Owners of Rivian EVs can now charge at Tesla supercharging stations

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.

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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 some Tesla 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).

Where are the charging ports in US electric cars?

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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?”

Autocharge versus “plug and charge”

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””

What’s the correct list of vehicle makes supported by EVgo’s plug and charge?

EVgo’s web page  about its “Autocharge” system (which means “plug and charge”) lists sixteen supported car makes.  They are denoted in bold face in the table below.

What I learned is that that list of sixteen supported car makes is incomplete.  A Rivian owner told me that Rivian is able to do plug and charge with EVgo.

Yesterday for the first time I managed to enroll my vehicle in EVgo’s plug and charge system.  After that, I received a customer satisfaction survey from EVgo asking how this first charging session went.  The first question is the make and model of the car that I charged.  (The second question is the model year of the car.)  The survey invited me to select the make and model from a drop-down list of 73 vehicle models.  Doing a “view source” on the drop-down list revealed database codes that presumably get used internally in the analysis of the survey responses.  The models and codes are listed in the table below.

It is interesting to speculate on why the database codes run in three distinct numerical sequences:

    • nine digits starting with “7231244” (56 codes)
    • nine digits starting with “8433858” (2 codes)
    • nine digits starting with “9456995” (1 code)
    • ten digits starting with “12650109” (10 codes)

What’s striking is how different the drop-down list is from the table on the EVgo web page.  The main thing is that the drop-down list from the satisfaction survey is much longer — the survey includes vehicle makes that are missing from the EVgo web page:

I welcome comments from readers who own any of the makes listed above, as to whether you have been able to enroll such an EV in EVgo’s Autocharge+ system.

Note that “Energica” is missing from the survey, despite being listed on the EVgo web page.   What, you may ask, is “Energica”?  It is a motorcycle.

Make and model database code
Audi e-tron 723124418
Audi e-tron GT 723124419
Audi e-tron Sportback 723124420
BMW Active E 723124421
BMW i3 723124422
BMW i4 1265010945
BMW i5 945699583
BMW i7 723124423
BMW iX 723124424
Cadillac Lyriq 1265010946
Chevrolet Blazer EV 723124425
Chevrolet Bolt EUV 723124426
Chevrolet Bolt EV 723124427
Chevrolet Spark EV 723124428
Energica Experia
Energica Eva Ribelle
Energica Ego
Energica EsseEsse9
Fiat 500e 1265010947
Fisker Ocean 723124429
Ford E-Transit-350 Cargo 723124430
Ford F-150 Lightning 723124431
Ford Focus Electric 723124432
Ford Mustang Mach-E 1265010949
Genesis Electrified G80 723124433
Genesis GV60 1265010948
Genesis GV70 723124434
GMC Hummer EV 723124435
Harley-Davison LiveWire 723124436
Honda Clarity EV 723124437
Honda Fit EV 723124438
Hyundai Ioniq 5 1265010950
Hyundai Ioniq 6 723124439
Hyundai Ioniq Electric 723124440
Hyundai Kona Electric 723124441
Jaguar I-Pace 723124442
Kia EV6 1265010951
Kia EV9 723124443
Kia Niro Electric 723124444
Kia Soul Electric 1265010952
Lexus RZ 450e 843385879
Lordstown Endurance 723124445
Lucid Air 723124446
Mazda MX-30 723124448
Mercedes-Benz B-Class Electric Drive 723124447
Mercedes-Benz B250e 1265010953
Mercedes-Benz EQB 1265010954
Mercedes-Benz EQE 723124449
Mercedes-Benz EQS 723124450
MINI Cooper SE 723124451
MINI Electric 723124452
Mitsubishi i-MiEV 723124453
Nissan Ariya 723124454
Nissan Leaf 723124455
Nissan Leaf Plus 723124456
Polestar 2 723124457
Porsche Taycan 723124458
Rivian R1S 723124459
Rivian R1T 723124460
Scion iQ EV 723124461
smart fortwo 723124462
Subaru Solterra 723124463
Tesla Model 3 723124464
Tesla Model S 723124465
Tesla Model X 723124466
Tesla Model Y 723124467
Toyota bZ4x 723124468
Toyota RAV4 EV 843385880
VinFast VF8 723124469
Volkswagen e-Golf 723124470
Volkswagen ID.4 723124471
Volvo C40 Recharge 723124472
Volvo XC40 Recharge 723124473

 

Who gets to do an easy “plug and charge”?

From the moment that became an owner of a Tesla vehicle, I was able to do an easy “plug and charge”.  I would park my car at a Tesla charging kiosk, plug the charging plug of the kiosk into the charging port of the car, and charging would commence.

Note what is missing from the previous sentence.  Never in all of my years of charging my Tesla car at a Tesla charging station have I needed to do anything else to get the charging to commence.  No tapping a proximity card in front of a “tap to pay” reader on the kiosk.  No tapping a credit card in front of a “tap to pay” reader on the kiosk.  No waving my phone in front of a “tap to pay” reader on the kiosk.  No inserting a credit card into a credit card reader on the kiosk.  No fumbling with a smart phone app, and no cursing because the stupid smart phone app had logged me out and of course I do not have the password memorized for logging back in.  No going on a treasure hunt on the kiosk to try to work out what the “kiosk number” is so that I can key in the kiosk number at the smart phone app.  No calling up tech support to talk to somebody about why the “tap to pay” did not work.

Tesla owners are, as you may appreciate, rather spoiled by this absolutely seamless charging experience.  We read news stories about owners of non-Tesla vehicles who end up very disappointed or angry because when they finally did locate a non-broken charging kiosk, they found that it was difficult or impossible to get the actual charging to begin.  Or if it was not that bad, at least the owner of the non-Tesla vehicle had to tap a phone or tap a prox card or key in a kiosk number into a smart phone app, to get charging to commence.  Yes, we read those news stories, but having never had those problems, we do not fully appreciate how bad it might be to try to get charging to commence.

Across the US are tens of thousands of free-of-charge Level 2 chargers.  Most of them provide a seamless charging experience, but of course it is slow.   You might have to leave your vehicle at the charger overnight to get a full charge.  No, what I am talking about in this blog article is fast DC charging or “supercharging”, typically at speeds of 50 kW or 150 kW or more.

Which brings me to two general questions.  First, to what extent is there any way for a Tesla owner to have “plug and charge” fast DC charging experience on any non-Tesla-branded kiosk?  And second, to what extent does the owner of a non-Tesla EV ever get to have a “plug and charge” fast DC charging experience?  Continue reading “Who gets to do an easy “plug and charge”?”

Owners of Ford EVs can now charge at Tesla supercharging stations

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The subject line of this blog article makes things sound better than they are.  The real situation is that starting now, the owner of a Ford CCS1 EV can try to place an order for an adapter to be able to charge at Tesla supercharging stations.  If and when the owner successfully places the order for the adapter, the owner gets to wait for the adapter to arrive.  If and when the adapter arrives, the owner can try to find a Tesla supercharging station at which the charging can be carried out. When the time comes to plug in the Ford CCS1 EV at the Tesla supercharging station, it is likely this will greatly inconvenience other users of the supercharging station. Continue reading “Owners of Ford EVs can now charge at Tesla supercharging stations”

Stellantis joins the Tesla-plug club

On February 12, 2024, Stellantis announced that Real Soon Now, all of its newly manufactured electric vehicles for the US will have a Tesla-style charging port located at the left rear corner of the vehicle.  Stellantis is the maker of Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Maserati, and Ram cars.

This adds another entry to the canonical list.