations as possible vs. EV owners who want reliable stations (and of course, more stations). Unfortunately I don't see this changing until a large majority of their EA and EVGo's revenue stream comes from paying customers or governments intervene and require reliability metrics to access government dollars.

[JonoNZ]

The CCS2 connector is a bit nicer and looks a bit better (no latch) and also has some extra technical capabilities, but I doubt these are the issues with non-NACS charging infrastructure in the US. That seems to be more related to site placement, weather proofing, maintenance, the scale of the rollout etc.

CCS1 vs CCS2 guide: https://insideevs.com/news/488143/cc...map-ccs1-ccs2/

[ixDriver]

I think for me at this point CCS networks in the US have shown such little regard for their customers that I don’t really care about “the principle of the thing” type problems with adoption of NACS.

I want competent charging network access and if it’s from Tesla or a result of competitive pressure from Tesla via NACS & MagicDock, so be it.

[nosnoop]

Originally Posted by NomoTesla

ALL manufacturers should have adopted this as well as joined the supercharger network 9 years ago when Elon open-sourced the patents.

The so called "All Our Patent Are Belong To You" by Tesla is in name only, as it carries significant legal risks in small prints - that's the main reason why no major manufacturers would risk it.

And what's the point of joining Supercharger network when they don't allow you to use it before the most recent change?

[NomoTesla]

Originally Posted by nosnoop

The so called "All Our Patent Are Belong To You" by Tesla is in name only, as it carries significant legal risks in small prints - that's the main reason why no major manufacturers would risk it.

Such as?

Originally Posted by nosnoop

And what's the point of joining Supercharger network when they don't allow you to use it before the most recent change?

I have no idea what you mean, sorry.

[nosnoop]

Originally Posted by NomoTesla

Such as?

Tesla’s ‘open source philosophy’ comes with conditions. The main qualifier in Tesla’s ‘Patent Pledge’ is that Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against a party acting in ‘good faith. According to Tesla, a party is acting in ‘good faith’ so long as the party (and anyone related/affiliated/associated) has not:

asserted, helped to assert, or financially backed an assertion of (i) any intellectual property right against Tesla, or (ii) any patent right against a third party for the use of its technologies relating to electric vehicles or related equipment challenged, helped to challenge, or financially backed a challenge to any Tesla patent marketed or sold any knock-off Tesla product or helped another party to do so.

So, essentially, Tesla’s patents are only free to use if: you do not enforce any right against Tesla, you do not enforce any patent right against another party, you do not oppose Tesla’s patents or copy Tesla’s designs.

Using Tesla’s technology would essentially make any other company’s own intellectual property rights redundant. On the other hand, Tesla benefits from the arrangement because it appears that Tesla is free to use any improvements made to its technology by another party.

I have no idea what you mean, sorry.

Supercharger network only allows non-Tesla cars to use it in the past year.
So any other car manufacturers deciding to use Tesla connectors has no benefit prior to 2022, as Supercharger network would be still inaccessible.

[NomoTesla]

Originally Posted by nosnoop

Supercharger network only allows non-Tesla cars to use it in the past year.
So any other car manufacturers deciding to use Tesla connectors has no benefit prior to 2022, as Supercharger network would be still inaccessible.

Tesla stated in 2014 that any EV manufacturer was welcome to join and access the supercharger network so long as it also bought into the system. I'm pretty sure this is the arrangement Tesla struck with Ford. Tesla's offer has been on the table for 9 years to every EV manufacturer.

Kudos to Ford.

[Pictor]

Tesla has open sourced their charging so much that you can run out and buy an adapter to use on their network for a couple of hundred bucks. /sarcasm

What I don’t understand is why I still see Teslas charging at EA stations even when there is a SC station within a mile. I mean, the SC location is available to the Tesla and the in car navigation does a great job of navigating the driver to the SC station and it’s more work to charge at an EA site, need an adapter, EA app, an account, etc.

[ggalanis]

Originally Posted by Pictor

Tesla has open sourced their charging so much that you can run out and buy an adapter to use on their network for a couple of hundred bucks. /sarcasm

What I don’t understand is why I still see Teslas charging at EA stations even when there is a SC station within a mile. I mean, the SC location is available to the Tesla and the in car navigation does a great job of navigating the driver to the SC station and it’s more work to charge at an EA site, need an adapter, EA app, an account, etc.

Tesla superchargers are probably more expensive

[darylp310]

Originally Posted by ggalanis

Tesla superchargers are probably more expensive

^^^^This. Bizzaro upside down world now isn't it? As recently as Jan 2023, my Tesla Model X Supercharging bill was exceeding $300/month, and they have raised rates since then.

[ggalanis]

Originally Posted by darylp310

^^^^This. Bizzaro upside down world now isn't it? As recently as Jan 2023, my Tesla Model X Supercharging bill was exceeding $300/month, and they have raised rates since then.

In April 2022 i rented a model3 off Turo for a weekend because I got a flat tire on my X5 on Saturday evening of Easter weekend... The owner warned me that the supercharging had gotten expensive recently and he wasn't very happy about it cause he essentially doesn't have much of a choice but to use them on longer trips. Especially here where electricity is dirt cheap, 6c/kWh for residential (most of the time), he sure felt like he was being gouged.

[NomoTesla]

I recently helped two Model 3 renters (one using Turo, the other using Hertz) trying to supercharge in a hurry on their way to the airport. The Tesla chargers kept faulting because there was no payment method on file. I didn't know how to change that for them so they headed off to the airport and hoped for the best.

[Pictor]

Originally Posted by NomoTesla

I recently helped two Model 3 renters (one using Turo, the other using Hertz) trying to supercharge in a hurry on their way to the airport. The Tesla chargers kept faulting because there was no payment method on file. I didn't know how to change that for them so they headed off to the airport and hoped for the best.

Hertz will just pass through the charges to the account of the renter so if the SC was faulting, it was either on the Hertz end or on Tesla's side of things. There is nothing the renter needs to do, or can do.