I don't know how to feel about this. Honestly, I think CCS is a perfectly fine solution that was basically the de-facto standard anyways for many years (everyone was on it except Tesla).
But if swapping to NACS provides consumers and manufacturers less resistance to swapping to electric, that isn't a bad thing.
As long as we have inter-operability that isn't a nightmare, it's fine.
The main concern for me is that this may very well allow Tesla to gatekeep the entire NA EV/EVSE market, since they still control the patents around NACS, and their pledge has carve-outs allows them to exclude pretty much every major player for one reason or another.
(I am also assuming that adapters well be relatively available in the 2+ years til implementation, so the CCS2-equiped fleet isn't left out in the cold)
If they were willing to release it under an OSHW license with a non-revocable patent grant, I'd be fine with it. I agree that Tesla superchargers do tend to provide a better UX than their competition, some of that is vertical synergy, but a good portion of it is the competition just not being up to snuff.
But of course it's going to provide more resistance. As you say, CCS was the obvious standard -- everyone (except Tesla) building a car was using CCS, and everyone (including Tesla) building chargers going forward was using CCS. You could buy a car with CCS and be confident you were buying the standard, well-supported thing. You could install CCS chargers in your garage, apartment complex, business parking lot, etc. and be confident that you were installing the standard, well-supported thing.
Now all that's up in the air. If you were planning to install chargers at home or in your business, it's not clear what kind you should install, so you just won't. If you were on the fence about buying an EV, it's now not clear whether your EV will be compatible with future chargers (without requiring a stupid dongle adapter that you have to haul around and pop out of your trunk every time you stop to charge), and you might just put that on hold.
(This is particularly egregious for Ford/GM, since their CEOs have announced that they think NACS is the path forward, and they make zero NACS cars and will not make any NACS cars until 2025. They just osborned their entire lineup, great move, real awesome strategy there.)
The uncertainty caused by backtracking from the vision of CCS as universal standard is awful, and may slow the EV transition by years. (But it's great for Tesla, inasmuch as a standards-compliant non-vendor-dependent charging network helps Tesla's competitors, and so slowing down that buildout makes Tesla stronger.)
If NACS outnumbers CCS enough in marketshare, it will become a defacto standard and everybody in conversational usage will just call it a "standard" instead of "defacto standard".
Whether that threshold has actually been reached and NACS is truly a defacto standard today may be debated.
1. If CCS took off as the standard (which it was extremely going to), then Tesla having an awkward proprietary charging port makes using a Tesla annoying, and they'd eventually have to transition over to CCS for their cars. It's like Apple having to switch from Lightning to USB-C -- an annoying transition that angers your early customers and makes them feel abandoned.
2. They have a giant network of NACS chargers. To receive federal subsidies, they have been planning to convert those to CCS. The argument they're going to make now -- helped by headlines like this inaccurate one -- is that NACS is the "real" standard, and the government should change the rules so that they subsidize NACS chargers. Then they can continue to make NACS-only chargers that don't support CCS, while taking taxpayer dollars to do so. (The government as of right now still holds the position that CCS is the official standard, and any charger receiving subsidy money needs to support CCS, but will that position hold up with GM and Ford joining Tesla in lobbying for NACS?)
They don’t, but they’ll be able to capitalize on this by opening up their charging infrastructure and also make it so that more and more non Tesla public charging stations will be able to support their customer base.
So far it’s looking like VW and Hyundai/Kia may be left out in the cold, especially if there’s no adapter made for NACS/CCS for those brands (GM/Ford are getting some made so they’ll be fine).
The adapters shouldn't be a big deal. All new Teslas are able to use the CCS protocol over the NACS port and any new chargers implementing NACS will likely use it as well so any dumb adapter should work perfectly fine with a 3rd party NACS charger. GM/Ford additionally may have some special sauce that will let them use superchargers but that's somewhat of a separate issue.
CCS is the big DC pins at the bottom. Ford and GM home charging happens via J-1772, the smaller AC pins. Tesla re-uses pins for both AC and DC which is a big part of why their handles are so much smaller than CCS Combo 1.
There are plenty of adaptors for Tesla <--> J-1772 already on the market. A popular one is called TeslaTap for J-1772 to connect to Tesla wallboxes and destination chargers.
A big downside of both J-1772 and NACS is they don't support 3-phase power. Type-2 in europe is very similar to J-1772 and will happily use 3-phase thanks to some extra pins. Not a big deal for home users, but operators of EV fleets could find 3-phase charging overnight very useful.
The answer here is: Yes. People are being weird pedants about J1772 vs. CCS to try to confuse this answer, but if you have a home J1772 adapter that plugs into your CCS car, and you get an NACS car in the future, you'll need to use an adapter.
There is no current V2H/V2L functionality on any NACS car, and nobody is sure how/if it would work. How Ford will handle that functionality on a hypothetical CCS-based F150 Lightning remains to be seen.
[+] [-] Night_Thastus|2 years ago|reply
But if swapping to NACS provides consumers and manufacturers less resistance to swapping to electric, that isn't a bad thing.
As long as we have inter-operability that isn't a nightmare, it's fine.
[+] [-] kj4ips|2 years ago|reply
(I am also assuming that adapters well be relatively available in the 2+ years til implementation, so the CCS2-equiped fleet isn't left out in the cold)
If they were willing to release it under an OSHW license with a non-revocable patent grant, I'd be fine with it. I agree that Tesla superchargers do tend to provide a better UX than their competition, some of that is vertical synergy, but a good portion of it is the competition just not being up to snuff.
[+] [-] mkozlows|2 years ago|reply
Now all that's up in the air. If you were planning to install chargers at home or in your business, it's not clear what kind you should install, so you just won't. If you were on the fence about buying an EV, it's now not clear whether your EV will be compatible with future chargers (without requiring a stupid dongle adapter that you have to haul around and pop out of your trunk every time you stop to charge), and you might just put that on hold.
(This is particularly egregious for Ford/GM, since their CEOs have announced that they think NACS is the path forward, and they make zero NACS cars and will not make any NACS cars until 2025. They just osborned their entire lineup, great move, real awesome strategy there.)
The uncertainty caused by backtracking from the vision of CCS as universal standard is awful, and may slow the EV transition by years. (But it's great for Tesla, inasmuch as a standards-compliant non-vendor-dependent charging network helps Tesla's competitors, and so slowing down that buildout makes Tesla stronger.)
[+] [-] activiation|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jasode|2 years ago|reply
The Bloomberg article is describing a defacto USA Standard while omitting the word "defacto":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_facto_standard
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_facto
If NACS outnumbers CCS enough in marketshare, it will become a defacto standard and everybody in conversational usage will just call it a "standard" instead of "defacto standard".
Whether that threshold has actually been reached and NACS is truly a defacto standard today may be debated.
[+] [-] josephcsible|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sp332|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Pwntastic|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yieldcrv|2 years ago|reply
if so, that makes me happy
[+] [-] baggachipz|2 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/15/tesla-chargers-publ...
[+] [-] throwaway5959|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshl32532|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkozlows|2 years ago|reply
1. If CCS took off as the standard (which it was extremely going to), then Tesla having an awkward proprietary charging port makes using a Tesla annoying, and they'd eventually have to transition over to CCS for their cars. It's like Apple having to switch from Lightning to USB-C -- an annoying transition that angers your early customers and makes them feel abandoned.
2. They have a giant network of NACS chargers. To receive federal subsidies, they have been planning to convert those to CCS. The argument they're going to make now -- helped by headlines like this inaccurate one -- is that NACS is the "real" standard, and the government should change the rules so that they subsidize NACS chargers. Then they can continue to make NACS-only chargers that don't support CCS, while taking taxpayer dollars to do so. (The government as of right now still holds the position that CCS is the official standard, and any charger receiving subsidy money needs to support CCS, but will that position hold up with GM and Ford joining Tesla in lobbying for NACS?)
[+] [-] dogma1138|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway5959|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] enragedcacti|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] sp332|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theluketaylor|2 years ago|reply
There are plenty of adaptors for Tesla <--> J-1772 already on the market. A popular one is called TeslaTap for J-1772 to connect to Tesla wallboxes and destination chargers.
A big downside of both J-1772 and NACS is they don't support 3-phase power. Type-2 in europe is very similar to J-1772 and will happily use 3-phase thanks to some extra pins. Not a big deal for home users, but operators of EV fleets could find 3-phase charging overnight very useful.
[+] [-] mkozlows|2 years ago|reply
There is no current V2H/V2L functionality on any NACS car, and nobody is sure how/if it would work. How Ford will handle that functionality on a hypothetical CCS-based F150 Lightning remains to be seen.
[+] [-] josephcsible|2 years ago|reply