What will happen to CCS?

The issue with the CCS connector is its weight and the multiple contour shape of it. Because it's rather heavy, it is not very easy to align the connector with the charging port quickly. Therefore, it's very common for many people to have to use both hands to align and plug in.

The gas pump is similarly bulky and heavy, but to insert the pump nozzle into the gas tank opening is very easy because the nozzle is a small round tube and the gas tank opening is a lot wider than the tip of the nozzle, hence despite of the fact it's bulky and heavy, it's still rather easy to insert successfully.

So it's not too much about the bulkiness and the weight alone, but it's more about the nature of the coupling mechanism which makes the bulkiness and weight become a critical factor.

Because the Tesla connector is a lot smaller and lighter even with the CCS adapter attached, it's easier to align and plug even with one hand.
 
SameGuy said:
Is it not “angled” on any other vehicle?
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In the context of the criticism, I think the point was that the port on Tesla vehicles is not at a different angle than the car's exterior, which is one characteristic that makes it easier to line up.

But yeah, in the world of CCS charging, "angled" charging ports don't appear to be all that common either: Ioniq 5, Mach E, ID.4, Bolt, e-tron ... even the BMW i3 has a charing port parallel with the body panel. The Taycan was the only other model in my small sample size with a (slightly) angled charge port.
 
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Those might be parallel with body panels, but none of them are vertically plumb. That’s what I’m on about.
 
The vertical face of the port in most cars is roughly in line with the body.
Mini have it tilted further inwards as if you are putting a gas nozzle in a hole which must ultimately lead downwards. The top of the port is further in than you would think and you can’t see it from above as it is blocked by bodywork due to being inset.
They compound the issue by not illuminating the charge port but the giant CCS connector gives you almost no view either.
The fact you have to perfectly align the outline of a very odd shape perfectly with the “slots” of the outline of the weird shape in the port is just not user friendly.
The Tesla port is in line with the body, essentially flush, your view of it is not blocked, it is simply a squarish hood that tapers as the entire connector goes into the hole (no aligning anything is necessary) causing the connector to twist as it goes in and self align.
The shape of the actual mating part and the fact it has to line up perfectly combined with the weight, size and shape of the “handle” often mated with a think, heavy cable and then in some cases compounded with no port light and ila mating surface not on line with the body means there is nothing, literally nothing, in its favor over NACS.
Why this is even a debate (on here and in legacy automakers board rooms) baffles me other than due to a dislike of anything Tesla…
 
What debate? I haven’t seen anyone here argue that the dumb, unwieldy CCS (or even J1772) is better in any way than Tesla/NACS.

OTOH, I’ve seen plenty of Tesla owners argue with little cogency that a port location anywhere other than the left rear is stupid.
 
SameGuy said:
What debate? I haven’t seen anyone here argue that the dumb, unwieldy CCS (or even J1772) is better in any way than Tesla/NACS.

OTOH, I’ve seen plenty of Tesla owners argue with little cogency that a port location anywhere other than the left rear is stupid.
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If they can’t provide rationale for their point of view then it should be ignored.
There is nothing that makes the rear left panel more suited or “better” for a charging port location as far as I am aware. Tesla seemed to copy the gas port location of 99.9% of cars out there, maybe for familiarity, I don’t know. Even then it is only familiar to LHD markets and is conveniently on the drivers side, not the case in RHD markets which is why the Mini has it on the right hand side.
For charging speed as well as cost reasons the run to the battery wants to be short but given the battery in a proper skateboard design EV is under the floor between the two wheels it seems to me it could be at either end. I’m sure there’s more to it than that though.
If there is no such thing as the optimum spot from the vehicles perspective then we only need to consider the charger side of the equation. Tesla get away with using shorter cables because they standardized on a port location across their cars: This helps them push more power through a given cable, reduce the cost of the cable, have less damage to the cables due to not having lengths if it left on the floor, and it also reduces their weight making them easier to handle.
There are solutions to many of these issues eg suspended cables on booms, auto cable retraction, and so on, but this all adds cost and points of failure.
To keep cost down and reliability up it seems to me that manufacturers moving to the Tesla connector should engineer their next gen vehicles with the port on the left rear or right front. That makes more sense to me than fitting longer cables and accepting more cost and problems just so designers can get creative about where they put the port.
Maybe the front center would have been best, maybe some other spot, I don’t know. But given their first mover advantage (74% of all EVs sold in the USA in just the past 3 years are Tesla, the figure is higher the further back you go, a realistic estimate would be 80-85%) and thus the most deployed vehicles and chargers (much less reliable chargers) such that manufacturers are asking to use their chargers, it makes sense to me that we standardize on their port location for the reasons above.
 
