News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Opening the North American Charging Standard by ryukafalz on Friday November 11, 2022 @02:25PM (#33565488)
Hilarious to call their thing the "North American Charging Standard" when every other manufacturer in North America has already standardized on something else.
Re:Opening the North American Charging Standard by wilg on Friday November 11, 2022 @02:26PM (#33565516)
Try plugging a Nissan Leaf into a CCS charger.
Re:Opening the North American Charging Standard by WaxProlix on Friday November 11, 2022 @02:35PM (#33565643)
Nissan 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.

Re:Opening the North American Charging Standard by Hamuko on Friday November 11, 2022 @02:31PM (#33565584)
Nissan 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.
Re:Opening the North American Charging Standard by pseudosavant on Friday November 11, 2022 @02:53PM (#33565905)
Lightning? Maybe the OG 30-pin iPod/iPhone connector.
Re:Opening the North American Charging Standard by Hamuko on Saturday November 12, 2022 @09:17AM (#33573244)
Apple doesn't sell anything with a 30-pin connector.
Re:Opening the North American Charging Standard by pseudosavant on Friday November 11, 2022 @02:48PM (#33565824)
Let'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).

Re:Opening the North American Charging Standard by rootusrootus on Friday November 11, 2022 @04:14PM (#33566949)
> The Leaf is the only model in the U.S. that uses, or has ever used, the CHAdeMO connection

That's mostly true, but there is the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV which still uses it.

Re:Opening the North American Charging Standard by InTheArena on Friday November 11, 2022 @02:52PM (#33565894)
They are all tiny in comparison...

The vast majority of EVs in the United States use this now, and it's not just historical - Just to emphasis the most popular EV cars in the US today are:

Tesla Model Y 60,271 20% 191,451 50.7% 33.2% Tesla Model 3 55,030 67% 156,357 94.5% 27.1% Ford Mustang Mach-E 10,414 – 28,089 49% 4.9% Tesla Model S 9,171 150% 23,464 79.9% 4.1% Chevy Bolt EV/EUV 14,709 226% 22,012 -11.3% 3.8% Hyundai IONIQ 5 4,800 – 18,492 – 3.2% Tesla Model X 6,552 43% 19,542 16.4% 3.4%

Re:Opening the North American Charging Standard by matthewdgreen on Friday November 11, 2022 @03:32PM (#33566402)
Cars can last 10 or more years. If you buy a car today you're making a bet that Tesla and its standard will still be dominant over all other car and charger manufacturers in the year 2032+. That is an extraordinarily foolish bet.

My bet is that within two years Tesla standardizes on CCS for its US cars (thus getting rid of an annoying upgrade/adapter/retrofit problem) and then what'll be left is the sad minority (AKA me) who are stuck with the dying standard and an annoying dongle.

Re:Opening the North American Charging Standard by londons_explore on Friday November 11, 2022 @04:16PM (#33566964)
I'd bet a garage will be able to do a connector swap within an hour's labour if Tesla will make the necessary firmware changes.
Re:Opening the North American Charging Standard by matthewdgreen on Friday November 11, 2022 @04:23PM (#33567048)
For legacy cars the likely answer is that people buy the $250 dongle. For new cars this will cost a few hundred bucks in parts and labor (or let's say 1-1.5% of the sales price) and it will be required surgery on your brand-new car.

Who is going to pay for this? If it's Tesla, then the smart move is to put CCS into cars right now (and as a side benefit, standardize their US and European models.) If it's the customer, then it's an annoying non-trivial cost you'll have to bear. Yuck.

Re:Opening the North American Charging Standard by wilg on Friday November 11, 2022 @04:28PM (#33567104)
They don't standardize US and Europe because US is CCS1 and Europe is CCS2.
Re:Opening the North American Charging Standard by matthewdgreen on Friday November 11, 2022 @04:37PM (#33567201)
Ugh god why. Didn't realize that. Rest of the point stands.
Re:Opening the North American Charging Standard by Symbiote on Friday November 11, 2022 @05:48PM (#33567888)
3 phase vs 120V.

But it doesn't matter. The number of vehicles taken either way is negligible. In the old days, you had to change the miles/km speedometer to the other one when you took you car with you as you emigrated. Buying a charge adapter is easier.

Re:Opening the North American Charging Standard by vel0city on Sunday November 13, 2022 @11:04AM (#33584260)
Arguing about 120V is a red herring. Just about every US home has 240V service, most cars will charge at 240V not 120V.

Single phase vs three phase is the big reason for a difference between US and EU charger plugs though. Three phase is pretty uncommon in residential areas in the US but is common in many EU countries. Industrial customers in the US will often have three phase but it's pretty rare to see outside of that.

Re:Opening the North American Charging Standard by ip26 on Friday November 11, 2022 @08:27PM (#33569051)
Since good adapters exist, it's not really a deeply committing bet.
Re:Opening the North American Charging Standard by matthewdgreen on Saturday November 12, 2022 @11:40AM (#33574681)
Adapters remove the benefits of having a "superior" charging standard. It may be that the Tesla connector is better than CCS, but Tesla+CCS_adapter is going to be obviously worse. (This is something you're going to use every day, even a slightly worse ergonomic experience adds up.)
Re:Opening the North American Charging Standard by ip26 on Saturday November 12, 2022 @02:47PM (#33576363)
My point is you get a Tesla for many reasons, not just the NACS plug, and if CCS wins you still enjoy all those other things.
Re:Opening the North American Charging Standard by DannyBee on Friday November 11, 2022 @04:05PM (#33566832)
But there are already 3x more level 2 + CCS ports than tesla ports.

In the US:

There are 36000 individual tesla connections

There are 92000 l2 j1772 ports.

There are 22000 CCS DC fast ports

They are comparing the DC fast number to the tesla number, and ignoring the j1772 number.

Re:Opening the North American Charging Standard by wilg on Friday November 11, 2022 @04:29PM (#33567108)
They are comparing fast charging only, yes. (Also all Teslas come with a J1772 adapter.)
Re:Opening the North American Charging Standard by DannyBee on Saturday November 12, 2022 @01:41PM (#33575755)
Which is pointless to compare -

1. All the other cars are J1772 + CCS

2. So you'd have to provide adapters for every other non-tesla car, or replace every non-tesla port. Not just the 20k CCS ones, but the 96K J1772 ones.

3. They are claiming a false ubiquity to make it seem like now is a good time to do this. The point at which there are 3x other plugs than yours is not a point where others are going to switch to your thing.

In fact, they are almost certainly doing it because they see the train coming at them, and don't want to deal with it.

It's too late.

Re:Opening the North American Charging Standard by reindeerer on Friday November 11, 2022 @04:02PM (#33566789)
Are you trying to imply that just calling something is a standard doesn't make it a standard ? Hmmmm