Opening the North American charging standard (opens in new tab)

> But the (Tesla) connector is definitely better,

I'm not convinced of that. Tesla's connector is thinner and lighter yes absolutely. But Tesla is also weaker and less reliable \ less fault tolerant than standard EV charger cables (See the dreaded EP307 / lock error, something that can't even happen with a normal EV CCS charger)

I definitely think it's preferable for CCS win, as it's the safest, most durable, most compatible, while also being the lowest cost option.

Doesn't really matter even if it's slightly technically better. We are WAY too late in the game here (US is already deploying federal funds!), and they should have engaged with open standards a decade ago.

> and allowing CCS cars to charge at Superchargers.

I'm reading the announcement differently. They are saying future non Teslas who adopt NACS can use the Tesla chargers. It doesn't say anything about current CCS cars being able to use Tesla charging.

That'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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

At one point that number was probably 100% or very close to it. Now it's 60%.

It has nowhere to go but now, and is almost certainly dropping fast.

The number is also a feint.

It's true that NACS outnumbers CCS, but that's because they are only comparing fast-charging spots, which they outnumber.

If you included the J1772 part, tesla is outnumbered at this point in the US.

Going by ports (because that's what tesla is counting in their numbers).

There are ~92000 public level 2 ports (not chargers) in the US. That does not include the DC fast charging ports. There are about 20k of these.

There are 35,000 tesla ports (which tracks, since this is 60% more than 20k) For tesla, there is no difference between dc fast charging and non ports.

So the number cited is, as per usual for tesla, misleading, since it ignores the level 2 ports that are commonly used. There are 2.5x more of those, and combined with CCS, there are 3x more ports total than tesla's standard.

I like the connector for sure, but it's way too late.

The 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.

Tesla 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).

I 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.

Interesting 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?

Haven'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"

Yeah, Apple has used similar language in marketing for their Lightning Connector licensing program.

I Googled it, and learned a new concept. Thanks!

Huh? 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.

Doesn't seem like it has to be different, right? The Tesla/"NACS" plug supports three-phase.

"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.

> 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.

Considering 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.

That really doesn’t explain all of it, J1772 is not really that big. CCS adds a ton of bulk on top of J1772.

Says 1 MW?

The 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.

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.

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?

People 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.

Does 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.

So in other words, “the vast majority of electric cars in the US are using Tesla’s connector”. How exactly does that mean CCS won?

A bunch of far behind EV manufacturers settling on an inferior connector doesn’t mean much. Tesla and its connector is exactly akin to Sony and Blu-ray, except Tesla is further ahead and won’t be charging licensing.

What is the percentage split of Tesla vs everyone else in NA?

Teslas (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.

I 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.