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OEM CCS adapter now available to order in North America, Retrofit for older cars coming in 2023
- Thread starter MP3Mike
- Start date
smogne41
Active Member
It is far more complicated than just cutting a second hole. You can't just wire the plugs in parallel or the pins of the unused plug would be energized when the other one is active. Even worse, somebody would try something dumb like plugging in both at the same time and with NACS sharing AC and DC pins you could have the situation of feeding 400 VDC into an AC charger (and thus the grid). So you would need extra contactors and control logic to disconnect the inactive one and prevent various pathological situations. Never gonna happen. The only cars with two plugs separate the AC and DC plugs (Chademo, GB/T).
Adding makes no sense. It would make sense to have after market kits that let you swap the CCS inlet to a NACS inlet as the CCS is bigger.
BTW, would have been funny is CCS ilet is square and NACS is round. Then we can watch someone try to ram a square plug into a round hole. LOL
israndy
Supercharger Hunter
Since the NACS plug requires at least one HVDC relay that CCS cars don't come with, you could just make it a multi position relay and have it switch between AC/DC/DC2
Not of interest to me, but @davewill brought it up and mentioned how easy it would be. I don't think the relays will be the problem as I mentioned above, it's the sheet metal
Not of interest to me, but @davewill brought it up and mentioned how easy it would be. I don't think the relays will be the problem as I mentioned above, it's the sheet metal
davewill
Active Member
Third party chargers are made to have more than one connector. There's an EVGo location not too far away that has one unit that has CCS and CHAdeMO, and another that has CCS and NACS plugs on it. That's why I think they should be able to add second plugs just by installing the appropriate kit inside.
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
@davewill is talking about adding NACS connectors on the CCS1 chargers. Those are trivial to do because many already are designed with two CCS connectors, so it's a simple matter of swapping one of them to NACS.
You are talking about adding them on the car, which is not the same thing. No automaker is considering doing so as far as I know.
On the subject of contactors, as others mentioned, the way Tesla implemented them for NACS does not require any increase in the count of contactors vs CCS. There are 2 for the HV battery, 2 for the charge port:
https://tesla-cdn.thron.com/deliver...-Charging-Standard-AC-DC-Pin-Sharing-Appendix
Charging & Adapter Product Guides
From a quick google of a I3, CCS is the same amount (2 for HV, 2 for Inlet):
BMW I3 Fast Charging LIM Module - openinverter.org wiki
HV connection point for OBC is same also (between the two sets of contactors).
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israndy
Supercharger Hunter
Thanks for clarifying, graphics are good. Not that I can make sense of what is in the graphics. I keep reading people claiming that CCS will need another relay to break out the formerly separate AC and DC pins. Perhaps they will need it if their AC charger can't handle its inputs being wired to 500-1000v DC
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
I think the point others were making is that for your proposal of adding a second CCS port on the car, you would need extra relays because you can't have two ports energized at the same time, and the AC/DC sharing just makes it even tougher. You can try drawing on the Tesla diagram yourself, I don't see how even replacing the fast charge contactors with triple position relays you would be able to avoid needing to add extra relays to support an extra CCS1 port, unless it was a DC-only port.
As for adopting NACS, I think most manufacturers will make their OBCs compatible, if they aren't already, given they have to reconfigure the wiring anyways. For someone aftermarket retrofitting a CCS car to NACS, they may have to verify the OBC won't be damaged when connected to HVDC on the output.
davewill
Active Member
Yes, I was responding to the comment that conversion to NACS might be delaying DC charging installations. I totally missed that my comment was being misconstrued to be talking about retrofitting a second inlet on a car. That is a much bigger deal, and is probably not terribly practical.
Off topic to the OP but if you take a step back, you would realize that AC charging's days are long past. Why would you have 1 rectifier:1 EV to support AC charging when you can have 1 rectifier:many EV. Hopefully with the increased price competition, we will start seeing EV makers drop the OBC - or make it an option like how DCFC used to be an option for EVs. Then, this whole switching question goes away.
In this future, people can elect to buy the OBC option and then buy a wall EVSE (3 items for a 2 car garage) or just buy a low power DC charger for the garage (1 item for a 2 car garage). Or even better to have the DC charger be a V2G type that lets you reduce/eliminate grid power use during TOU peak.
Remember that while AC differs by country, DC is universal. Dropping the OBC may get us to eventually standard EV plug world-wide.
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I saw a post somewhere (and can't find it again) that someone had their older Model 3 retrofitted with the CCS upgrade (official? Not sure) and as a result, their Gen1 portable charger (UMC) no longer works with the car. Since I have a late 2018 Model 3, contemplating a CCS upgrade someday, has anyone heard of this? Is it an issue with the official Tesla source upgrade? Seems like an expensive problem if the portable charger no longer works. I've had to use it a few times.
pilotSteve
Active Member
Thinking of the irony here.... My Signature S85 from 2017 is equipped with the "new" NACS plug.... and has been for over 5 years!
smogne41
Active Member
Mechanically yes, but unless you have gotten the CCS upgrade it is not a NACS-compatible port yet.
Still no CCS modification for my '18 M3. Originally promised in Q1 of this year. Then mid year. Maybe they meant next year. Or the year after.
Won't really be needed as more CCS vendors are adopting the Tesla standard. The vendors will probably be converted to Tesla before Tesla comes out with the mod for us early M3 owners.
Right now, third party NACS level 3 chargers total approximately zero. Tesla has the technology now, as evidenced by the people installing the conversion themselves. Companies regular announce products which may never be available. That's vaporware.
A new network of 30,000 level 3 chargers was just announced as a Tesla Supercharger competitor. It was reported as though they were going to appear in short order. It took Tesla over ten years to build out their network. Third party NACS chargers are not likely to appear in quantity for over a year. There are a lot of CCS chargers now. I would like to have existing CCS chargers as a backup.
A new network of 30,000 level 3 chargers was just announced as a Tesla Supercharger competitor. It was reported as though they were going to appear in short order. It took Tesla over ten years to build out their network. Third party NACS chargers are not likely to appear in quantity for over a year. There are a lot of CCS chargers now. I would like to have existing CCS chargers as a backup.
No, they didn't say they were going to appear shortly. They said: "The first stations are expected to open in the United States in the summer of 2024 and in Canada at a later stage.", so a year from now for them to start. (And that is likely an early estimate.) I thought I saw that the network wasn't expected to have 30k chargers until 2030, but I can't find any target for completion now. (Shoot they haven't actually signed anything yet, and don't even have a name.)
My guess is that their plan is mainly to try to harvest NEVI funding to build the network, but they are going to find out that that likely isn't as easy as they thought it would be. They will also find out that making a profit on a charging network is very difficult.
You mean like how gas stations don't make their money on gas? DCFC along the highway needs to be at the Travel/Truck Stops and in towns/cities along the way.
