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Charging Station standards

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Some "charging stations" offer other features besides GFCI including things like:


  • Clocks and timers that restrict charging to certain times of day. (I gather this is built into the Roadster though?)
  • Meters that tell you how much current has been used.
  • Simulated voices that tell you how long you have charged, how many kWh have been used, etc.
$3,000 seems excessive, but I wanted to point out that some charging stations do have a fair bit of "intelligence" and extra features built into them.

It isn't always just safety features.
 
When you unplug the cable you hear stuff (in a simulated voice) like:
"Power applied for 2 hours, 14 kilo-watt hours"
or
"Your EV did not request a charge"
or
"please press the stop button before disconnecting the EV", etc.

We can write some better ones. How about positive aspirations...

"Thank you for saving the planet."

"You have made a Saudi sad. Well done."

"And you never spilled a drop."
 
j1772.jpg


Ah yes, 11+ years and counting...

http://www.theautochannel.com/news/press/date/19980527/press012917.html
 
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If the proposed standard has been around for 11 years, why didn't Tesla adopt it? If there are competing proposed standards, why didn't Tesla select one of those?

From vfx' link, it seems that the J1772 connector is presently only designed for low to medium power charging.

This new Yazaki coupler will, however, be able to deliver much more than the former Level II power limit (6.6 kW), perhaps as much as 16-19 kW. This medium power capability is necessary in order to obtain reasonable charge times with upcoming long-range BEVs. Tesla Motors will be shipping their Roadster in 2008 with a 52 kWhr battery. With the former Level II charge limits of 6.6 kW, charge times for a 52 kWhr battery would become unreasonably long, perhaps as much as 7-8 hours. This charge time duration would extend beyond preferred late-evening low-cost Utility rate schedules, while a medium-power 3-4 hour charge could be scheduled to “fit” better into these upcoming schedules.

It is assumed that high power capable EVs (50+ kW) would now make use of a separate on-vehicle higher-power inlet standard that is yet to be developed. Overall, the attractiveness of all PHEVs and BEVs making use of an consistent, almost worldwide J1772-Yazaki-based low-to-medium power connection standard more than outweighs the loss of potential high power capability with the former Avcon connector. The need for and attractiveness of higher “fast charge” power capability for EVs is not yet proven to be necessary to market BEVs.

(emphasis mine)
 
The conspiracy theory I've heard is that established automakers have pushed for keeping the standard only capable of relatively low power in order to advantage plug-in hybrids over full EVs.

Or that they have bollocks up the works so that no standard has been decided on in 13 years throwing (yet another) wrench into the new EV paradigm.
 
From vfx' link, it seems that the J1772 connector is presently only designed for low to medium power charging.
(emphasis mine)

That's pretty disappointing, it's not even capable of the 4 hour charge in the Roadster, much less the 1 hour charge coming later. That means there is no incentive for Tesla to use this standardized connector.

I was hoping the standardized connector would be capable of high power charging so all it takes is a simple adapter for the 110V/220V and the connector can be used directly with an external charger for faster charges. Having two connectors will be a hassle, especially if the high power connector is likely to be standardized also sometime in the future.