CCS Adapter for North America

[RTPEV]

What GM is doing with EVgo is Autocharge, not Plug & Charge.

You set up an EVgo account and save your vehicle's MAC address to your EVgo account and that's it.

Next time, EVgo would recognize your vehicle's MAC address and bill your EVgo account.

The MAC address of what? The vehicle's WiFi hotspot?

It would be great if there were an alternative way to authenticate to charging stations that wouldn't require specific hardware support for Plug & Charge for cars that don't have it, but it seems like relying on a MAC address alone seems pretty insecure.

 

[jsight]

What GM is doing with EVgo is Autocharge, not Plug & Charge.

You set up an EVgo account and save your vehicle's MAC address to your EVgo account and that's it.

Next time, EVgo would recognize your vehicle's MAC address and bill your EVgo account.

Ah, yes, Autocharge... that's what I was thinking of but couldn't quite remember the specifics. Thanks for clarifying!

 

[MP3Mike]

The MAC address of what? The vehicle's WiFi hotspot?

No, the MAC address of the ethernet controller in your car that is used for the CCS communications.

It would be great if there were an alternative way to authenticate to charging stations that wouldn't require specific hardware support for Plug & Charge for cars that don't have it, but it seems like relying on a MAC address alone seems pretty insecure.

That is what AutoCharge is. (Insecure if you hack your car and change the MAC address on the CCS communication hardware... Though I guess on a homegrown CCS capable car they could emulate another vehicle, but they would have to have some way to capture your MAC address and know what charge network you have set it up with. So it seems fairly low risk to me.)

 

[israndy]

It seems odd to me that Rivian is going to try to build a network to rival Tesla's private network in this era of government funding of chargers that are available to all. I have been to all the new Rivian Free AC chargers in the Bay Area (not many yet) and it's NOT Rivians that are charging there (well, once it was). If they are focusing on putting chargers in outta the way places that Rivians would be more likely to go, why not just open them to everyone, but charge a premium for other cars using them. Use that money to open even more RAN chargers. Instead they seem to be giving away LOTS of AC power that is mostly not benefiting Rivian owners. The new RAN DCFC on Colorado has 4 DC stations for Rivians only, and 4 AC stations for all that are probably already busy after being open only a couple of days.

 

[Mockingbird]

It seems odd to me that Rivian is going to try to build a network to rival Tesla's private network in this era of government funding of chargers that are available to all. I have been to all the new Rivian Free AC chargers in the Bay Area (not many yet) and it's NOT Rivians that are charging there (well, once it was). If they are focusing on putting chargers in outta the way places that Rivians would be more likely to go, why not just open them to everyone, but charge a premium for other cars using them. Use that money to open even more RAN chargers. Instead they seem to be giving away LOTS of AC power that is mostly not benefiting Rivian owners. The new RAN DCFC on Colorado has 4 DC stations for Rivians only, and 4 AC stations for all that are probably already busy after being open only a couple of days.

Rivian really needs to rethink its business.

The company is billions in the red and rolling out a private charging network while the government is handing out billions to build public charging networks.

 

[MP3Mike]

It seems odd to me that Rivian is going to try to build a network to rival Tesla's private network in this era of government funding of chargers that are available to all.

I didn't think their plan is to compute with Tesla's network or the government funded ones. It is to put chargers in places that won't be covered by the other charging networks. But after looking at the map they provide it seems like they are trying to do both. (Which may end up being smart if EA can't solve their reliability problems.)

 

[SageBrush]

If they are focusing on putting chargers in outta the way places that Rivians would be more likely to go, why not just open them to everyone, but charge a premium for other cars using them.

Because they are selling exclusivity. This should not be too foreign to you.

 

[israndy]

No I get that, but the reason Tesla did it was because there WASN'T a nationwide network nor a DC charging standard when the Model S started shipping. Early S owners didn't know they could ever drive long distances w/o spending the night recharging.

