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Originally Posted by ZBB
That’s basically it. An adapter to fit the plug differences, and a way to “start” charging.
The beauty of the Tesla method is that it’s tied to the car. The Supercharger talks to the car, which then authenticates that the VIN is Supercharger enabled and has a valid payment method. Charging starts within a few seconds, and your card on file with Tesla is billed when charging is done (and the car will tell you how much the charge costs).
For the Magic Docks, Tesla just built in the adapter to the Supercharger. You have to activate the charger from the mobile app, which releases the charger cable with the Magic Dock locked to the cable. Plug in and go. Fairly similar to how other CCS chargers are supposed to work.
It will be interesting to see if Ford activation at Superchargers works more like Tesla or more like Magic Dock. I suspect the Ford Tesla adapter will basically be a Magic Dock with a slightly simpler mechanism (since it won’t have to lock to the Supercharger…).
We have the CCS adapter and have used it a couple times. Basically you can put the adapter into the car, plug the charger cable into the adapter, then activate the charger. Problem is activating the charger is a hit or miss. I’ve been successful at a couple different Volta sites and at a car wash near the house (which isn’t networked — the car wash attendant activates it). But I have not been successful at the one Electrify America station I visited — but I was trying to use their POS on the charger; next time I’ll just use the EA app…
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Yeah that would be cool if the Ford adapter will allow it to function more like an actual Tesla (plug and charge). But I suspect that would mean that the car (or the adapter) would need to have more intelligence built into it to be able to communicate back to Tesla for billing purposes. I think you're right that it will function more like the magic dock where you have to use the app to enable it. Then again, the Mach E supports the CCS version of plug and charge so maybe they can somehow adapt that to work with the Tesla chargers.