Charged EVs | Whatever happens to Tesla, adopting its NACS connector won’t solve EV charger reliability problems

The poor reliability of public EV chargers is an industry-wide scandal. A yr in the past, when legacy automakers began adopting Tesla’s NACS charging system, many appeared to imagine that this may quickly remedy all the issues. Extra sober observers instructed us that one of many essential causes Tesla’s Superchargers have been so dependable is that automobiles, chargers and community had been all managed by a single firm—and that benefit was all the time going to vanish as quickly as different manufacturers’ EVs began utilizing the Superchargers.

Right here at Charged, we had been additionally skeptical in regards to the knowledge of granting a lot energy over the charging scene to anyone firm (particularly one with a unfastened cannon on the helm). These considerations had been arguably validated this week when Tesla reportedly laid off its entire Supercharger team and threw the {industry} into turmoil.

It stays to be seen how the shock transfer will have an effect on Tesla and different {industry} gamers, however no matter finally ends up taking place, Tesla’s NACS has morphed into SAE J3400, and it isn’t going away. Interoperability testing has been happening for months, and can proceed. One of many corporations on the heart of that is EcoG, which gives an working system that powers EV chargers from many various manufacturers.

“Tesla is doing higher as a result of there you might have this single entity controlling each the charger and the car,” EcoG CEO Joerg Heuer instructed Charged in a current interview (which happened earlier than the newest Tesla information). “Most individuals look to the charger, however we additionally look to the car. We offer a Reliability Index for vehicles, and we plan to publish the second version someday later this yr.”

“Proper now, we’re a panorama with about 100 charging station producers and a rising variety of EV producers,” stated Heuer. “Tesla may check its EVs with 5 to 10 charger varieties, however the broader problem is far more complicated. To realize a very seamless charging expertise for any EV driver, we’re tasked with making certain that each electrical automotive can use any charging station. Reaching this interoperability means testing over 500 completely different combos of vehicles and chargers.”

One factor that can hopefully facilitate interoperability over the approaching years is the truth that NACS/J3400 just isn’t radically completely different from CCS. “The plug is kind of completely different, however all of the processing behind it’s fairly comparable,” Heuer explains. “That’s additionally the rationale why in Europe they will simply use a CCS plug, and in US they’ve these adapters. In fact, within the foreground, it seems to be very completely different as a result of the plug seems to be completely different. However within the background, the automation, the actually complicated stuff, that’s fairly comparable.”

“About two weeks after the announcement that Ford would undertake NACS, a buyer of ours simply added a Tesla cable to their CCS station, and the factor labored with a Tesla car,” Heuer instructed us. “That’s the good factor. It’s not this competitors between CHAdeMO and CCS, which had been actually completely completely different programs. In comparison with CHAdeMO, I might say 90% or 95% is absolutely the identical between CCS and NACS.”

Some discover it ironic that in Europe, Tesla adopted the CCS plug, whereas within the US, car OEMs and EVSE producers are adopting the Tesla plug. Heuer explains that there are a number of causes for that. “One cause is that in Europe, now we have a three-phase AC system, so this may be a shortcoming of the Tesla plug as a result of then they might solely be capable of cost one section. In Europe, we might then be restricted to 3 kilowatts in most international locations, perhaps most seven. That’s one bodily facet.”

A second distinction between the North American and European markets is that the latter has developed in a much less vertically-integrated method. “The networks began fairly early with roaming and so forth—it was not so depending on what community or mobility service supplier you contracted with. So the benefit Tesla had in comparison with the remainder of the networks was not so important.”

Supply: EcoG