GM follows Ford with NACS Tesla charge port adoption -- time to ditch CCS1 (at least the physcial design)

[snstevens]

Well said. Totally agree.

@tchavei - I know you said you were going to disconnect from this thread, but I'd like to ask that you consider hanging around.

I personally want to hear from members in Europe as we work through this rapidly evolving charge port situation. I find it interesting. Your decision of course.

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[or1]

Another European here. Very interesting discussion to follow, even though it takes a lot of time. (I am sometimes reminded of the Mark Twain quote "I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.")

I think we Europeans have a hard time understanding how bad you find the DC charging situation on the western side of the Pond. But I do see that an unfortunate choice of plug and operators that almost could not care less has led you there.

As far as my experience goes, yes some pertinent decisions from Tesla is all that is necessary: sell a NACS-to-CCS1 adapter to anyone, and allow anyone to create a Tesla account and use the Tesla app to start charging sessions. No other hardware changes anywhere should be necessary. Whether Tesla will do it now (or later) is their business decision, perhaps limited by exclusivity terms in the agreements with Ford and GM?

Whether this would be what Porsche North America prefers is not important to the users I think. But PNA may see that they can benefit and help you at the same time by having an agreement with Tesla like the Ford and GM ones. However, would it matter much to you?

This is written from the European perspective where the Tesla chargers are physically CCS(2), the Tesla cars are too, and Tesla opening chargers definitely seem to be no more than an administrative (business) decision and a data setting in their charger registry.

 

[satchurator]

@tchavei
I personally want to hear from members in Europe as we work through this rapidly evolving charge port situation. I find it interesting. Your decision of course.

Good call @snstevens. Your perspective is welcome, @tchavei. Generally, this forum is a place of respectful, objective discourse. The antagonists tend to get weeded out over time. Everybody should be aware of the Ignore feature (found by viewing an individual's profile) which helps tune out those folks. @Administrator is generally good about banning any really aggressive folks who tend to come in hot and go out hot.

 

[snstevens]

As far as my experience goes, yes some pertinent decisions from Tesla is all that is necessary: sell a NACS-to-CCS1 adapter to anyone, and allow anyone to create a Tesla account and use the Tesla app to start charging sessions. No other hardware changes anywhere should be necessary. Whether Tesla will do it now (or later) is their business decision, perhaps limited by exclusivity terms in the agreements with Ford and GM?

Good perspective.

In some ways it doesn’t matter what Porsche North America decides to do. Tesla could open their SuC network to all of us if they wished.

Beyond selling cars, they could have a good second business simply in charging stations.

 

[daveo4EV]

Good perspective.

In some ways it doesn’t matter what Porsche North America decides to do. Tesla could open their SuC network to all of us if they wished.

Beyond selling cars, they could have a good second business simply in charging stations.

agreed 100%

 

[daveo4EV]

I'm super curious to see what Ford does with their Ford Pro home EVSE which supports bi-direction charging…

https://www.ford.com/trucks/f150/f150-lightning/features/ev-charging/ford-charge-station-pro/

it's essentially a CCS1 based residential EVSE (but not a DC fast/slow charger) - I think also it's the only EVSE on the market that uses all 7-pins…when charging the vehicle it uses the "upper" portion of the CCS1 connector as a J-1772 AC charging connector, and when feeding power back from the vehicle it uses the CCS1 lower DC-only pins to provide power for the household (meaning there is an AC inverter somewhere downstream from the vehicle to power the house)…

there is no-reason NACS can't be bi-directional - but so far there is no example of such a beast in the wild…

I guess it doens't matter - existing F-150's will continue to work - and Ford can stop selling or modify future Ford Pro EVSE's to have the NACS cable/connector and multiplex it appropriately.