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AndysComputer said:
There is nothing that makes the rear left panel more suited or “better” for a charging port location as far as I am aware. Tesla seemed to copy the gas port location of 99.9% of cars out there, maybe for familiarity, I don’t know.
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Gas ports have not always been in a standard location. They have been behind the license plate, behind turn signals, on the left, on the right, on the rear of the car and in the open, in the center in front of the boot lid, and those are just the locations I've seen. I'm not quite old enough to have experienced the early refueling spots in the first ICE cars, but I'm sure there were a multitude. It was probably just as difficult for "early adapters" who purchased those new-fangled smoky vehicles.
 
revorg said:
Gas ports have not always been in a standard location. They have been behind the license plate, behind turn signals, on the left, on the right, on the rear of the car and in the open, in the center in front of the boot lid, and those are just the locations I've seen. I'm not quite old enough to have experienced the early refueling spots in the first ICE cars, but I'm sure there were a multitude. It was probably just as difficult for "early adapters" who purchased those new-fangled smoky vehicles.
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Very true! They were in all sorts of dodgy locations…
We seem to have standardized now, side not withstanding…
 
For street-side (likely L2) charging in North America, the right side is absolutely superior. Same goes in many suburban residential (we’ll say non-MDU) garages, where people tend to park with the passenger side closer to a wall. If I pull in to the right hand spot in my house, the wall is on the right. Because of the layout of the workbench and storage, electrical panel, compressor, etc, I let my wife use the right side for the Subaru, and I back in to the left side spot, and again the wall is on the right side of the car. I put my EVSE on that wall, near the middle. It’s a three foot reach to my SE’s port, but if I’m parking on the other side for whatever reason (detailing, unloading Costco crap), the Grizzl-E’s 24-foot cable has no trouble reaching around à-la Tesla.
 
MINI themselves moved the fueling port from the driver side to the passenger side when switching from the R55 and R56 to F54 and F55/F56 models (North America anyway). I always thought the original driver (traffic) side was to make it easier to get to, but moving to the passenger (curb) side seems a move to be safer if you're stranded roadside. And yeah, the passenger side is definitely easier for on-street charging. Which isn't much of a thing yet, but is going to have to come. We have been getting street chargers installed in my area.
 
teslarati97 said:
BMWs have traditionally been on the right side with the exception of the 1955-1962 BMW Isetta 300 in the middle (back).

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The BMW showroom next door when I took delivery of my SE had one of those in a very pretty teal.

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Well, the honeymoon appears to be over. When Ford, etc., all went to the dark side and joined the Supercharger brigade there was considerable excitement among the “electric transportation” bloggers. Now it’s beginning to sink in that this may not be as simple as it sounds.

For example, Motor Trend took 3 BEVs - Lightning, iD4, and Ioniq5 - to a Tesla Magic Dock station. Lightning and iD4 charged just fine, but they could not get the Ioniq to charge at ALL. They had to charge it up a bit off of the Lightning to get it to an EA station. Apparently this is a big issue with the Hyundai and Kia BEVs.

So, who will volunteer to sort this all out? Tesla? Hyundai? Neither?

This is exactly what may happen when multiple brands start showing up at the Superchargers. Hopefully not, but based on past experiences I’m seeing problems ahead.


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If the other brands charge there just fine it’s clearly Hyundai’s problem which they will need to fix via their own software updates.
Legacy car company having software problems, no surprise.
 
AndysComputer said:
If the other brands charge there just fine it’s clearly Hyundai’s problem which they will need to fix via their own software updates.
Legacy car company having software problems, no surprise.
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So Hyundai just needs an OTA software update to make their traction motor spin backwards faster without current overloading the tiny 697V wires?
 
But why would the nozzle of the Tesla pump not work, but the nozzle of the Electrify America did work? Is that a car problem? A Magic Dock problem? A NACS problem? A CCS problem? Or simply that multiple brands sharing multiple pumps may not be as reliable as we might wish.


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