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by InTheArena 1311 days ago
They are all tiny in comparison...

The vast majority of EVs in the United States use this now, and it's not just historical - Just to emphasis the most popular EV cars in the US today are:

Tesla Model Y 60,271 20% 191,451 50.7% 33.2% Tesla Model 3 55,030 67% 156,357 94.5% 27.1% Ford Mustang Mach-E 10,414 – 28,089 49% 4.9% Tesla Model S 9,171 150% 23,464 79.9% 4.1% Chevy Bolt EV/EUV 14,709 226% 22,012 -11.3% 3.8% Hyundai IONIQ 5 4,800 – 18,492 – 3.2% Tesla Model X 6,552 43% 19,542 16.4% 3.4%

2 comments

Cars can last 10 or more years. If you buy a car today you're making a bet that Tesla and its standard will still be dominant over all other car and charger manufacturers in the year 2032+. That is an extraordinarily foolish bet.

My bet is that within two years Tesla standardizes on CCS for its US cars (thus getting rid of an annoying upgrade/adapter/retrofit problem) and then what'll be left is the sad minority (AKA me) who are stuck with the dying standard and an annoying dongle.

I'd bet a garage will be able to do a connector swap within an hour's labour if Tesla will make the necessary firmware changes.
For legacy cars the likely answer is that people buy the $250 dongle. For new cars this will cost a few hundred bucks in parts and labor (or let's say 1-1.5% of the sales price) and it will be required surgery on your brand-new car.

Who is going to pay for this? If it's Tesla, then the smart move is to put CCS into cars right now (and as a side benefit, standardize their US and European models [edit: nevermind this bit, not the same standards].) If it's the customer, then it's an annoying non-trivial cost you'll have to bear. Yuck.

They don't standardize US and Europe because US is CCS1 and Europe is CCS2.
Ugh god why. Didn't realize that. Rest of the point stands.
3 phase vs 120V.

But it doesn't matter. The number of vehicles taken either way is negligible. In the old days, you had to change the miles/km speedometer to the other one when you took you car with you as you emigrated. Buying a charge adapter is easier.

Since good adapters exist, it's not really a deeply committing bet.
Adapters remove the benefits of having a "superior" charging standard. It may be that the Tesla connector is better than CCS, but Tesla+CCS_adapter is going to be obviously worse. (This is something you're going to use every day, even a slightly worse ergonomic experience adds up.)
My point is you get a Tesla for many reasons, not just the NACS plug, and if CCS wins you still enjoy all those other things.
But there are already 3x more level 2 + CCS ports than tesla ports.

In the US:

There are 36000 individual tesla connections

There are 92000 l2 j1772 ports.

There are 22000 CCS DC fast ports

They are comparing the DC fast number to the tesla number, and ignoring the j1772 number.

They are comparing fast charging only, yes. (Also all Teslas come with a J1772 adapter.)
Which is pointless to compare -

1. All the other cars are J1772 + CCS

2. So you'd have to provide adapters for every other non-tesla car, or replace every non-tesla port. Not just the 20k CCS ones, but the 96K J1772 ones.

3. They are claiming a false ubiquity to make it seem like now is a good time to do this. The point at which there are 3x other plugs than yours is not a point where others are going to switch to your thing.

In fact, they are almost certainly doing it because they see the train coming at them, and don't want to deal with it.

It's too late.