 

[daveo4EV]

the future replacement for my 2021 Cayenne TurboS eHybrid is going to be a suitable/appropriate full BEV SUV - until all this news broke I was assuming I would be patiently wait and ultimately purchase the Cayenne BEV porsche has discussed/hinted about (not the 7 seater and the not the Macan EV) - but if Porsche drags their feet on this too long I'm pretty sure BMW will be more aggressive on this front and more tech-forward - and X5'ish full BEV SUV with decent feature set and a NACS port native w/Supercharger (adapter or NACS native) access and I'm voting with my $$$ and moving brands…

my money is available for any of the german's that "read the room" on this issue and push to gain me access to the supercharger network in North America…I'll humbly suggest I'm not alone on this front - and I truly pity any Porsche sale person attempting to explain to soccer mom's Porsche's position on the Macan EV in 2024 if Porsche does not have a response/road-map…

and since doing EV's since 2012 and talking to friends, familiy, aquaintances and co-workers fast charging network access is a highly visible aspect of their EV purchase migration and they are aware of it - it's not some tech-wonky thing -they are deeply concerned and value access to a functional network with good standards and access...silence in this space will lead to two results: 1. not moving to an EV at all 2. going with the vendors who are proactively engaged on this topic.

I was also "all in" on a future post face lifted .2 Taycan CT (GTS or Turbo I'm waffling) MY'25/26 - but now I'm thinking I'm on hold on that plan pending engagement from Porsche on this topic - Silence is not golden for me personally on this topic and it will influence my future purchasing decisions - but may simply be I choose to satisfied with the status quo of my 2020 Taycan Turbo longer than I was orginally planning - I'm not defecting back to Tesla - but future purchases will take this development into consideration…I can't believe I'm the only one with that perspective.

keeping what I currently own easy and plausible - but I'm certainly not spending "new money" on any EV product with out an explicit response in this space - even a "we're doing nothing" explicit response may be acceptable for "new money" purchased because then I can make an informed decision about my purchase…but a non-response will give me pause about writing a check - it smells of lack of engagement and deer in headlights about things they don't want to understand or engage on.

this annoucment does not change anything about my current vehicle ownership - but future new money from me will require an answer in this space so I can make an informed decision.

 

[DerekS]

Port upgrade path: it was explained in this thread that it will not happen because of cost and complexity of this upgrade.

It was not "explained." It was "speculated."

We're all speculating what-ifs here. Nobody knows what will happen but Porsche.

I personally think a port swap is feasible - I don't expect it to be free, because Porsche. But at least one user on the forum replaced a charge port on her Taycan, so it's a removable/replaceable part.

 

[ciaranob]

Another European here. Very interesting discussion to follow, even though it takes a lot of time. (I am sometimes reminded of the Mark Twain quote "I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.")

I think we Europeans have a hard time understanding how bad you find the DC charging situation on the western side of the Pond. But I do see that an unfortunate choice of plug and operators that almost could not care less has led you there.

As far as my experience goes, yes some pertinent decisions from Tesla is all that is necessary: sell a NACS-to-CCS1 adapter to anyone, and allow anyone to create a Tesla account and use the Tesla app to start charging sessions. No other hardware changes anywhere should be necessary. Whether Tesla will do it now (or later) is their business decision, perhaps limited by exclusivity terms in the agreements with Ford and GM?

Whether this would be what Porsche North America prefers is not important to the users I think. But PNA may see that they can benefit and help you at the same time by having an agreement with Tesla like the Ford and GM ones. However, would it matter much to you?

This is written from the European perspective where the Tesla chargers are physically CCS(2), the Tesla cars are too, and Tesla opening chargers definitely seem to be no more than an administrative (business) decision and a data setting in their charger registry.

Good points - I don't mean to belittle in any way the issues many forum members here in th US have had with EA but I can def say there are equally many of us who have had zero, I mean zero issues with charging at EA (for me now over 1.5 years of use). Specifically I for one have had ca. 16 charge stops at 9 different EA stations across Texas on long out of town trips (an area the size of France BTW !), where Plug and Charge has worked perfectly every single time.

It is also quite possible that other States here have had EA stations longer and are seeing higher fail rates etc but don't need to get into a separate discussion here - only point is that when things go wrong they are usually super-elevated on Forums like this and a silent majority might never actually be heard from - so despite all the statistics being shared, we really do not have a good measure of all Taycan (Forum/non-Forum) owner's experiences here in the US.

