Crucially, the cable swap is a non-issue, because the chargers will all use the CCS communication protocol. NACS uses the J1772 pins for sensing and initiating charging, and CCS adds an extra communication layer which Tesla has built into their cars since mid-2019 or something when Europe switched to CCS Combo 2 as the EU standard.
I’m not personally a promoter of the NACS connector for lots of reasons nobody cares about, but I’m glad we’ve at least landed on the common communication protocol. If all these chargers started popping up in 2024 with CCS Combo 1 connectors, I wonder how many of these other brands would actually migrate to the NACS wand versus just continuing on with Combo 1 forever. I’m not convinced any of them really care either, and it’s just a matter of convenience for customers. Without the necessity to rely on Tesla’s charging network, that convenience sort of evaporates. Add in an adapter for NACS to CCS, and I think the whole issue goes away.
They haven’t switched yet, though. And that’s one of the points I’m making. They have said they’re switching in 2025. To me, that sounded a lot like they were waiting to see what happened with chargers in US and Canada. Announcing charger support for it is also not a meaningful announcement since you really only need to change the cable end. It’s like saying I now support winter boots. I didn’t change my feet, so it’s not a meaningful statement.
The number of EVs sold isn’t an argument that’s going to sway me. As I’ve said, I have technical reasons I don’t like the NACS connector. If everyone sticks to the current announced plan, then we get DCFC with both connectors and nobody really cares. But if the charger manufacturers and EV manufacturers decide to drop NACS as a whole, I don’t think anybody will know or care in 3-4 years time outside of Tesla owners that need an adapter to access other brands chargers.
I clearly said they all announced it was happening in 2025, so obviously linking to their announcements isn’t really going to change anything.
The thing they are doing is trying to equip their cars with the port for the chargers that their customer will use. What I’m saying is if the NACS adoption doesn’t take off my charger manufacturers, then auto manufacturers have no incentive to adopt it either. That’s the remaining question mark. Regardless, Combo 1 connectors are going to be on those chargers because that’s what every other brand has on their cars.
I guess if it was just Ford and Ford alone, I could see one company backing out, but not several entities.
Consider why these companies have decided to transition to an NACS port. Because they want their customers to gain access to chargers that exist, and those chargers are operated by Tesla. Now, imagine that in 2024 we start seeing NEVI funded chargers installed around the country, and those chargers have fewer NACS connectors than CCS Combo, or they have no NACS connectors. What do you think the auto manufacturers would do? They haven’t signed any kind of contract requiring they use NACS, they’ve simply announced that they plan to in 2025.
In other words, if there’s no convenience improvement to deploying NACS ports because new charger sites don’t have a majority of NACS connectors, then they wouldn’t do it. They’d simply keep equipping vehicles with Combo 1 ports.
Each announcement has explicitly said they’re doing this to gain access to the Supercharger network.
Yes. Because today that network is by far the largest in the US, and almost certainly in Canada. But the US is funding deployment of new chargers every 50 miles, so you can see where brands other than Tesla might outnumber Tesla over the next few years.
The ink has dried on contracts.
Buying new plastic bits from an injection molding company doesn’t require an insane lead time, and the existence of contracts really isn’t meaningful in any way. There is almost guaranteed to be language in supplier contracts that allows both parties to back out as long as they keep a dollar spend level or pay a small penalty. This kind of thing happens all the time during qualification and testing.
Going back to CCS would be incredibly unlikely.
Why? If there was a compelling reason to not use NACS, why would anybody continue charging ahead?
They’ll be out-pacing the collective NEVI deployment for a while.
I disagree. They’ve added 21 in the past year in the US, so let’s call it 2 per month on average for 2023. The plan for several states I’m interested in will outpace that immediately. I don’t know where you got 1.5 sites per day, but that’s absolutely not the case in any way. It’s not even 1.5 stalls per day, instead it’s 0.624 stalls per day. Can you tell me where you got that number from, because 1.5 sites per day would be 548 sites per year and with an average of 10 stalls per site they’ve installed this past year that’s 5479 stalls. Back of the envelope math should have sounded wrong to you.
I seriously doubt this will happen in the next 2-4 years at the clip Tesla has been dropping chargers.
Again, your Tesla number is extremely wrong. You should go back to the supercharge.info site, go to the changes list, and switch to “add”. Lots of Tesla sites have been in planning and permitting for years, and to be frank until something Tesla says actually exists in the world it’s not worth much.
Sure but we’re 8-9 months from cars rolling off the assembly line
Maybe.
There is no compelling reason.
There’s a couple I can think of off the top of my head. Can you not?
greater reliability
You’re comparing to existing EA chargers, which we know isn’t the real comparison at hand here.
Realistically, most people just don’t care about the CCS/NACS debate.
Right, which is why I specifically didn’t have it. So let’s not start it, because there’s no debate to be had. One is superior to the other, and it isn’t NACS. That’s entirely separate from the conversation being had right now.
claim CCS was the reason everything was bad
Nope. Charger reliability has nothing to do with the connector, stop here. Do not pass go. It was the chargers, not the connectors. The connector decision was one of convenience because Tesla has a reliable network when used with a Tesla.
What I’m suggesting here is that companies are prepared to use the NACS connector, as published by SAE. They announced this because Tesla’s network exists now and we didn’t know what was going to happen with NEVI funds. Now most of those funds have been allocated (if not all?), and since all of those sites are going to get Combo 1 connectors as well as NACS, it’s conceivable to me that they announced NACS to hype things up for a while, and the option to pull out is always there. They have zero requirement to use NACS on either chargers or vehicles, they simply may choose to. There’s been quite a swing in perception of supporting a certain CEO in the past 6 months that might not be as appealing to a lot of people, so it may not be the selling point it would have.
