Excellent explanation, but the article title is also bullshit because both Penn and ohio have started building chargers already in the last month or so, they just aren’t finished. These two are in the lead because they had largely done the ground work you describe for EV charger rollouts. The money is doing exactly what it needs to do: give states the capitol to start work immediately. Most states are still planning, but the moneys there to actually make the plans a reality.
Based on the white House statements, no one expected this to immediately happen. They all planned for it to take a while to sort, but once its sorted, to move quickly. Turns out infastructure is hard to do competently, but when you put smart people in charge of it and fund them, it actually gets done.
People can say what they want to about Biden, but the motherfucker had been hiring good people to do good things.
Were people actually expecting the construction to start immediately or something? There’s absolutely wrenches being thrown at the process, and all of the planning and construction time on top of it all.
The plan all along was to complete everything by 2027, with construction starting in '24 and '25. Every state I’ve cared to look at has a published plan and timeline. 🤷♂️
Crucially, the cable swap is a non-issue, because the chargers will all use the CCS communication protocol. NACS uses the J1772 pins for sensing and initiating charging, and CCS adds an extra communication layer which Tesla has built into their cars since mid-2019 or something when Europe switched to CCS Combo 2 as the EU standard.
I’m not personally a promoter of the NACS connector for lots of reasons nobody cares about, but I’m glad we’ve at least landed on the common communication protocol. If all these chargers started popping up in 2024 with CCS Combo 1 connectors, I wonder how many of these other brands would actually migrate to the NACS wand versus just continuing on with Combo 1 forever. I’m not convinced any of them really care either, and it’s just a matter of convenience for customers. Without the necessity to rely on Tesla’s charging network, that convenience sort of evaporates. Add in an adapter for NACS to CCS, and I think the whole issue goes away.
They haven’t switched yet, though. And that’s one of the points I’m making. They have said they’re switching in 2025. To me, that sounded a lot like they were waiting to see what happened with chargers in US and Canada. Announcing charger support for it is also not a meaningful announcement since you really only need to change the cable end. It’s like saying I now support winter boots. I didn’t change my feet, so it’s not a meaningful statement.
The number of EVs sold isn’t an argument that’s going to sway me. As I’ve said, I have technical reasons I don’t like the NACS connector. If everyone sticks to the current announced plan, then we get DCFC with both connectors and nobody really cares. But if the charger manufacturers and EV manufacturers decide to drop NACS as a whole, I don’t think anybody will know or care in 3-4 years time outside of Tesla owners that need an adapter to access other brands chargers.
I clearly said they all announced it was happening in 2025, so obviously linking to their announcements isn’t really going to change anything.
The thing they are doing is trying to equip their cars with the port for the chargers that their customer will use. What I’m saying is if the NACS adoption doesn’t take off my charger manufacturers, then auto manufacturers have no incentive to adopt it either. That’s the remaining question mark. Regardless, Combo 1 connectors are going to be on those chargers because that’s what every other brand has on their cars.
I guess if it was just Ford and Ford alone, I could see one company backing out, but not several entities.
Consider why these companies have decided to transition to an NACS port. Because they want their customers to gain access to chargers that exist, and those chargers are operated by Tesla. Now, imagine that in 2024 we start seeing NEVI funded chargers installed around the country, and those chargers have fewer NACS connectors than CCS Combo, or they have no NACS connectors. What do you think the auto manufacturers would do? They haven’t signed any kind of contract requiring they use NACS, they’ve simply announced that they plan to in 2025.
In other words, if there’s no convenience improvement to deploying NACS ports because new charger sites don’t have a majority of NACS connectors, then they wouldn’t do it. They’d simply keep equipping vehicles with Combo 1 ports.
Each announcement has explicitly said they’re doing this to gain access to the Supercharger network.
Yes. Because today that network is by far the largest in the US, and almost certainly in Canada. But the US is funding deployment of new chargers every 50 miles, so you can see where brands other than Tesla might outnumber Tesla over the next few years.
The ink has dried on contracts.
Buying new plastic bits from an injection molding company doesn’t require an insane lead time, and the existence of contracts really isn’t meaningful in any way. There is almost guaranteed to be language in supplier contracts that allows both parties to back out as long as they keep a dollar spend level or pay a small penalty. This kind of thing happens all the time during qualification and testing.
Going back to CCS would be incredibly unlikely.
Why? If there was a compelling reason to not use NACS, why would anybody continue charging ahead?
