The Switch From CCS1 To Tesla's NACS Connector Is Expected To Kill The J1772 AC Plug
The Switch From CCS1 To Tesla's NACS Connector Is Expected To Kill The J1772 AC Plug
I was wondering with all the talk of NACS, what would happen to J1772. I think I found the answer, unless folks here see it differently. Thanks!
“The only thing better than perfect, is standardized.”
-Technology Connections
I expect 10-15 years of dongle hell as we wait for the old cars to reach end-of-life. Then once everything's settled down, battery chemistry improvements will prompt a migration to the MCS connector for faster DC charging.
Though Tesla is claiming "up to 1MW" for the connector. Perhaps 100 kWh in 6 minutes is good enough for the foreseeable future of passenger road vehicles, even if MCS would be ~4X faster.
Tesla is completely full of it with the 1MW claim. Period. Look at their work on MCS and you'll see what's needed for 1MW charging.
Keep in mind, that claim includes the modifications done to the NACS plug to fix the problems with the Tesla plug.
Also, at those power draw rates, the power transmission to the charger becomes the biggest problem, maybe second to heat dissipation.
Tesla also claimed FSD "this year" for past better part of the decade. In theory you can charge your battery with whatever voltage and/or current you want... dissipating heat on the other hand is a real problem that kills chemistry. Then again, Tesla doesn't consider spontaneously combusting cars an issue so...
What is this spontaneous combustion FUD?
Currently kia and Hyundai owners are currently being told not to park their cars in the garage as they are recalled for catching on fire, but somehow it's Tesla that doesn't care about burnimg cars.
In the future, cars might store energy in nanosupercapacitors, but we'll still be stuck with NACS. The ultimate physical limits of the connector are what matters today.
Still going to have ac charging at homes and parking lots. I think DC charging at gas station like businesses will be common, but the majority of charging will still be done at home.
What is the currently maximum available performance of NACS?
CCS is designed up to 1000V and 500A. Charging stations offer typically up to 350 kW.
What do the available NACS charging stations offer? As I remember Tesla is only using 400V batteries, so with 500A they only get up to 200kW.
So the switch to NACS sounds like a performance downgrade. But yes: probably a usability upgrade but at the cost of longer charging times.
Is Tesla planning to switch to 800V too? So they can deliver more performance?
Looks like there is a 1000V variant. I'm guessing there just aren't any chargers built with it yet.
North American Charging Standard Technical Specification 6. Ratings 6.1 Voltage Rating The North American Charging Standard exists in both a 500V rated configuration and a 1,000V rated configuration. The 1,000V version is mechanically backwards compatible (i.e. 500V inlets can mate with 1,000V connectors and 500V connectors can mate with 1,000V inlets)
NACS standard specification Tesla published actually included modifications to the Tesla plug to allow for higher voltages. The current Tesla connectors on all the superchargers can't do 800V safely.
Edit: correction from below.
Specification. Tesla published a specification. It can't publish a standard, since it isn't a standards body. J3400 will be the standard based on the specification published by Tesla after checking and possible refinements. Nitpicky, yes, but also not. Since standardization includes stuff like governance agreements, governance organization, Patent and IP licensing clearance and so on. The technical spec is only part and maybe simplest part of the standard. The really important part is the legal and contractual matter, so that when standards body does officially adopt standard everyone can use it with confidence of knowing under what terms and payment said standard is offered and that there will be no lawsuits waiting to jump out in the bushes.
Also theoretically there can be technical differences between J3400 and Tesla connector, if those changes are done in backwards compatible fashion to Tesla's earlier plug. Not out of having to, but out of it being desired feature for utilization of existing infrastructure.
Whole point of J3400 is it isn't the "Tesla plug" anymore, it is a plug governed by Society of Automotive Engineers. It just happened to originate from specification developed by Tesla originally.
Just like how the European Type 2 plug is sometimes called Mennekes, since Mennekes Elektrotechnik GmbH & Co. KG was the original designer. However officially and governance wise it is now the Type 2. It is governed by IEC, not by Mennekes anymore.
IIRC, Tesla claims their connector is rated for 1kV as well, and at a slightly higher total power rating than NACS. They haven't actually fielded chargers above 400V, though. It seems though that the general consensus is that the NACS connector is actually more or equally capable overall compared to the CCS (J1772) connector, in a smaller form-factor. At first I thought it was a pretty odd switch, but now that it's an open standard managed by SAE and the specs seem to be at worst comparable... it's not exactly a bad idea for the OEMs to use it.
Actually, it’s not just another plug. The fact that the same Pins are used for AC and DC charging adds a little bit more complexity to the car. Either you need additional switches in the car to separate the Onboard AC-Charger from the charging port, or the AC-Charger must be designed to withstand an DC input on its AC-Input contacts. That probably won’t be the biggest problem when the DC-voltage is just around 400V, as the AC-voltage is not that far away.
But if you switch to 800V Batteries (which most of the industry is doing), that probably could get more challenging, as the AC-charging-voltage won’t change.
We‘ll see what the car industries solution will be.
While they are only 400v, at least here in Europe we get up to 250kW charging for a short while. But that is why CCS2
NACS is just a different plug - ccs1 is still the protocol used, so it’s just going to be dongle-hell for North America for the next 15-20 years.
Here in the rest of the WWW, our standards stay standardized.
*In North America
Indeed. In Europe all chargers have CCS2.
All cars come with CCS2 as well, except for some very old cars, which carry a CCS2 adapter.
Europe never used J1772, so that standard won't be replaced over here. Europe standardised IEC 62196 Type 2 (the "Mennekes" plug) in 2013, so the whole question doesn't apply to the EU.
Japan will keep using J1772