The early CHAdeMO chargers were pretty rare, so Tesla did come out with an adapter, but they already had the technology to DC Fast Charge built in, and when Tesla started the Supercharging network it allowed a car that could go more than 200 miles on a charge to be used to cross the nation on electricity only. Left to the other auto makers there would never have been such a thing.

I get than you might wanna put trailhead chargers out there for off roading, but do they need to be DCFC? And why build an exclusive network when you could just partner with a network and pay to have them come up to your standards. Rivians can already charge at any public charger, what's having a few exclusive ones do for you in this day and age other than limit the growth of a single charging standard. Of course if CCS does fail I wouldn't be unhappy, Tesla cables are so much nicer, stations so much more reliable, in all the best places, just not 800/900 volts.

 

[Mockingbird]

Because they are selling exclusivity. This should not be too foreign to you.

Imagine if back in 2012, when Tesla was rolling out the Supercharger, there is $7.5 billion to rollout public EV charging stations.

I doubt Tesla would say, "No, I don't want it!".

 

[MP3Mike]

Imagine if back in 2012, when Tesla was rolling out the Supercharger, there is $7.5 billion to rollout public EV charging stations.

I doubt Tesla would say, "No, I don't want it!".

What is ridiculous is that Tesla probably hasn't spent any where near that much on their entire worldwide Supercharger network...

 

[avs007]

The MAC address of what? The vehicle's WiFi hotspot?

It would be great if there were an alternative way to authenticate to charging stations that wouldn't require specific hardware support for Plug & Charge for cars that don't have it, but it seems like relying on a MAC address alone seems pretty insecure.

That's not at all how plug and charge authenticates the car. It uses public key infrastructure.

Here is a brief overview of how plug and charge security works.

 

[MP3Mike]

That's not at all how plug and charge authenticates the car. It uses public key infrastructure.

Here is a brief overview of how plug and charge security works.

We weren't taking about Plug&Charge...

 

[Mockingbird]

What is ridiculous is that Tesla probably hasn't spent any where near that much on their entire worldwide Supercharger network...

Highly doubtful.

 

[MP3Mike]

Highly doubtful.

On the permits Tesla listed the value of the work for V2 sites at around $300k. They are now listing V3 sites with a value around $200k.

They only have ~3,500 sites, so you are saying that they spent over $2.1 million per site... (Or 7x what they said they cost.) Yeah, I don't think so...

 

[Mockingbird]

On the permits Tesla listed the value of the work for V2 sites at around $300k. They are now listing V3 sites with a value around $200k.

They only have ~3,500 sites, so you are saying that they spent over $2.1 million per site... (Or 7x what they said they cost.) Yeah, I don't think so...

There is no way a V3 Supercharger is $200k.

That number came from that stupid Forbes article written by a clueless author.

 

[Jeff N]

Tesla does this in Europe, so they can take shortcuts in the handshake, as well as exceed the 500A limitation, from what I heard.

That sounds like speculation.

The part about exceeding the 500A limitation is just a trivial extension of the CCS protocol — it already has an open-ended mechanism for requesting and acknowledging “arbitrary” voltage and amperage levels. Just don’t enforce the 500A limitation in the protocol implementation.

I’m not sure what “shortcuts in the handshake” means.

 

[israndy]

We weren't taking about Plug&Charge...

Well, technically no, we were talking about why Rivian was building a private charging network and the question of how are they preventing others from charging and people started discussing what protocol is being used on the Rivian stations

 

[avs007]

I’m not sure what “shortcuts in the handshake” means.

It means when a Tesla connects to a Tesla supercharger, it doesn't need to use CCS/PLC for the communications mechanism. It can use the Canbus based Tesla protocol.

 

[MP3Mike]

There is no way a V3 Supercharger is $200k.

That number came from that stupid Forbes article written by a clueless author.

Actually it comes from the permits that Tesla has pulled, just like I said. For example:

In some jurisdictions that only includes labor, but I thought in Oregon it had to include everything.

 

[MP3Mike]

And a smaller 8 stall: