[Updated] Model 3 CCS / CHAdeMO adapter

[MorrisonHiker]

They really shouldn't lump the two incompatible CCS standards together, it really misrepresents things.

I want to know why Vancouver Island, Newfoundland and the Great Lakes haven't decided on a standard yet!

 

[KJD]

This map is very misleading. CCS-1 and CCS-2 should be shown in two different colors.

 

[miimura]

This map is very misleading. CCS-1 and CCS-2 should be shown in two different colors.

It was created by the industry body promoting CCS. What did you expect? It also doesn't show the areas in Europe and North America that have widespread CHAdeMO deployments.

 

[Rocky_H]

And showing the North American AC charging J1772 plug inside the CHAdeMO box is just wrong.

 

[miimura]

And showing the North American AC charging J1772 plug inside the CHAdeMO box is just wrong.

All of the boxes show the required inlets for AC and DC. That is the least of the problems with that infographic.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

You're right, and yet wrong, mainly because you're missing a major use case that Tesla has not been able to address, and a use case that has the potential to result in a lot of sales, both of CHAdeMO adapters and cars: workplace level 3 charging.

At work, we've been discussing the problem of having way too many EVs for the number of charging spots. One big problem is that some percentage of users need to charge for a large portion of the day, and if you end up with somebody charging for six hours, another vehicle can't charge all day in the two or three hours that remain. An L3 charging setup can get much closer to full utilization all day because the charge cycle is so much shorter that charging for an hour is actually useful.

The only problem with that idea is that the majority of our EVs are Teslas, and a large percentage of those are Model 3s. So the only way level 3 workplace charging will ever be practical for us is if Tesla enables CHAdeMO support on the Model 3. Until Tesla rolls out that firmware update, it won't be possible to convince the powers that be to build the charging infrastructure, and we'll remain stuck at level 2 charging.

(Ostensibly, CCS would be a possibility, but not if the adapters are paired to the cars, because asking thousands of Tesla owners to spend hundreds of dollars for an adapter just so they can charge at work isn't likely to fly.)

However, DCFC are expensive, you can install multiple AC EVSEs for the same cost as a single DCFC. I'd be interested to know what would happen if you went the DCFC route.

I can see two advantages to DCFC:
- you only need to reserve 1 parking space to provide charging for multiple vehicles
- you get to treat PHEV owners like low-life scum and deny them access to workplace charging*

*

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

And showing the North American AC charging J1772 plug inside the CHAdeMO box is just wrong.

Japan uses J1772 AC and CHAdeMO DC.
China has Type 2 and GB/T.

 

[Rocky_H]

China has Type 2 and GB/T.

It visually looks that way, but it's not.
China has GB/T AC and GB/T DC. That thing that looks like the Mennekes Type 2 outlet in Europe isn't really a Type 2. It's their GB/T AC charging port.

 

[dgatwood]

It will be interesting to see the results of the survey. It seems to me the charging capacity is limited by the kW made available to the chargers. If there is 66kW spread across 12 L2, or 2 L3, that is the same daily charging capacity. My guess is installing and maintaining 12 L2 is less expensive than 2 L3, but that is just a guess.

So I don't think L2 or L3 allows more cars to be charged - it is all about the kW made available. 8 hours should be plenty of time to charge on L2.

It isn't that you can't do it with L2. The problem is that it requires a complex scheduling algorithm to achieve a comparable level of efficiency. Let's say you have two spaces and four cars that need to charge. Two cars need four hours of charging, one needs two hours, and one needs six hours.

8:30 Car A arrives and needs four hours. Stall 1 is occupied until 12:30..
8:40 Car B arrives and needs four hours. Stall 2 is occupied until 12:40.
9:30 Car C arrives and needs two hours.
9:45 Car D arrives and needs six hours.
12:30 Car C is allowed to charge. Stall 1 is occupied until 2:30.
12:40 Car D is allowed to charge. Car D needs six hours, but can only stay for 5:05. Car D has to go to a supercharger anyway, and thus doesn't bother to charge because it wont' save any time. Stall 2 goes unused for the rest of the day.

If you could somehow know in advance of the existence of cars C and D, you could do it like this:

8:30 Car A arrives and needs four hours. Stall 1 is occupied until 12:30;
8:40 Car B arrives and is asked to wait until 12:30.
9:30 Car C arrives. Stall 2 is occupied until 11:30.
9:45 Car D arrives and needs six hours.
11:30 Car D is allowed to charge. Stall 2 is occupied until 5:30 (before the 5:45 departure).
12:30 Car B is allowed to charge. Stall 1 is occupied until 4:30 (before the 4:40 departure).

But doing so requires perfect future knowledge of what vehicles will arrive when, and how much charging they will need. This is, unfortunately, unachievable. Even getting close is tremendously difficult.

Compounding this problem is the fear that you'll end up preventing someone from getting home by taking an L2 charging spot for 6 hours, whereas the risk of doing so goes away with L3 charging, because any car that supports L3 charging could also use other L3 charging nearby if the workplace charging never becomes free. So users are more willing to charge beefier cars like the Tesla if L3 charging is available than if only L2 charging is available (unless L2 charging is so abundant that there's nearly one charger per car, but this is rarely the case).

And further complicating things is the fact that supercharging tapers its charge speed based on SoC. So charging a near-empty Tesla at L2 speeds for three hours only saves you five or ten minutes at the supercharger later. At that point, it isn't even worth walking downstairs to move your car. So that results in even less utilization at the end of the day than you might otherwise have.

If you switch to an L3 charger, the relative speed makes scheduling much easier. The shorter the charging period, the easier it is to schedule fairly, because a user is much more likely to be able to stay for an extra few minutes than an extra few hours, which means the latter part of the day becomes much more fully schedulable.

Obviously an L3 charger takes the place of O(6) stalls, rather than just two, so I won't even try to shoehorn the example above into that arrangement, but mathematically speaking, L3 charging is superior to L2 charging for all the same reasons that having a fast single-core CPU is superior to having a two-core CPU where each core is half as fast.

 

[Rocky_H]

Obviously an L3 charger takes the place of O(6) stalls, rather than just two, so I won't even try to shoehorn the example above into that arrangement, but mathematically speaking, L3 charging is superior to L2 charging for all the same reasons that having a fast single-core CPU is superior to having a two-core CPU where each core is half as fast.

You should have stuck with not using the analogy, since multi-core is almost always more efficient and faster than single core processing. But you were right about the car chargers.

 

[MP3Mike]

If you switch to an L3 charger, the relative speed makes scheduling much easier. The shorter the charging period, the easier it is to schedule fairly, because a user is much more likely to be able to stay for an extra few minutes than an extra few hours, which means the latter part of the day becomes much more fully schedulable.

Obviously an L3 charger takes the place of O(6) stalls, rather than just two, so I won't even try to shoehorn the example above into that arrangement, but mathematically speaking, L3 charging is superior to L2 charging for all the same reasons that having a fast single-core CPU is superior to having a two-core CPU where each core is half as fast.

You are missing the whole point. If you have the funds to install a single L3 charger you could use those funds to instead install 25-50 L2 EVSEs. There is no way you are going to get 25 cars moved through a single L3 charger in a normal work day. You would likely have to put some load management in place for the L2 EVSEs because they could easily end up drawing 200kW vs. 50 kW for your L3 charger. But that technology exists and is in use in a number of places now.

Going to your CPU analogy your fast single core processor costs $1000 while your slower dual-core processor only costs $40. So you just get 4 dual-core processors for $160 and you get way more computational power and have still spent significantly less money.

 

[tes-s]

It isn't that you can't do it with L2. The problem is that it requires a complex scheduling algorithm to achieve a comparable level of efficiency. Let's say you have two spaces and four cars that need to charge.

Only L3 requires scheduling and moving cars. For L2, there are enough connectors for all cars to park and plug in.

Change your problem to two circuits, 4 charging connectors, and four cars that need to charge. Everyone just arrives and plugs in, and unplugs when they leave. No shuffling of cars around.

If you have 100 cars that need an average of 20kWh over an 8 hour period, then you need 250kW of power infrastructure running continuously to charge them all. Whether you have L2 or L3 chargers does not matter.

 

[Goodtohave]

Unless you don't have the ability to charge at home.

I hate to be a party pooper but if you can’t charge at home, not even at 110v and EV is not for you.

I had a Leaf for 4 yrs the best part of an EV is a full charge every morning. Running around supercharging all the time makes no sense for the car , the cost or the waste of time.

 

[GlenM]

I hate to be a party pooper but if you can’t charge at home, not even at 110v and EV is not for you.

I had a Leaf for 4 yrs the best part of an EV is a full charge every morning. Running around supercharging all the time makes no sense for the car , the cost or the waste of time.

Without a charging solution at home or at work, an EV just does not make sense.

 

[miimura]

Without a charging solution at home or at work, an EV just does not make sense.

Yet there are people that buy Teslas without home or work charging. The people that I really don't understand are people who COULD install home charging but don't.

 

[Argoniii]

You don't need a home charger really. Just a nema 14-50 and use the charger that charger that comes with the car.

This conversation has left the original topic though. Tesla needs a ccs adapter or possibly chademo. It would make road trips far easier in Canada.

 

[miimura]

You don't need a home charger really. Just a nema 14-50 and use the charger that charger that comes with the car.

Absolutely true, but my point was equally applicable to people who could install a 14-50 and actively choose not to. There are also people who could get by charging on the 120V outlet that's already right next to their car if they would just leave it plugged in all the time the car was home, yet they don't and they would rather waste their time at a Supercharger. Because Free. SMH...

So, yes, please, go back to whining about the lack of fast charge adapters for the Model 3.

 

[Argoniii]

Pfft charging is cheap even if you pay. I just want convenience on a road trip.

 

[dgatwood]

Only L3 requires scheduling and moving cars. For L2, there are enough connectors for all cars to park and plug in.

There's no way in you-know-where that one can justify blocking thirty parking places per building as EV charging only. There are practical concerns that go beyond the electrical infrastructure as the number of EVs gets large.

You are missing the whole point. If you have the funds to install a single L3 charger you could use those funds to instead install 25-50 L2 EVSEs.

I'm not sure why you think that, but that isn't consistent with the numbers I've seen.

The only time L2 charging is cheaper is when your existing building transformer can accommodate the extra load of the number of L2 chargers that you want to add. That's often fine for a single-digit number of chargers per building. But if you want to cover everybody who wants EV charging at a typical tech company, you'll need more like 20 per building right now, and within a couple of years, that could easily grow to 50 per building, exceeding a couple of hundred per building within ten years.

To service 50 chargers per building, you have to install a new building transformer with at least 1500 additional amps of 240V service. So you're guaranteed to have 480V three-phase power available at that point, making DC fast charging easy, and most of your costs will actually come from installing the power service, which is cheaper for L3 charging because you don't have to add step-down transformers for 240V service. And your next biggest cost is labor, which is also a lot cheaper if you're wiring one sixth as many stations.

Yes, the equipment costs 10x and only gives you 6–8x as much power, but with L2 charging, most or all your chargers go idle halfway through the afternoon because nobody cares about charging for only a couple of hours, and when you factor that in, the equipment costs end up being comparable as well.

So basically, the cost of one L3 charger is comparable to the cost of an equivalent amount of L2 charging (6–8 chargers) as soon as you actually start talking about an installation on the sort of scale where L3 charging would make sense, and may actually be cheaper. Obviously, you should always have some L2 charging, because not all cars support L3 charging, but I think we're at the point where most workplaces, at least in the Bay Area, already have as much L2 capacity as they can handle without major service upgrades. As soon as you're talking about a service upgrade anyway, IMO, you'd be crazy to add more L2 capacity rather than adding L3 capacity with a similar power budget, because in terms of bang-for-the-buck, it ends up being much more efficient in every way.

 

[smatthew]

Wasn't there a guy on here who developed a charging system for a University of California Campus in Southern California where the system lowered charge rates based upon owners inputs, allowing a ton of chargers to be active? Same total grid usage, but much much lower peak usage.
I DO NOT WANT LEVEL 3 CHARGING AT WORK. I'm at work for 8+ hours, why would I want my charge to be complete in 30 minutes? I don't want to go move my car or disconnect a cable until I'm ready to leave work! Does work hire valets? Or does productivity take a hit when workers go move their car. I assume someone could design a level 3 charger that switched between charging cables once it was done, but I don't know how practical or expensive that would be.
The other solution is to offer everyone a slow charge. I'm super-on-board with 12A charging rates for work parking. Heck, L1 charging is sufficient for most employees........