In July of 2023, seven car makers (BMW Group, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes-Benz Group and Stellantis) announced (blog article) that Real Soon Now they would install thirty thousand EV charging kiosks. The title of this blog article says it all:
How many of the promised 30,000 charging kiosks have the seven car makers installed?
The answer is zero. Not one of the 30,000 promised EV charging kiosks as been installed, as of April 2024.
The seven car makers have given a name (blog article) to the entity that will install the 30,000 EV charging kiosks — Ionna. And the entity has a web site. As best I can see from clicking around on the web site, it is content-free.
The latest firmware update for my Tesla Model S shows a new item of “Additional Vehicle Information”, namely “CCS and 3rd-party NACS DC charging”. As you can see in the screen shot at right, the status for this item is said to be “Enabled ⓘ”. I click on the “ⓘ” and it brings up a new page with “404 not found” in tiny writing. Continue reading “CCS and 3rd-party NACS DC charging”
It will be recalled (blog posting) that EVgo seems to have a lot of trouble carrying out the seemingly simple task of enrolling a new vehicle into its “autocharge” program. However badly it went in the earlier enrollment process described in that blog posting, it was far worse in a recent enrollment for an EV car rental. Continue reading “EVgo again fails to cover itself in glory”
On February 28, 2023 the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) picked CCS as the type of DC fast charging plug that would receive $7½ billion in federal funding. After that, every US car maker and every provider of DC fast charging services announced that they would migrate to NACS (Tesla-style, also called J3400) charging plugs. Now the FHWA has requested comments as to whether the $7½ billion should continue to get spent on CCS plugs, or whether the money should go to J3400 plugs. As of today, 62 comments have been filed, nearly all of which say that the correct answer is “J3400”. One of the comments has a far higher word count than any of the others, and you can see it here, archived here.
Hertz did not cover itself in glory in a recent EV rental. The roadside assistance was clueless, the Hertz EV Trip Planner gave false information about charging locations, the charge-level-upon-return policy was customer-hostile, and the car that Hertz actually gave me had a shorter driving range than the car I had reserved. Continue reading “Disappointing Hertz EV rental”
On June 20, 2023, Rivian announced (blog article) that Real Soon Now the owners of Rivian EVs would be able to charge at Tesla supercharging stations. Now, after a passage of more than eight months, there is progress.
click to enlarge
Which vehicles does this apply to? The Rivian vehicles to which this applies to are the R1T pickup and R1S all-electric SUV. Each of these vehicles has a CCS1 charging port at the left front of the vehicle, behind the left front wheel. Each of these vehicles needs an adapter to be able to charge at a Tesla supercharging station. The adapter permits a Rivian EV with a CCS1 charging port to charge using a Tesla supercharger NACS (J3400) charging plug.
Avoiding incompatible Tesla superchargers. It turns out that only someTesla superchargers can be used with this adapter for fast DC charging of Rivian EVs. The charging works only at (newer) V3 superchargers, and does not work at (older) V2 superchargers. (See this blog article that discusses the differences between V2 and V3 superchargers.) As a fun fact, one way that a person can figure out whether they are looking at a V2 or V3 supercharger is by looking at the charging plug.
V2 supercharger
V3 supercharger
works for Rivian EVs
no
yes
As of right now (March 2024) the number of V3 charging kiosks in the US is about 15,000. For the owner of a Rivian CCS1 EV, the use of this adapter approximately doubles the number of places where the owner can accomplish fast DC charging.
This brings to two the number of makes of non-Tesla CCS1 EVs that can charge at NACS Tesla supercharging stations (see canonical list).
Yes, every US car maker has by now joined the NACS club (blog article). This means that Real Soon Now, they will drop the legacy CCS1 charging port and switch over to the NACS (Tesla-style) charging port. The natural corresponding step will be to place the charging port at either the left rear corner of the car or at the right front corner of the car. This location permits normal parking in a parking space in a Tesla supercharging station.
But Real Soon Now has not yet happened. As of right now, every newly manufactured EV by any US car maker that is not Tesla has a CCS1 charging port. Where on the vehicle do these non-Tesla car makers choose to place the (CCS1) charging port? I invited readers to respond to a survey on this. The diagram at above right shows the results of the survey. Continue reading “Where are the charging ports in US electric cars?”
It turns out that there are better and worse ways to accomplish a seamless charging experience for fast DC charging of electric vehicles. There is “autocharge” which is older and more widely adopted, and less secure. EVgo uses “autocharge”. And there is “plug and charge” according to ISO 15118, which is much more secure, but is much newer and is not yet widely adopted. Continue reading “Autocharge versus “plug and charge””
I have a table where I am trying to keep track of progress in the US toward “plug and charge”. It is quite discouraging to see so many cells that fail to say “yes”. Having said this, I figured I should try out EVgo’s “plug and charge” system, which it calls “Autocharge+“. It did not go well. Continue reading “Trying to enroll in EVgo’s “plug and charge” system”
In July of 2023, seven car makers (BMW Group, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes-Benz Group and Stellantis) announced (blog article) that Real Soon Now they would install thirty thousand EV charging kiosks. The title of this blog article says it all:
