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

[whitex]

An recent post from the former President of Porsche Cars North America:

Perhaps he moved over to Rivian so that he can see some technological growth in his lifetime. Rivian is an automotive company from this century, they move much faster than the old guard.

 

[Tooney]

View attachment 66697

 

[Tooney]

Starting this summer, we will be implementing the North American Charging Standard (NACS) across our infrastructure. This means that Mercedes-Benz EV drivers will gain access to Superchargers via an adapter, and Tesla DC chargers will seamlessly integrate into our ecosystem. Additionally, by 2025 the first Mercedes-Benz vehicle will be equipped with the physical NACS plug, further solidifying our commitment to providing convenient and efficient charging solutions for EV owners.
Mercedes Shares More Details About EV Charging Hubs In North America

 

[Tooney]

Tesla can now deploy pre-fabricated Superchargers in a game-changing 4 days

https://twitter.com/TeslaCharging/status/1777395990766432596

 

[Tooney]

Tesla plans new world’s largest Supercharger with an impressive 200 stalls

Tesla has unveiled plans for a new world’s largest Supercharger station, with an impressive 200 stalls in Yeehaw Junction, Florida.

It was just over a month ago that we learned that Tesla planned a new world’s largest Supercharger station – a new 164-stall station in California.

Now, Tesla is already planning to beat that and by a significant margin.

Tesla has now filed for a new mega Supercharger station in Florida with an astonishing 200 stalls.

@Jonathan S. needs to relocate to Yeehaw Junction.

 

[Jonathan S.]

[...]@Jonathan S. needs to relocate to Yeehaw Junction.

Although my experience with Florida is limited, I'm pretty sure all the skiing there is water, not snow.

Speaking of Tesla though, today I learned that I might have to testify in a month at a trial in Plymouth MA.
I've done that previously as a daytrip, and even in my A6ar, that's about five hours of roundtrip driving. (Massachusetts is quite bit along the NW<>SE axis!)
And in my Taycan ... wait, what, Tesla has a Magic Dock station in Foxborough, wuhoo!
At first I didn't believe the app, but then I found a thread at the Tesla forums confirming it.

Meanwhile, back in the CCS1 Universe, specifically Planet EA, while preparing to drive home yesterday from a few days of skiing, I checked the latest PlugShare reports in case I needed to charge along the way, which fortunately I did not, as the EA at the junction of I-89 and I-91 was still down to only three chargers, with an eclipse-induced wait time of many hours:

 

[Tooney]

LOL @ "Station 2, Cord 2 is working!"
But, it's good that the new Taycan can charge umteeump percent in only 10 minutes.........

 

[whitex]

Tesla can now deploy pre-fabricated Superchargers in a game-changing 4 days

https://twitter.com/TeslaCharging/status/1777395990766432596

We already knew that Tesla can update supercharger firmware faster than Porsche can update their EV cars. Now we know Tesla can build and deploy superchargers faster than Porsche can deploy NACS adapters to their cars.

Even though I am not in the market for a new car right now, I must say I was rather disappointed, though not surprised, that the new Macan and Taycan will still ship with CCS ports. At this time I am gauging the chances of old Taycans getting access to superchargers, ~21%, which is 1% over the chance than Elon will open them to all cars with an adapter.

 

[Jonathan S.]

[...] At this time I am gauging the chances of old Taycans getting access to superchargers, ~21%, which is 1% over the chance than Elon will open them to all cars with an adapter.

My phone call with the A2Z CEO mainly focused on upcoming access for the first generation of the i4, but his optimism there for the many ways that Tesla can authenticate an EV model gives me confidence that old Taycan builds won't have any problem either.
Plus given that VAG isn't slated for access until 2025, with nobody left to exclude by then, would not make any sense for Tesla to exclude old Taycans.
(And yes, I know that Tesla does all sorts of things that make no sense -- or at least, make no sense to anyone besides Elon -- but TSCN does make sense.)
Also, the Magic Docks are proliferating so much in the Northeast (despite the lack of recent social median influencer attention) that access to all V3 and V4 stations is becoming less important to me.