That and I suspect the vast majority (I do not have a no.) of owners likely charge with AC at home for >90% of all trips such that the DC charge network is a seriously minor player in respect their day to day usability.

All that said, I would def welcome ANY effort to expand DC charging networks and would be delighted if the Tesla Supercharger network was made available to us all.

 

[daveo4EV]

It was not "explained." It was "speculated."

We're all speculating what-ifs here. Nobody knows what will happen but Porsche.

I personally think a port swap is feasible - I don't expect it to be free, because Porsche. But at least one user on the forum replaced a charge port on her Taycan, so it's a removable/replaceable part.

but NACS requires you to "mutliplex" the high-voltage "pins" it's not just a port swap - it's a new wire harness, and new onboard charging hardware than can dynamically adjust for AC or DC from the same inputs...

it would be "feasible" to swap the driver's side north american J-1772 charging point for a NACS port (if the part was avaiable) but that achieves nothing - other than you no longer need a TeslaTap to charge at a Tesla L2 AC charger, but it would not allow DC charging at a supercharger or CCS charger...

swapping the driver side J-1772 for NACS is the cheapest alternative - but does not achieve anything.

Pro: you no longer need a TeslaTap
Con: you need the J-1772 Tesla adapter to use any J-1772 EVSE
Pro: no new onboard charging hardware
Pro: no new wire harness from the port to the onbaord charging hardware
Con: what's the point?

the interesting "swap" is the passenger side CCS1 port which currently support both L1/L2 J-1772 AC charging and CCS FastDC charging - swapping this port requires:

• new NACS port
• new wire harness (5 wire instead of 7)
• new onboard AC/DC charging hardware that can multiplex AC/DC inputs
• firmware/software changes to the vehicle to support all this

It is not speculation to say Porsche will never do this as a retrofit.

it's $5000 dealer service estimate to swap the the North American 11 kW onboard charger for the 19.2 kW onbboard charger - most of which is labor to tear the car apart to gain access to the onboard charger hardware and do _NOT_ include pulling a new harness from the passenger side port to embedded onboard charger.

Hello my money is on porsche not even EVER shipping an NACS port for the entire run of the current gen 1/2 Taycan's or even the Macan (maybe the .2 Macan if NACS swap has good buzz from GM/Ford and others in 2026 and beyond) - the earliest we could see a factory NACS port is probably the 718 EV sport car…but that's assuming Porsche is motivated to make the change, which I'm not clear they 'get it' yet.

there will be no retrofit - there is no upside when a $200 retail cost adatper does all that you need it to do. Future vehicles can be NACS from the factory but it requires redesiging the entire in-vehicle wiring layout and inputs to the AC/DC onboard charging hardware.

 

[DerekS]

the interesting "swap" is the passenger side CCS1 port which currently support both L1/L2 J-1772 AC charging and CCS FastDC charging - swapping this port requires:

• new NACS port
• new wire harness (5 wire instead of 7)
• new onboard AC/DC charging hardware that can multiplex AC/DC inputs
• firmware/software changes to the vehicle to support all this

It is not speculation to say Porsche will never do this as a retrofit.

I rescind my skepticism in light of this detail - and if I glossed over it earlier in the thread, my apologies.

Yeah, it looks like an adapter is going to be our future.

 

[daveo4EV]

I rescind my skepticism in light of this detail - and if I glossed over it earlier in the thread, my apologies.

Yeah, it looks like an adapter is going to be our future.

the requirement for AC/DC multiplexing on the high-voltage power feed pins/wires/lines is both the beauty and the pain of NACS - it's a brilliant optimization but it requires some clever engineering for the onboard power components to be able to dynamically demultiplex the power feed - what you gain is the physical space recovery for a smaller connector/plug that is more dense by design than J-1772 or CCS1 - lots of negative/wasted empty space in CCS1…making the connector large/bukly and ultimately wasteful of it's space and awkward to handle.

saying it beyond speculation that they will never be a retrofit is even a light touch - hell Porsche may even lack motivation to EVER make this change on future cars…I'm not sure they will/have receive NACS news graciously or even be sympathetic to it as a medium long term goal.

