International Electric-Car Charging-Plug Standards

[Rocky_H]

When we have a need for multi megawatt charging,

...which will not be applicable to the passenger vehicle market.

At that point, people will just toss out the old stuff and start over, and there will be a set of adapters to get the old cars to work with the new standards.

Those are going to be two entirely separate markets, so no, there won't be any need to make the big megawatt power connections for semi trucks fit with cars.

The same thing happened with NTSC (made to be backwards compatible with the old black and white TV) to ATSC (different enough that they just started over and gave anyone who wanted to keep using an old TV a converter box).

Television transmission is one market, not two separate ones, like this.

the old hardware is already too limiting.

It's not. We are already supporting about 300 kW with the existing connectors for passenger vehicles. Charging times are already down to about 15 minutes. It's not going to need ridiculous megawatt level charging. That 300 kW kind of level is fully sufficient from the connectors there. It's two other things in other areas that make the connector hardware not the issue:

1. Battery tapering. The connectors supplying 300 or 350 kW are fine, but vehicles can't accept it for very long. So that's where it's limited, and there really is room for more improvement--to receive what the connector can provide.
2. Cumbersome cable thickness. This is why there will need to be a distinction between large bulky cumbersome connectors versus what is smaller, lighter, more convenient, and easier to handle for the consumer market. Many things in many industries are like this. The big high power industrial versions of things are allowed to be big and bulky because they need it, while the public doesn't stand for that in consumer products. Cables as thick as your leg can't become a thing for regular car charging standards.

 

[Earl]

Think mobile 3G (UMTS vs EVDO which was never resolved) and it wasn't until a new generation of mobile standards (4G LTE) that everything converged.

That only converged because the company who had the proprietary standard (IS-95 CDMA) put out of business everyone who was trying to fight in the competitive GSM business.

Television transmission is one market, not two separate ones, like this.

As I recall, there were at least 3 different, non-compatible old analog Television standards: NTSC (USA), PAL (Europe), and SECAM (I don't recall where all)

The changes to charging equipment is rapidly evolving, the old hardware is already too limiting.

Please explain? How are Superchargers limiting today, other than not being always exactly where I want them - and that's not a technical limitation?

I figure we'll get a standard supercharger connection shortly after we get a standard electrical grid service and connector. You'll know what I mean if you travel internationally.

 

[Earl]

Anyone working on a unified connector?

Great! Now we'll have a 5th non-interoperable competing standard to go along with the 4 that currently exist. :-(

 

[tps5352]

Anyone working on a unified connector?

The next generation of connector will likely be unified. Think mobile 3G (UMTS vs EVDO which was never resolved) and it wasn't until a new generation of mobile standards (4G LTE) that everything converged.

Exactly.
The changes to charging equipment is rapidly evolving, the old hardware is already too limiting.

Great! Now we'll have a 5th non-interoperable competing standard to go along with the 4 that currently exist. :-(

The best we can hope for is unified per continent. We are already too far along, where different large regions of the world have established infrastructure and plug types, where Type1 and Type2 are totally fine for where they are and are not going to change.

What happened with that

GB/T (China) + CHAdeMO (Japan) = ChaoJi (CHAdeMO 3.0)​

standard that we have been hearing about occasionally for a few years? Thst might have helped unify two major, and hence eventually the minor, Asian countries somewhat? (I must assume from the apparent general lack of news that it has failed to catch on or had some sorts of problems?)

Because of the regional differences in electrical infrastructure (not to mention geopolitical power struggles, politics, and egos), it is probably unrealistic to expect anything close to a globally-unified standard in the near future. But it would arguably be helpful (for manufacturers and their customers) to at least have single Asian, North American, and European standards that all car brands used regionally. The conclusions by Rocky_H in Post #95 appear, unfortunately, right on the mark to me.

 

[Rocky_H]

As I recall, there were at least 3 different, non-compatible old analog Television standards: NTSC (USA), PAL (Europe), and SECAM (I don't recall where all)

That ties with what I mentioned above about charging standards, where it becomes reasonable to get to a unified standard per large continent of the world, but sometimes doesn't have enough drive to get to one single one worldwide.

The ChaoJi is an interesting one. In North America, CHAdeMO was just allowed to die and disappear, but it has too strong of support and footprint in Japan to go away. So there seems to be motivation to try to do something to support and merge with something else.

 

[STS-134]

That only converged because the company who had the proprietary standard (IS-95 CDMA) put out of business everyone who was trying to fight in the competitive GSM business.

Not really. Qualcomm controlled one set of standards and the GSMA controlled the other. What happened was that Verizon refused to deploy UMB, Qualcomm's proposed 4G standard, in favor of convergence with what everyone else was using. Without the support of its biggest potential customer, Qualcomm euthanized the project.

 

[STS-134]

...which will not be applicable to the passenger vehicle market.

It is absolutely applicable. Sometimes, I just want to go from near 0% to 100% range in 3 minutes. The only way to get 75-130 kWh into a battery in 3 minutes is to charge it at 1.5-2.5 MW. Since I cannot currently do this, my only option in such a scenario is to take my PHEV. There are people who hate to stop except to refuel and will eat in the car when they are on roadtrips to save time, or who want to stop places where there's no chargers. For EVs to get to 100% adoption, someone will need to make EVs for those people.

 

[Earl]

It is absolutely applicable. Sometimes, I just want to go from near 0% to 100% range in 3 minutes. The only way to get 75-130 kWh into a battery in 3 minutes is to charge it at 1.5-2.5 MW. Since I cannot currently do this, my only option in such a scenario is to take my PHEV. There are people who hate to stop except to refuel and will eat in the car when they are on roadtrips to save time, or who want to stop places where there's no chargers. For EVs to get to 100% adoption, someone will need to make EVs for those people.

There were also folks who didn't want to have to stop to get gas but to let their horse eat grass while they slept at night.

Seriously though, Don't think of going 0% to 100% in 3 minutes - that will probably never happen due to battery limitations towards full. Think, instead, of charging for 300 miles in 3 minutes. That would, of course require about 2000 KW (1GW) of power. That same battery, if fully charged in about an hour, would actually go about 400 miles.
The question there will be: how many folks will be willing to pay how much for that.

 

[Midnightsun]

Not sure they will standardize EV plugs globally. For anyone that travels a bit, you know how many different plugs there are around the world not to mention 220 or 110 or 50 or 60hz. The world/countries will never agree on a standard format if you ask me.

Tesla recently made a change to enlarge the charge port door on the MS and MX, not because it is better just because now there is room to install any charge port a country may require making it much more economical for them to accommodate. The larger door is rather useless in North America.

 

[MontyFloyd]

Please explain? How are Superchargers limiting today, other than not being always exactly where I want them - and that's not a technical limitation?

I figure we'll get a standard supercharger connection shortly after we get a standard electrical grid service and connector. You'll know what I mean if you travel internationally.

Simple:
1 design of SC power supply and connector world wide, and be about same size as the Tesla (or possibly proposed Chao-Ji) connector.
There is no technical issue preventing this.

This will save tens of billions.

 

[MontyFloyd]

What happened with that

GB/T (China) + CHAdeMO (Japan) = ChaoJi (CHAdeMO 3.0)​

Improvement, but maybe caught in politics?

 

[MontyFloyd]

Great! Now we'll have a 5th non-interoperable competing standard to go along with the 4 that currently exist. :-(

It is to replace all, with adapters for legacy.
Did not stop USB from its everything USB-C connector.

 

[MontyFloyd]

That ties with what I mentioned above about charging standards, where it becomes reasonable to get to a unified standard per large continent of the world, but sometimes doesn't have enough drive to get to one single one worldwide.

The ChaoJi is an interesting one. In North America, CHAdeMO was just allowed to die and disappear, but it has too strong of support and footprint in Japan to go away. So there seems to be motivation to try to do something to support and merge with something else.

Only because Nissan and Mitsubishi failed to get sales for tis BEV, and Honda and especially Toyota failed to promote PHEV.

Meanwhile the completely proprietary Tesla system is by far the most common.
If Tesla maintains at least 50% of BEV market in US, then Tesla might just become a standard.

 

[Earl]

It is to replace all, with adapters for legacy.
Did not stop USB from its everything USB-C connector.

. . . after more than a quarter of a century, not counting 20 years before and many after the inception of USB. There has been a hodge-podge of incompatible and proprietary, singe-model connectivity, expansion, monitor, and power connectors and standards (CGA, VGA, SVGA, HDMI, DP, mDP, DB9, DB14, IEC 320-C7, Centronix, PCMCIA, RJ-45, RJ-11, phone jack, mini phone jack, . . . ).

 

[MontyFloyd]

. . . after more than a quarter of a century, not counting 20 years before and many after the inception of USB. There has been a hodge-podge of incompatible and proprietary, singe-model connectivity, expansion, monitor, and power connectors and standards (CGA, VGA, SVGA, HDMI, DP, mDP, DB9, DB14, IEC 320-C7, Centronix, PCMCIA, RJ-45, RJ-11, phone jack, mini phone jack, . . . ).

Besides the purpose of those connectors, also miss the evolution (FYI: RJ11 and RJ45 are still in use for the same purpose, 60 years later, no change needed)

When a protocol is improved, the hardware is also improved.
Except that really did not happen with EV plugs.
They took the J1772 connector (which is fine), and stuck on DC pins. This is called an expedient "accessory", or "side car", it is not an actual development of the connector, and requires extra effort by operator to use it (manually opening the mud flap, and closing). the USB-3 B connector was the same thing, but the A connector was able to cram the needed pins to make a functional improvement.

The current CCS1 and CCS2 are actually stop-gap additions, not an improvement.

 

[tps5352]

Update: September 21, 2022: Tesla has finally released its CCS1 adapter directly in North America. See it for sale here (Canada) and here (U.S.), along with a link to the Owner's Manual in English.

 

[tps5352]

The unexpected (to me) increasing impetus to use the Tesla proprietary plug/port charging standard as the imagined North American Charging Standard (NACS) suggests that some day, Chart #1 could be simpler--just the Tesla plug (or some future variation) for North America AC and DC electric car charging. While they may hang around for some time, CHAdeMO and even CCS1 should eventually diminish in popularity and cease to be significant factors.

Meanwhile, the three Tesla North American adapters (CCS1, CHAdeMO, and J1772) in Chart #2 could eventually become unnecessary (after another 'car generation' of about 10-15 years passes).

Interesting that Tesla wanted to develop a joint standard with other North American car makers/marketers before the release of Model S in 2012. The other companies said, "Take a hike." So Tesla independently developed its own elegant proprietary design.

It has taken awhile, but good for Tesla.