OEM CCS adapter now available to order in North America, Retrofit for older cars coming in 2023

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Read what? I can't find any document from Tesla which "explicitly" threatens legal action against charging stations who choose to charge older Teslas.
Please cite your source. I'll cite mine:

All Our Patent Are Belong To You | Tesla

www.tesla.com

I think you guys are conflating portable adapters with actual charging stations - they are not the same thing and do not have the same limitations.

When ChargePoint/Flo/whoever comes out to convert their old CCS charging stations, they're not just going to show up with whatever cheap random adapter they found on eBay and duct-tape it on. They're going to take a minute to update the little circuit board inside which manages the communication and they're going to do it with whatever protocols they legally can. So unless you guys have somehow found evidence that Tesla has vowed to block them from doing so, we can be certain that for-profit charging stations are not going to intentionally exclude a huge percentage of the nation's EVs.



A lot of irony to unpack there but I'll note that being irrationally offended by the mere existence of facts and resorting to hateful nationalism is really more of an American thing. Perhaps we have more in common than you think?

When Tesla opened up NACS, it was the connector, not the Supercharging protocol.

Opening the North American Charging Standard | Tesla

www.tesla.com

As a purely electrical and mechanical interface agnostic to use case and communication protocol, NACS is straightforward to adopt. The design and specification files are available for download, and we are actively working with relevant standards bodies to codify Tesla’s charging connector as a public standard. Enjoy.

When Tesla open up the Supercharger network it will be all the V3+ because they can talk CCS, Just as now, it's only V3 and now V4 equipped with Magic Dock because they can talk CCS.

Tesla sells a simple CCS adapter which easily allows Tesla owners to charge at CCS chargers, if their car has the CCS hardware, which the large majority now do.

So it stands to reason that charger manufacturers will have NACS plugs and use the CCS protocol, which the large majority of new North American Teslas can use. But there are some out there, such as the OP's car that won't be able to use them until they have the hardware.

And it's going to take a long time before older chargers have their CCS cables swapped out, so given that the CCS to NACS adapters are cheap, the OP would buy one.

Plus, for Canada you can look at CCS on Plugshare to see that there are plenty of CCS locations in Canada with good Plugshare scores in places that Tesla doesn't have Superchargers. My immediate thought was getting to Cape Breton. Aulac, NB is the last Supercharger, while there are well-rated CCS in Stellarton, NS, Monastery, NS on the way, and at Baddeck (CHAdeMO plug problems, but CCS OK) and North Sydney and Sydney on Cape Breton.

Also, I drove my Kona on Prince Edward Island, and while Charlottetown, PE has a Supercharger, if you're staying in Charlottetown, but drive across around the western part of the island, it's quite a bit of driving, so being able to use one of the Flo CCS in O'Leary, or the CCS in Summerside could save some anxiety getting back to Charlottetown.

With the EVGo chargers they originally did some with CHAdeMO adapters and some with CCS adapters. I'm not sure Model 3 or Y could use the CHAdeMO versions as I remember there were issues using the CHAdeMO adapter.

 

[MP3Mike]

I can tell you that local EVGo chargers with Tesla plugs don't work with my non-CCS Model 3.

Then either the EVgo site(s) you tried are broken, or your car is broken. (As they are CHAdeMO based, not NACS.)

That's interesting @davewill, EVGo began installing Tesla connectors back around the time of the October 2020 ECU change so I would expect that a lot of people would have noted the incompatibility but I can't find any other references. Have you seen anything official from EVGo or Tesla on this topic?

There is no incompatibility because what EVgo did was install CHAdeMO to Tesla adapters. So, what they have at this point are not NACS ports.

 

[Soul Surfer]

This post has gone way off the rails, thanks to this person who seems to enjoy stirring the pot. @jjrandorin, could you please lock this out? Thank you.

 

[GSP]

I can tell you that local EVGo chargers with Tesla plugs don't work with my non-CCS Model 3. It's unfortunate, but understandable for creating a universal standard. If I had the need, I'd pony up for the upgrade, but our Model Y is the road trip car and it's CCS capable.

I'm not going to take the M3SR far enough to need other than Superchargers, not here in SoCal.

I am in the same boat. Our ‘22 MYLR is the primary road trip car, and it is CCS capable. I did purchase a CCS adapter from Tesla as soon as they became available in the US, and it has come in handy once so far.

I might consider upgrading my ‘18 M3 LR RWD when Tesla finally gets around to offering the upgrade. However, it will be tough to justify the cost since the road trips we take the M3 have plenty of superchargers. I will wait to see how much Tesla will charge for the upgrade.

For people that need CCS capability before Tesla offers the upgrade, like @Soul Surfer , it is possible to buy the CCS-capable charging ECU from Tesla (the one newer cars use) and use a third-party wiring harness adapter to install it in your older Tesla.

GSP

 

[jjrandorin]

This post has gone way off the rails, thanks to this person who seems to enjoy stirring the pot. @jjrandorin, could you please lock this out? Thank you.

Sorry but I dont agree with this statement. The thread is about Gen4 ECUs and CCS charging. Location of CCS charging is at least semi relevant to that discussion, so its not appropriate to lock this thread because of discussion about CCS charging locations.

What I will do (have done) though, is do what I contemplated doing in the first place, which is merge this thread into the main CCS discussion thread vs it being a stand alone thread. I thought it belonged there when it was first created but didnt do it then.

 

[Soul Surfer]

Sorry but I dont agree with this statement. The thread is about Gen4 ECUs and CCS charging. Location of CCS charging is at least semi relevant to that discussion, so its not appropriate to lock this thread because of discussion about CCS charging locations.

What I will do (have done) though, is do what I contemplated doing in the first place, which is merge this thread into the main CCS discussion thread vs it being a stand alone thread. I thought it belonged there when it was first created but didnt do it then.

Thank you JJ. Always the voice of reason.

 

[Gauss Guzzler]

Huh. YouTube put this video in my feed for some reason.

Unfortunately, they don't address the question of "what's preventing 3rd party chargers from providing support?" but they do mention that many of these stations are independently owned/operated so the transition will inevitably be slow and inconsistent.

They also amplify the popular assumption that Tesla will do the wrong thing by blocking older cars from charging. They speculate this will cause many stations to get review-bombed into oblivion by unwitting folks who conclude them to be broken, and they hint at the PR damage that may result if, ironically, Teslas became the only cars to be incompatible with Tesla's universal standard.

Look, I'm as critical of Elon as the next guy, and I have no doubt that his zero-F's approach to things like PR or anti-trust lawsuits makes this nightmare scenario possible, but I just can't (yet) imagine that he would do something so insane and so profoundly stupid as to block certain Teslas from charging at the very stations Tesla just standardized. I expect that Tesla will either allow 3rd parties to include the old comm protocol, goodwill the $140 update board, or both. And it's possible that the former has already occurred.

 

[MP3Mike]

They also amplify the popular assumption that Tesla will do the wrong thing by blocking older cars from charging.

Tesla isn't blocking anything. The cars just don't have the necessary hardware to support NACS.

I expect that Tesla will either allow 3rd parties to include the old comm protocol, goodwill the $140 update board, or both. And it's possible that the former has already occurred.

Unlikely, in Europe Tesla makes older vehicles pay for the CCS Retrofit if they want to use V3 Superchargers, as they only support CCS and have a different connector.

 

[Gauss Guzzler]

It doesn't matter what hardware the cars do/don't have, they all charge just fine on any Tesla-branded station.

A 3rd party station would have to make the explicit decision to implement just the NACS subset of Tesla's standard instead of the complete protocol. And there are only two legitimate reasons for them to do so:

1. Tesla will sue them for offering to charge older models
2. They don't want any extra money

In the near-term it's likely that some station owners won't want to wait for the little circuit board which manages the protocols to be updated and approved so they'll just slap a new cable on their CCS chargers and walk away into the review-bomb hell that awaits them. But this strategy seems unlikely to become widespread or long-lasting in a capitalistic society.

 

[MP3Mike]

It doesn't matter what hardware the cars do/don't have, they all charge just fine on any Tesla-branded station.

Not in Europe. Model S&X have to have the CCS retrofit to be able to use V3 Superchargers.

A 3rd party station would have to make the explicit decision to implement just the NACS subset of Tesla's standard instead of the complete protocol. And there are only two legitimate reasons for them to do so:

1. Tesla will sue them for offering to charge older models
2. They don't want any extra money

3) They don't want the risk/liability of using a non-public/non-documented protocol that controls 250kW of power. (I highly doubt that any commercial operation is going to implement it via reverse-engineering.)

 

[KJD]

Have a service appt tomorrow and just noticed this alert on my phone app.

View attachment 855261

View attachment 855262


Wasn’t aware this was happening for our cars.

This is post #2 of this thread.

