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CCS Adapter for North America

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Wow. I have some shocking news for you. The whole of the United States is not exactly like the bay area of California.
I'm guilty of mixing that up 😅 Only in the past few posts, I realized that the "navigate to a CCS, then put a Supercharger ahead of it" trick (I use multiple times a week) wouldn't work outside the SC-dense Bay Area. If the SC is too far ahead in nav, it'll just figure it's got way more time than it needs to preheat, and it just won't bother.

Not even a switch to say "this is a charging station", but even just having a switch buried in the settings page to say "i'd like a warm battery please" (or not!). That'd be nice...
 
IIRC (I took that picture a few weeks ago), this is the EA station in question:
View attachment 867213

This is an area where EA has way better coverage than Tesla.
Uh, for those interested, NONE of the chargers shown here are Tesla. The ones fully in frame are 3 EA and 1 EVgo (the right most of fully in frame). The ones cut off are EVgo (bottom and right) and EA (top right sliver). I had/have a "100kW+ only" filter active for this view that cuts out a few dealership/public DCFCs. The nearest tesla charger is just off screen to the right, and there's another one just off screen to the south.

This will likely become more normal in the future... I can't see just Tesla building new stations fast enough.
 
I'm guilty of mixing that up 😅 Only in the past few posts, I realized that the "navigate to a CCS, then put a Supercharger ahead of it" trick (I use multiple times a week) wouldn't work outside the SC-dense Bay Area. If the SC is too far ahead in nav, it'll just figure it's got way more time than it needs to preheat, and it just won't bother.
Yeah, the main route I need near me to go to the CCS station is over 100 miles to the nearest Supercharger, so I don't consider them "near each other".
 
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I'm guilty of mixing that up 😅 Only in the past few posts, I realized that the "navigate to a CCS, then put a Supercharger ahead of it" trick (I use multiple times a week) wouldn't work outside the SC-dense Bay Area. If the SC is too far ahead in nav, it'll just figure it's got way more time than it needs to preheat, and it just won't bother.

Not even a switch to say "this is a charging station", but even just having a switch buried in the settings page to say "i'd like a warm battery please" (or not!). That'd be nice...

Sometimes the opposite is true. At low speed (e.g., less than say 100 kW) DC fast chargers that are common in the CCS/CHAdeMO world, you'd like the ability to avoid the battery heating. Bjorn did a video on this last winter:
 
seems like something similar to preconditioning for a supercharger is coming in 2022.40. will be interesting to see how they implement this and how well it works...


During DC fast charging, the thermal system controls have been optimized for each charging station’s power capability, improving both charging and on-route battery preconditioning efficiency. This results in fast charge time and reduced energy costs.
 
Sometimes the opposite is true. At low speed (e.g., less than say 100 kW) DC fast chargers that are common in the CCS/CHAdeMO world, you'd like the ability to avoid the battery heating. Bjorn did a video on this last winter:
When driving the Ring Road around Iceland in the summer of 2021, we really could've used preconditioning of the battery. At the time, most of the 3rd party CCS chargers were only 50 kW max. Since the speed limits in Iceland are relatively low and the temperatures are cool or cold (even in July), the battery was never the optimum temperature when using 3rd party CCS. The 50 kW stations would actually deliver 38 kW maximum whenever we plugged in. After an hour or so, it would eventually ramp up to 50 kW. Whenever we chatted with the locals, they all complained about the inability to precondition the battery.

Since July 2021, Tesla has added several new Superchargers which make the drive around Iceland much easier but it's still necessary to use 3rd party CCS charging stations at times. We've needed to go off the Supercharger network in our Teslas stateside. Now that we have CCS compatibility on two of our three Teslas, we still would really like to see an option to enable preconditioning, no matter what the speed of the CCS charging station.
 
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When driving the Ring Road around Iceland in the summer of 2021, we really could've used preconditioning of the battery. At the time, most of the 3rd party CCS chargers were only 50 kW max. Since the speed limits in Iceland are relatively low and the temperatures are cool or cold (even in July), the battery was never the optimum temperature when using 3rd party CCS. The 50 kW stations would actually deliver 38 kW maximum whenever we plugged in. After an hour or so, it would eventually ramp up to 50 kW. Whenever we chatted with the locals, they all complained about the inability to precondition the battery.
I suspect you were seeing 38 kW because the chargers were limited to either 100A or because they were limited to 125A and several kW were being used by the car to run the battery heater. Your charging voltage was probably not much more than 350V initially on a low state of charge and 350V x 125A is only 43 kW. Your battery is inherently capable of receiving much more than 38 kW of power even when not preconditioned to ~120F as long as the pack temperature is greater than, for example, 60F.
 
I stopped at a bunch going north to Seattle and there was none, but I paid the $4 for the month so it was at least cheaper to charge than it would have been otherwise.

Felt bad at a couple where there were CCS only cars waiting on us Teslas with CCS adapters charging at their cheaper pricing. Probably would have felt worse if I didn't then discover free DCFC at the new Willows rest area just up the road they could have used. Outside California I haven't seen any EV charging traffic at all.
 
I stopped at a bunch going north to Seattle and there was none, but I paid the $4 for the month so it was at least cheaper to charge than it would have been otherwise.

Felt bad at a couple where there were CCS only cars waiting on us Teslas with CCS adapters charging at their cheaper pricing. Probably would have felt worse if I didn't then discover free DCFC at the new Willows rest area just up the road they could have used. Outside California I haven't seen any EV charging traffic at all.
Did you go to the one in Springfield, OR? That one always seems to be full whenever I go, but half the stalls have been busted for like 2-3 years now at that location.
 
Did you go to the one in Springfield, OR? That one always seems to be full whenever I go, but half the stalls have been busted for like 2-3 years now at that location.
I charged at the Springfield SC on 1/6 and it seemed all the stalls were functional(I didn't check each myself but there were cars coming and going and nobody plugged in and then immediately switched to a different stall). Additionally the SC north of Springfield by the Harrisburg exit for I5 is a nice little spot with wine tasting and a burger trailer.
 
Any reports of EA offering free charging for the holiday weekend?
Obviously my reply is months late, but it's worth checking these:
along w/Plugshare's activity feed to see if anyone has reported complimentary sessions.
 
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I charged at the Springfield SC on 1/6 and it seemed all the stalls were functional(I didn't check each myself but there were cars coming and going and nobody plugged in and then immediately switched to a different stall). Additionally the SC north of Springfield by the Harrisburg exit for I5 is a nice little spot with wine tasting and a burger trailer.
I wasn't talking about the SC, I was talking about the EA chargers down the street at Gateway Mall.