Crucially, the cable swap is a non-issue, because the chargers will all use the CCS communication protocol. NACS uses the J1772 pins for sensing and initiating charging, and CCS adds an extra communication layer which Tesla has built into their cars since mid-2019 or something when Europe switched to CCS Combo 2 as the EU standard.
I’m not personally a promoter of the NACS connector for lots of reasons nobody cares about, but I’m glad we’ve at least landed on the common communication protocol. If all these chargers started popping up in 2024 with CCS Combo 1 connectors, I wonder how many of these other brands would actually migrate to the NACS wand versus just continuing on with Combo 1 forever. I’m not convinced any of them really care either, and it’s just a matter of convenience for customers. Without the necessity to rely on Tesla’s charging network, that convenience sort of evaporates. Add in an adapter for NACS to CCS, and I think the whole issue goes away.
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They haven’t switched yet, though. And that’s one of the points I’m making. They have said they’re switching in 2025. To me, that sounded a lot like they were waiting to see what happened with chargers in US and Canada. Announcing charger support for it is also not a meaningful announcement since you really only need to change the cable end. It’s like saying I now support winter boots. I didn’t change my feet, so it’s not a meaningful statement.
The number of EVs sold isn’t an argument that’s going to sway me. As I’ve said, I have technical reasons I don’t like the NACS connector. If everyone sticks to the current announced plan, then we get DCFC with both connectors and nobody really cares. But if the charger manufacturers and EV manufacturers decide to drop NACS as a whole, I don’t think anybody will know or care in 3-4 years time outside of Tesla owners that need an adapter to access other brands chargers.
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I clearly said they all announced it was happening in 2025, so obviously linking to their announcements isn’t really going to change anything.
The thing they are doing is trying to equip their cars with the port for the chargers that their customer will use. What I’m saying is if the NACS adoption doesn’t take off my charger manufacturers, then auto manufacturers have no incentive to adopt it either. That’s the remaining question mark. Regardless, Combo 1 connectors are going to be on those chargers because that’s what every other brand has on their cars.
deleted by creator
Consider why these companies have decided to transition to an NACS port. Because they want their customers to gain access to chargers that exist, and those chargers are operated by Tesla. Now, imagine that in 2024 we start seeing NEVI funded chargers installed around the country, and those chargers have fewer NACS connectors than CCS Combo, or they have no NACS connectors. What do you think the auto manufacturers would do? They haven’t signed any kind of contract requiring they use NACS, they’ve simply announced that they plan to in 2025.
In other words, if there’s no convenience improvement to deploying NACS ports because new charger sites don’t have a majority of NACS connectors, then they wouldn’t do it. They’d simply keep equipping vehicles with Combo 1 ports.
Yes. Because today that network is by far the largest in the US, and almost certainly in Canada. But the US is funding deployment of new chargers every 50 miles, so you can see where brands other than Tesla might outnumber Tesla over the next few years.
Buying new plastic bits from an injection molding company doesn’t require an insane lead time, and the existence of contracts really isn’t meaningful in any way. There is almost guaranteed to be language in supplier contracts that allows both parties to back out as long as they keep a dollar spend level or pay a small penalty. This kind of thing happens all the time during qualification and testing.
Why? If there was a compelling reason to not use NACS, why would anybody continue charging ahead?
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I disagree. They’ve added 21 in the past year in the US, so let’s call it 2 per month on average for 2023. The plan for several states I’m interested in will outpace that immediately. I don’t know where you got 1.5 sites per day, but that’s absolutely not the case in any way. It’s not even 1.5 stalls per day, instead it’s 0.624 stalls per day. Can you tell me where you got that number from, because 1.5 sites per day would be 548 sites per year and with an average of 10 stalls per site they’ve installed this past year that’s 5479 stalls. Back of the envelope math should have sounded wrong to you.
Again, your Tesla number is extremely wrong. You should go back to the supercharge.info site, go to the changes list, and switch to “add”. Lots of Tesla sites have been in planning and permitting for years, and to be frank until something Tesla says actually exists in the world it’s not worth much.
Maybe.
There’s a couple I can think of off the top of my head. Can you not?
You’re comparing to existing EA chargers, which we know isn’t the real comparison at hand here.
Right, which is why I specifically didn’t have it. So let’s not start it, because there’s no debate to be had. One is superior to the other, and it isn’t NACS. That’s entirely separate from the conversation being had right now.
Nope. Charger reliability has nothing to do with the connector, stop here. Do not pass go. It was the chargers, not the connectors. The connector decision was one of convenience because Tesla has a reliable network when used with a Tesla.
What I’m suggesting here is that companies are prepared to use the NACS connector, as published by SAE. They announced this because Tesla’s network exists now and we didn’t know what was going to happen with NEVI funds. Now most of those funds have been allocated (if not all?), and since all of those sites are going to get Combo 1 connectors as well as NACS, it’s conceivable to me that they announced NACS to hype things up for a while, and the option to pull out is always there. They have zero requirement to use NACS on either chargers or vehicles, they simply may choose to. There’s been quite a swing in perception of supporting a certain CEO in the past 6 months that might not be as appealing to a lot of people, so it may not be the selling point it would have.