Just curious what "Early 2023" really means anyhow ????

 

[MP3Mike]

This is post #2 of this thread.

Just curious what "Early 2023" really means anyhow ????

At some point they updated it to mid-2023, which I think we are passed as well: https://shop.tesla.com/product/ccs-combo-1-adapter?web=true

There must be some hold-up...

 

[Gauss Guzzler]

Big corporations bet the farm on reverse-engineering all the time. Look no further than the computer, phone, or tablet you're reading this on for a good example.

But even if you're correct that it's too risky, the decision remains in Tesla's court nonetheless. They can provide legitimate licenses to the protocol, they can goodwill affected customers with a simple board update to promote the simpler long-term solution, or they can try to crush 3rd party competition by exploiting their own customers as unwitting pawns in a war against their own charging standard.

 

[smogne41]

Not in Europe. Model S&X have to have the CCS retrofit to be able to use V3 Superchargers.


3) They don't want the risk/liability of using a non-public/non-documented protocol that controls 250kW of power. (I highly doubt that any commercial operation is going to implement it via reverse-engineering.)

The only commercial operation that has that I know of is the Setec/Lectron active CCS to Tesla adapter. But that was never what most people would call reliable and seems to be a dead product now since the passive adapters exist now. Don't know if that was because of the reverse-engineered Tesla CANbus side or the CCS side though. But yeah, I agree, no charging network is going to do this unless the Tesla protocol is officially released. And even than, most will probably not bother since no new cars are shipping that need it.

 

[stopcrazypp]

It doesn't matter what hardware the cars do/don't have, they all charge just fine on any Tesla-branded station.

A 3rd party station would have to make the explicit decision to implement just the NACS subset of Tesla's standard instead of the complete protocol. And there are only two legitimate reasons for them to do so:

1. Tesla will sue them for offering to charge older models
2. They don't want any extra money

In the near-term it's likely that some station owners won't want to wait for the little circuit board which manages the protocols to be updated and approved so they'll just slap a new cable on their CCS chargers and walk away into the review-bomb hell that awaits them. But this strategy seems unlikely to become widespread or long-lasting in a capitalistic society.

The reason why they won't bother is because to support NACS they literally just need to swap the connector on a CCS station.

To support the legacy supercharger protocol, they instead need to implement a CANBUS and a standard that is proprietary and not open (Tesla have not documented it publicly).

There's literally no charger manufacturer that have announced they are building chargers to support the older Tesla protocol. The only third party implementation that exists is EVgo's which is literally a 50kW Tesla CHAdeMO adapter with an extension cable. That should tell you how likely third parties will support older Teslas.

As others mentioned, the population of Teslas without CCS support is only shrinking, while the ones with CCS is growing rapidly.

 

[Gauss Guzzler]

There's literally no charger manufacturer that have announced they are building chargers to support the older Tesla protocol.

And the converse? Has any manufacturer announced that older cars will not be supported?

 

[Mercimek]

Got the CCS adapter. Have had 1 decent experience with a CCs charging station. Over a dozen bad ones. For me, I feel silly for having bought it. The goal was to have more options for fast charging though practically speaking superchargers end up being the best option.

 

[eevee-fan]

Got the CCS adapter. Have had 1 decent experience with a CCs charging station. Over a dozen bad ones. For me, I feel silly for having bought it. The goal was to have more options for fast charging though practically speaking superchargers end up being the best option.

Maybe when Rivian opens up their chargers, you can get some use when going camping.

 

[DuncanM]

Got the CCS adapter. Have had 1 decent experience with a CCs charging station. Over a dozen bad ones. For me, I feel silly for having bought it. The goal was to have more options for fast charging though practically speaking superchargers end up being the best option.

I have used my CCS1 adapter in Canada many times, and generally it works well when I am using a charging network that I have the app for (Petro Canada Electrify C, BC Hydro, Flo and Chargepoint) and that can use tha Chargepoint RFID card ( BCH, FLO Chargepoint). Npw there have been issues with Petro C. chargers being down but overall my success rate is about 90%.

 

[Mercimek]

I have used my CCS1 adapter in Canada many times, and generally it works well when I am using a charging network that I have the app for (Petro Canada Electrify C, BC Hydro, Flo and Chargepoint) and that can use tha Chargepoint RFID card ( BCH, FLO Chargepoint). Npw there have been issues with Petro C. chargers being down but overall my success rate is about 90%.

Thanks for sharing your experience. Good to hear your success rate. I Will keep on trying.