I would be disappointed but not suprised to see 2027/2028 MY'EV's and beyond from VW/Audi/Porsche still shipping with J-1772 and Combined CCS1 ports on their vehicles in North America.

 

[DerekS]

We own a Tesla and a Taycan, and I can say the NACS connector is by far a nicer connector to use. Marginally so when compared to J-1772, dramatically so when compared to CCS.

The whole notion of different ports for AC and DC is a confusion point that normal people don't want to deal with, too.

It sucks to be on the losing end of the format war, but if I am being objective NACS really is a better move for EV adoption in America.

 

[snstevens]

the future replacement for my 2021 Cayenne TurboS eHybrid is going to be a suitable/appropriate full BEV SUV - until all this news broke I was assuming I would be patiently wait and ultimately purchase the Cayenne BEV porsche has discussed/hinted about (not the 7 seater and the not the Macan EV) - but if Porsche drags their feet on this too long I'm pretty sure BMW will be more aggressive on this front and more tech-forward - and X5'ish full BEV SUV with decent feature set and a NACS port native w/Supercharger (adapter or NACS native) access and I'm voting with my $$$ and moving brands…

my money is available for any of the german's that "read the room" on this issue and push to gain me access to the supercharger network in North America…I'll humbly suggest I'm not alone on this front - and I truly pity any Porsche sale person attempting to explain to soccer mom's Porsche's position on the Macan EV in 2024 if Porsche does not have a response/road-map…

and since doing EV's since 2012 and talking to friends, familiy, aquaintances and co-workers fast charging network access is a highly visible aspect of their EV purchase migration and they are aware of it - it's not some tech-wonky thing -they are deeply concerned and value access to a functional network with good standards and access...silence in this space will lead to two results: 1. not moving to an EV at all 2. going with the vendors who are proactively engaged on this topic.

I was also "all in" on a future post face lifted .2 Taycan CT (GTS or Turbo I'm waffling) MY'25/26 - but now I'm thinking I'm on hold on that plan pending engagement from Porsche on this topic - Silence is not golden for me personally on this topic and it will influence my future purchasing decisions - but may simply be I choose to satisfied with the status quo of my 2020 Taycan Turbo longer than I was orginally planning - I'm not defecting back to Tesla - but future purchases will take this development into consideration…I can't believe I'm the only one with that perspective.

keeping what I currently own easy and plausible - but I'm certainly not spending "new money" on any EV product with out an explicit response in this space - even a "we're doing nothing" explicit response may be acceptable for "new money" purchased because then I can make an informed decision about my purchase…but a non-response will give me pause about writing a check - it smells of lack of engagement and deer in headlights about things they don't want to understand or engage on.

this annoucment does not change anything about my current vehicle ownership - but future new money from me will require an answer in this space so I can make an informed decision.

I want to second this “new money” sentiment.

I see a future with many EV options that could be both fun and exciting and while I love my Taycan, I really want to have high speed DC charging that is reliable.

I sent a link to Dave’s entry above to my service advisor and to Porsche NA support. It can’t hurt.

 

[WasserGKuehlt]

I mean no offense to anyone in here, but some of you guys are sounding like you might have a heart attack getting yourselves worked up over trying to read between the lines about the news in the past few weeks. Ford and GM have announced changes that are going to take a long time to come to fruition. If VWAG/EA are going to announce a change as a result of the recent news, it could be weeks or months down the line, and still result in the same rough timelines for consumers as Ford/GM.

Yes, let your dealer know that you want Porsche/VWAG to make a similar decision, but it's important to know that in the short term nothing is changing for anyone, including Ford/GM owners, and that any long term implications of resale value can change in an instant if VWAG makes a similar announcement.

I'll start worrying if we get to EOY and there's no signs of VWAG making an adjustment here.

Are you suggesting that we wait until the end of the year before we comment? I can do Labor Day, but it’s a long way from there to Thanksgiving. ?

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