 

[whitex]

My phone call with the A2Z CEO mainly focused on upcoming access for the first generation of the i4, but his optimism there for the many ways that Tesla can authenticate an EV model gives me confidence that old Taycan builds won't have any problem either.
Plus given that VAG isn't slated for access until 2025, with nobody left to exclude by then, would not make any sense for Tesla to exclude old Taycans.
(And yes, I know that Tesla does all sorts of things that make no sense -- or at least, make no sense to anyone besides Elon -- but TSCN does make sense.)
Also, the Magic Docks are proliferating so much in the Northeast (despite the lack of recent social median influencer attention) that access to all V3 and V4 stations is becoming less important to me.

Elon could enable it for anyone with an adapter today. The fact that he's not doing it means he's trying to keep tighter control on who can access the network. Once there is no manufacturer to exclude, you think they will just open it to everyone, but the other possibility is that they will just close the app authentication for unauthenticated cars completely. Magic docs will simply become convenience for those who didn't want to buy the adapter, but their cars have been enabled. Why? Because it still allows Tesla to exclude cars, for example cars which have been totaled - something Tesla took a lot of public opinion hit but never waivered, so obviously important to them (probably to avoid cars catching on fire a the SC, which would be bad PR). Another reason is to force data collection, which has value to Tesla - cars which cannot talk to the supercharger to identify itself, probably cannot provide all the data Tesla requires for their data trove.

Magic docs also provide Tesla a testing opportunity, to see how well other, non-purpose-integrated cars are playing with the SC's. That use will not longer be needed once everyone is equipped with NACS.

 

[Jonathan S.]

Such a scenario is certainly plausible.
But I remain just as optimistic for TSCN access (profit motive!) as I do pessimistic for EA (civil consent decree version of prison work release program!) and its nearly equally miserable CCS1 competition (seemingly optimized for gov't subsidies).

 

[whitex]

Such a scenario is certainly plausible.
But I remain just as optimistic for TSCN access (profit motive!) as I do pessimistic for EA (civil consent decree version of prison work release program!) and its nearly equally miserable CCS1 competition (seemingly optimized for gov't subsidies).

Biggest problem with current government subsidies is they are not at all tied to energy delivered (which is closely related to uptime). Of course companies will optimize for subsidies, so structure subsidies to get the result you want. Unfortunately that would require our elected representatives to actually exercise some critical thinking, and themselves be motivated by results rather than politics and generating kickbacks to donors (e.g. Biden pushing for EV incentives to be tied to US unionized manufacturing, so a huge UAW kickback). So I guess not going to happen.

 

[Tooney]

It's gonna be fun when Macan EV owners (particularly Macan ICE owners) get introduced to Electrify America, PlugShare.com, and terms like 'CCS' and 'NACS'.

 

[Tooney]

Tesla's NACS To CCS1 Adapter Works Great, But Has One Flaw (Updated)

 

[Jonathan S.]

Subject to interpretation of course, but I seem to have inadvertently uncovered evidence that Tesla Magic Docks are already distinguishing between different vehicle types, even among manufacturers that do not yet have access to TSCN, and even among cars that lack P&C.

As for how this test was inadvertently conducted:

• Opened the app this morning at Brewster NY Magic Dock, but after two attempts charger 1A would not detect my Taycan. I have previously charged successfully at this specific location and charger (since it’s the sole pull-by charger, as opposed to the other drive-in chargers).
• Switched to another charger (successfully parking as Tesla originally intended, thanks to Lift for pulling able to drive in far enough). Same error message.
• Totally baffled (with mild panic starting to set it) … hmm … last summer I successfully charged at this Magic Dock location with my Taycan and this phone … last summer I successfully charged at another Magic Dock location with this car and this phone … last week we successfully charged at another Magic Dock with my wife’s i4 and this phone … oh wait, what are the current Tesla app vehicle settings on this phone?

Yes, that’s right – or rather, wrong – I had been playing around with different vehicle settings in my app, and the only one there this morning was my wife’s i4 but I was in my Taycan, whoops!

(At the time earlier this year when I was playing around with the settings, I might have noted then that I had not added Other back in for my Porsche, thinking, Eh, what's the difference, if a marque isn't authorized, it isn't authorized?")

Changed the vehicle to Other (as Porsche is oddly enough still not listed), and then everything was fine.

So I think all that shows how Tesla is somehow able to detect whether a vehicle is a BMW EV, even though BMW currently has no authorization for TSCN (other than the universal Magic Docks for all CCS1), and even though our i4 is March 2023 production before the iDrive update (from 8.0 to 9.0) from August 2023 that added P&C.

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