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Excellent explanation, but the article title is also bullshit because both Penn and ohio have started building chargers already in the last month or so, they just aren’t finished. These two are in the lead because they had largely done the ground work you describe for EV charger rollouts. The money is doing exactly what it needs to do: give states the capitol to start work immediately. Most states are still planning, but the moneys there to actually make the plans a reality.
Based on the white House statements, no one expected this to immediately happen. They all planned for it to take a while to sort, but once its sorted, to move quickly. Turns out infastructure is hard to do competently, but when you put smart people in charge of it and fund them, it actually gets done.
People can say what they want to about Biden, but the motherfucker had been hiring good people to do good things.
Fun fact: Ohio already has its first NEVI station up and running.
https://www.plugshare.com/location/581134
Were people actually expecting the construction to start immediately or something? There’s absolutely wrenches being thrown at the process, and all of the planning and construction time on top of it all.
deleted by creator
The plan all along was to complete everything by 2027, with construction starting in '24 and '25. Every state I’ve cared to look at has a published plan and timeline. 🤷♂️
It’s going to be 90% planning and permitting. 10% construction. There’s very little construction needed. (It may even be 99:1).
Crucially, the cable swap is a non-issue, because the chargers will all use the CCS communication protocol. NACS uses the J1772 pins for sensing and initiating charging, and CCS adds an extra communication layer which Tesla has built into their cars since mid-2019 or something when Europe switched to CCS Combo 2 as the EU standard.
I’m not personally a promoter of the NACS connector for lots of reasons nobody cares about, but I’m glad we’ve at least landed on the common communication protocol. If all these chargers started popping up in 2024 with CCS Combo 1 connectors, I wonder how many of these other brands would actually migrate to the NACS wand versus just continuing on with Combo 1 forever. I’m not convinced any of them really care either, and it’s just a matter of convenience for customers. Without the necessity to rely on Tesla’s charging network, that convenience sort of evaporates. Add in an adapter for NACS to CCS, and I think the whole issue goes away.
deleted by creator
They haven’t switched yet, though. And that’s one of the points I’m making. They have said they’re switching in 2025. To me, that sounded a lot like they were waiting to see what happened with chargers in US and Canada. Announcing charger support for it is also not a meaningful announcement since you really only need to change the cable end. It’s like saying I now support winter boots. I didn’t change my feet, so it’s not a meaningful statement.
The number of EVs sold isn’t an argument that’s going to sway me. As I’ve said, I have technical reasons I don’t like the NACS connector. If everyone sticks to the current announced plan, then we get DCFC with both connectors and nobody really cares. But if the charger manufacturers and EV manufacturers decide to drop NACS as a whole, I don’t think anybody will know or care in 3-4 years time outside of Tesla owners that need an adapter to access other brands chargers.
deleted by creator
I clearly said they all announced it was happening in 2025, so obviously linking to their announcements isn’t really going to change anything.
The thing they are doing is trying to equip their cars with the port for the chargers that their customer will use. What I’m saying is if the NACS adoption doesn’t take off my charger manufacturers, then auto manufacturers have no incentive to adopt it either. That’s the remaining question mark. Regardless, Combo 1 connectors are going to be on those chargers because that’s what every other brand has on their cars.
deleted by creator
Consider why these companies have decided to transition to an NACS port. Because they want their customers to gain access to chargers that exist, and those chargers are operated by Tesla. Now, imagine that in 2024 we start seeing NEVI funded chargers installed around the country, and those chargers have fewer NACS connectors than CCS Combo, or they have no NACS connectors. What do you think the auto manufacturers would do? They haven’t signed any kind of contract requiring they use NACS, they’ve simply announced that they plan to in 2025.
In other words, if there’s no convenience improvement to deploying NACS ports because new charger sites don’t have a majority of NACS connectors, then they wouldn’t do it. They’d simply keep equipping vehicles with Combo 1 ports.
Yes. Because today that network is by far the largest in the US, and almost certainly in Canada. But the US is funding deployment of new chargers every 50 miles, so you can see where brands other than Tesla might outnumber Tesla over the next few years.
Buying new plastic bits from an injection molding company doesn’t require an insane lead time, and the existence of contracts really isn’t meaningful in any way. There is almost guaranteed to be language in supplier contracts that allows both parties to back out as long as they keep a dollar spend level or pay a small penalty. This kind of thing happens all the time during qualification and testing.
Why? If there was a compelling reason to not use NACS, why would anybody continue charging ahead?
deleted by creator
This is why I come to the comments. Thanks for this explainer!