Supercharger protocol a superset of CCS?

[miimura]

Supercharging does not use PLC. It uses Single-wire CAN at 33.3k. This is done by using the Pilot connection in the connector.

Have you looked at what's going over the wire to HPWC Gen 2 units?

 

[widodh]

Ok, thanks! But still, the point is, the car does talk to the SuC and exchange information like the VIN and more. It's not that the car uses it's 3G/4G to talk to Tesla HQ when charging.

 

[stopcrazypp]

Ok, thanks! But still, the point is, the car does talk to the SuC and exchange information like the VIN and more. It's not that the car uses it's 3G/4G to talk to Tesla HQ when charging.

I think you misunderstand. The supercharging session is handled through the cable obviously. The latency/reliability of 3G/4G is not enough to do that practically.

However, the VIN information is not used by the superchargers even though it is transferred. All the access control appears to be done on the car side, at least from what wk057 found back a while.

So the permission for free supercharging and also billing for supercharging appears to be handled on car side (no different than activation of other features like autopilot). Of course they can change this to have some sort of processing on the supercharger side.

 

[widodh]

I think you misunderstand. The supercharging session is handled through the cable obviously. The latency/reliability of 3G/4G is not enough to do that practically.

However, the VIN information is not used by the superchargers even though it is transferred. All the access control appears to be done on the car side, at least from what wk057 found back a while.

So the permission for free supercharging and also billing for supercharging appears to be handled on car side (no different than activation of other features like autopilot). Of course they can change this to have some sort of processing on the supercharger side.

Wow, ok. That way if you hack your Model S/X or build something yourself you can charge for free from a SuC if you just submit the right VIN to the DB.

Who says that the SuC doesn't check it's internal database to see if that VIN is allowed to SuC? We can't see that part. The VIN is transferred and something is done with that information.

This is all software and Tesla can change it without us knowing it ofcourse. But with the market growing you don't want people to be handing out "free SuC kits" where they just modify your vehicle and let you charge for free.

 

[stopcrazypp]

Wow, ok. That way if you hack your Model S/X or build something yourself you can charge for free from a SuC if you just submit the right VIN to the DB.

Who says that the SuC doesn't check it's internal database to see if that VIN is allowed to SuC? We can't see that part. The VIN is transferred and something is done with that information.

This is all software and Tesla can change it without us knowing it ofcourse. But with the market growing you don't want people to be handing out "free SuC kits" where they just modify your vehicle and let you charge for free.

wk057 tried submitting a dummy/incorrect VIN to the supercharger and it charged just fine. As of the time he tested the superchargers did nothing with the VIN. Of course, that was before pay-per-use was released, so things may have changed. Tesla probably didn't care about that because there are no signs this is even an issue that mattered (no reports of people hacking to regularly freeload off superchargers).

 

[verygreen]

wk057 tried submitting a dummy/incorrect VIN to the supercharger and it charged just fine. As of the time he tested the superchargers did nothing with the VIN. Of course, that was before pay-per-use was released, so things may have changed. Tesla probably didn't care about that because there are no signs this is even an issue that mattered (no reports of people hacking to regularly freeload off superchargers).

When the paid supercharger access was reverted to free recently, Tesla logged into cars and changed an in-car variable that controls the supercharging type.
Sure it's probably used for in-car display of billing, but do you really need that if car can get history info from the mothership?

Granted, you can do billing on supercharger side still, but what's to stop people from impersonating a vin? There might be defenses against that, but this might blow out of proportions complication-wise.