Opening the North American charging standard

Tesla said in May that it would be adding CCS adapters to its Supercharger stations, already used in Europe: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;electrek.co&#x2F;2022&#x2F;05&#x2F;10&#x2F;tesla-add-ccs-connectors-supercharger-stations-us-elon-musk&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;electrek.co&#x2F;2022&#x2F;05&#x2F;10&#x2F;tesla-add-ccs-connectors-supe...</a><p>Now they&#x27;re trying to declare their own charger as a &quot;standard&quot;, after launching a $250 adapter in September to use the <i>actual</i> standard plug?<p>Also, obligatory Technology Connections video: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=sZOuz_laH9I" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=sZOuz_laH9I</a>

Hilarious to call their thing the &quot;North American Charging Standard&quot; when every other manufacturer in North America has already standardized on something else.

Tesla is at least 5 years late here, maybe more like 10. All of the US federal funds will likely go to CCS now because they stuck to the proprietary network strategy, despite the OBVIOUS and natural social utility from an open industry-wide standard and charging networks open to all.<p>For reference here is the DOT&#x27;s NPRM from June laying out the proposed requirements for states to receive federal funds from the infrastructure package: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.federalregister.gov&#x2F;documents&#x2F;2022&#x2F;06&#x2F;22&#x2F;2022-12704&#x2F;national-electric-vehicle-infrastructure-formula-program" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.federalregister.gov&#x2F;documents&#x2F;2022&#x2F;06&#x2F;22&#x2F;2022-12...</a>

I don&#x27;t see anything new here (other than the name).<p>For those who don&#x27;t know there are two charging connecters used for new electric cars in the US: Tesla (now called NACS and only used on Teslas) and CCS (used by everyone else). There&#x27;s nothing here to indicate that that&#x27;s changing and it feels like a move by Tesla to try turning around the momentum in a format war they&#x27;re losing, even if they have a wider installed base today

What legal guarantee is there that Tesla won&#x27;t reverse course in the future? Say a charging station or car manufacturer adopts this connector and then in 5 years Tesla says &quot;well actually, we&#x27;ve got these patents and we&#x27;re going to start charging you to sell cars&#x2F;charging stations&quot;? Publishing the specs and saying &quot;we won&#x27;t enforce patents&quot; isn&#x27;t a legally binding guarantee

For context, North America&#x27;s current &quot;standard&quot; is CCS1, which is not the same as Europe, which uses CCS2. So North America already has its own weird plug. The Tesla plug is definitely better from a usability perspective. Very curious to see if there is a major technical advantage for one or the other.

I wish they had gotten more serious about this sooner. They had talked about offering the plug and network to other manufacturers before but there wasn&#x27;t any movement on it. I expect that now it&#x27;s too late and we&#x27;ll be stuck with terrible CCS forever, but I&#x27;d be happy to be wrong.

&gt; It has no moving parts, is half the size, and twice as powerful as Combined Charging System (CCS) connectors.<p>It&#x27;s just a connector. Why did CCS have to be twice as big then? What&#x27;s the tradeoff CCS took?<p>Edit: I just looked up a size comparison of CCS vs Tesla&#x2F;NACS and <i>what the heck happened</i>...

Why is CCS so absolutely enormous and so technically limited? What&#x27;s the story behind how it got so bad? There must be some kind of trade-off Tesla took that CCS didn&#x27;t?

It sounds like folks are assuming this will be free for implementors and license universally with little restriction. Nothing in this press release says it&#x27;s free. &quot;open&quot; could just mean &quot;open to apply&quot;, for example. &quot; We invite charging network operators and vehicle manufacturers to put the Tesla charging connector...&quot; could be read as an invitation to negotiate.<p>I expect licensing terms to be announced, and I bet you large users will have to pay.

Yay—wish they did this sooner. Anyone know if this is one of those “we will give you a royalty-free license to use our patent for this if you promise never to sue us?”

How much cheaper is it to build a vehicle with the NACS port vs J1772 port? If the build savings are enough, I foresee manufactures making the switch.

Wow. Awesome!<p>I hope Ford and other EV Manufacturers make retrofit kits though - and similar for the charging stations already deployed. Lugging an adapter for all non-Tesla EVs before the, what, 2024 model year would be irritating. Assuming, of course, they are on board and this doesn&#x27;t turn into Betamax&#x2F;VHS, Blu-ray&#x2F;HD-DVD, or HDR10+&#x2F;Dolby Vision again.

This is starting to feel like... the XKCD meme about too many standards.<p>Everyone in North America that isn&#x27;t Tesla: CCS1<p>Telsa in North America: NACS<p>Everyone including Tesla in Europe: CCS2<p>Everyone in Japan: CHAdeMO<p>Everyone in China: GB&#x2F;T

I have to admit, taking your own closed, proprietary standard, then opening it up while single handedly declaring it the &quot;North America Charging Standard&quot; takes a level of chutzpah that would make, well, Elon Musk blush.

Awesome. This should be a world-wide standard. NACS (Tesla) VS CCS is like USB-A 1.0 vs USB-C with Power Delivery: CCS is unbelievably slow and clunky to the point where it might turn people off wanting an EV once they experience the slow and clunkiness.