Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.
A lot of companies now jumping on the NACS bandwagon:
Not sure how big FLO’s network is, and I imagine Pure Watercraft is pretty small… but regardless, it’s good to see support at all scales.
I happened to be walking by a Charge Point CCS/Chademo combination high speed charger, so for the first time I handled a CCS and Chademo plug.
Those things are heavy! Are they using 1/2 inch bus bars in there?
The Tesla/NACS supercharger cable is heavy compared to the cable on a level 2 charger, but the plug itself is the same lightweight one on my mobile charger.
A YouTuber that seemed to be knowledgeable claimed that the CCS cabling was rated to 10,000 cycles, while Tesla is only in the low thousands. He thinks Tesla has the right idea here since no other component of the cable will last 10,000 cycles–it’s just massively overbuilt. You’re paying the cost of a really beefy cable that’ll never actually hit the cycle limit. Could be that applies to some of the internals as well.
10,000 cycles (if that is the same as “charges?”) doesn’t seem that high at all for a public charger. 10 cars per day for three years.
They’re basically wear items. The cables are trivial to replace; the charger as a whole surely handles more cycles than that. But the cables get dropped and abused in various other ways. Plus the plastic gets brittle and damaged in the cold and heat. Coming by once a year to replace the old ones is fine.
I’m not sure what a “cycle” is either, but I expect that it’s equivalent to more damage than a typical charge. Say, rolling into a loop of some diameter and then unwinding. Most actual charge cycles will do less damage than that.
Add Rivian to the list:
I wonder if they’ll provide symmetrical access to the Rivian Adventure Network.
Ironically, the infrastructure bill that passed last year required charging stations to support CCS to qualify for federal subsidies.
My very limited understanding is that the bill itself does not require CCS. However, the regulatory body in charge of enforcement currently does require it (presumably because they saw a single-provider standard as being basically proprietary). So I expect some lawsuits from Tesla, et al to change the rule.
That’s what’s wrong woth bills that specify specific technologies. Government works too slow to keep up with technological change. Everyone thinks the EU law mandating USB-C is a good idea, but what if they had passed one ten years ago mandating USB-A? Would we even have USB-C? What new charging standard are we going to miss because the USB-C mandate stopped us from investing in it?
EVs are still an emerging industry. We don’t know what the final ‘proper’ infrastructure looks like. Mandating a specific tech in that environment is iust stupid. As we have seen with the rapid switch to Tesla’s supercharger network.
The DoE site, which I guess is the agency handling things, says this:
https://afdc.energy.gov/laws/12744
EV charging stations must be non-proprietary, allow for open-access payment methods, be publicly available or available to authorized commercial motor vehicle operators from more than one company, and be located along designated FHWA Alternative Fuel Corridors (AFCs). If a state and DOT determine that all AFCs in the state have been fully developed, then the state can propose alternative public locations and roads for EV charging station installation.
That’s all reasonable enough. And would not have been true for Superchanger stations a short while ago, aside from ones that had the “magic dock” feature (a combo NACS/CCS connector). But it still may take time (and/or a lawsuit) if currently, CCS is the only standard that they’ve evaluated to meet their criteria.
And Hyundai is studying NACS to see if it is in the interest of their customers.
Makes sense to me. The 800 V architecture is a fairly minor problem–the Ionic has a 400->800 V upconverter. Charging will be a little slower at 400 V, but not obscenely so.
The 4th-gen Superchargers support up to 1000 V charging. So no problem for the newer ones. And even the older ones are probably faster than EA ones on average. Only a small fraction are the 350 kW, 800 V kind.
We’ve had out Tesla since December and this is QFT.
We drive to work and back and weekend errands but we have our hybrid for weekend trips. There was one time that a combination of not charging at home that night (we have the wall charger) and the temperature dropping to well below freezing she got to within 14 miles of getting home and there were a couple of time that given the combination of work and errands around town that we got home on fumes. But if you get a car for work and home and errands an EV is great … it’s just that the Tesla software sucks.
I do wonder how the payment processing is going to work for the cars gaining access to Superchargers.
It is obviously very convenient for Tesla owners: it just gets charged to your account. If you don’t have a credit card on file, it allows you to charge once, but asks you to resolve the fee. Or, you can pay on the main screen with a credit card.
IMO, the proper way to do this would be for each manufacturer to have a similar account. They already have your name, address, VIN, etc. on file for recall purposes. So adding a payment system should not be a big deal. There’s really no need to have third-party processors here. I understand not wanting Tesla specifically to be in charge of everything, but Ford owners should have fees charged to their Ford account, and so on.
I don’t want to have a “ford account”, thanks. I’m happy to have a “charging account”, which could be Tesla, or SharePoint, or whatever.
Sounds like you’ll need to be on the Tesla App with a $10/month fee? Marques Brownlee
That’s crazy. As has been pointed out, supercharging is a rare thing for most EV owners. We use them maybe once a year. A monthly fee doesn’t make sense.
You already have a Ford account. That’s how they know where to send recall notices to. The only question is if they handle payment processing, too.
I’m not sure where he’s getting that. Maybe it works that way in Europe; I’m not sure. Whatever they end up with here, it should be seamless and not require an extra fee. I can’t imagine that Ford, et al would go along with that.
From the EVGo ($0-13) or Electrify America ($0-4) monthly subscription pricing models? Those both cost more to use unless you have a paid subscription. It looks like Tesla is doing something similar for non-Tesla cars. This article says $0.10 more per kWh without $13 monthly fee.
If subscriptions can be turned on and off, it should be pretty easy to calculate if it is worth paying for any given month. On my last 1800 mile trip I used 680 kWh, so it would have been worth joining to save $0.10/kWh, if I had a non-Tesla.
(Bothsidesism) I don’t buy enough to bother, but the last time I got gas somewhere other than Costco, I had to tap through a bunch of ads and reminders to create a reward account with the station, so it isn’t like an account is unique to charging, even if I agree it’s annoying everywhere.
I would like to see little display panels and tap pads on superchargers.