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by toomuchtodo 1311 days ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27907051

TLDR CCS wanted to be backwards compatible, while Tesla planned fast charging to be first class with their standard. At the time, no one was doing fast charging at Supercharger currents (150kw). CCS was bolted on to J1772.
2 comments
boardwaalk 1311 days ago
Considering how early that decision was made in the timeline of electric vehicles (how early we still even are) — getting saddled with a backwards compatibility kludge kind of sucks.
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criddell 1311 days ago
It’s still early days and certainly not too late to change it.
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chroma 1311 days ago
That's true for the US, but the EU mandates that all vehicle charging stations support CCS Combo 2.[1] They'd have to undo their mandate to allow better chargers, and I don't think that'll happen any time soon.

1. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...

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Dylan16807 1311 days ago
CCS 2 is a different discussion, because at least it supports something the Tesla connector doesn't, 3 phase charging.
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ip26 1311 days ago
That really doesn’t explain all of it, J1772 is not really that big. CCS adds a ton of bulk on top of J1772.
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Dylan16807 1311 days ago
J1772 can't carry enough amps through those pins. So it needs two more huge pins in a separate compartment.

CCS isn't the absolute smallest way to add two more huge pins, but it's pretty close.

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gwbas1c 1311 days ago
Why keep the J1772 connector? Only the data pins are used. I'm sure there's a way to make a connector that's just the CCS part and fudge the data pins into it.

Then supporting the old cars just happens with a dongle.

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Dylan16807 1311 days ago
Don't ask me that, I'm just answering why the decision to keep it caused such a huge connector.
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