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JST · 10-03-2018, 12:30 PM

AF--

The vast majority of electric cars--in fact, I'm going to say all electric cars, including Teslas--can use SAE J1772 standard charging equipment. If you install one of these in your house, you won't need to change it when you get a new car.

Teslas have a proprietary charge port that doesn't look like a J1772 plug, though they come with an adapter that makes the car work with J1772 charging equipment.* The Tesla plug is, in a lot of ways, better technically than the SAE standard one, in part because it's physically smaller and in part because you can use it for both AC and DC fast charging.**

DC fast charging is different. There are 3 standards for that, as I noted above. Generally, Japanese cars use CHAdeMO, American and German cars use SAE Combo, and Tesla uses Tesla. Tesla has made a CHAdeMO adapter so their cars can plug into those chargers, and word is that the Tesla standard is similar enough to SAE Combo that an adapter wouldn't be hard, but AFAIK there isn't one yet.

There is no adapter that goes the other way, i.e. letting you plug a non-Tesla into a Supercharger. Tesla has had discussions about licensing with other manufacturers, and has generally opened its patents on this stuff, but the company has been more focused on building out its network so it can sell its cars than licensing the tech.

It's all fairly complicated, but part of what's going on is that legacy manufacturers have, until recently, not been at all serious about selling EVs. As a result, they haven't really cared about building out DC fast charging infrastructure. That's part of the reasons why the incentives just aren't there to make them sit down and hammer out a deal.

*To give you a sense of the head start Tesla has here, they were developing the plug for the White Star (what became the Model S) before the J1772 standard was finalized, so this isn't *just* about them being bloody minded and trying to do a proprietary plug.

**Because Tesla has a proprietary plug, the wall-mounted charging equipment that Tesla sells for AC charging is not compatible with other EVs. If you buy a Tesla wall-mounted charging cable, you will have to get a different one if you got a different EV.

10-03-2018, 12:30 PM	#2210
JST 195 Join Date: Oct 2003 Posts: 24,611	AF-- The vast majority of electric cars--in fact, I'm going to say all electric cars, including Teslas--can use SAE J1772 standard charging equipment. If you install one of these in your house, you won't need to change it when you get a new car. Teslas have a proprietary charge port that doesn't look like a J1772 plug, though they come with an adapter that makes the car work with J1772 charging equipment.* The Tesla plug is, in a lot of ways, better technically than the SAE standard one, in part because it's physically smaller and in part because you can use it for both AC and DC fast charging.** DC fast charging is different. There are 3 standards for that, as I noted above. Generally, Japanese cars use CHAdeMO, American and German cars use SAE Combo, and Tesla uses Tesla. Tesla has made a CHAdeMO adapter so their cars can plug into those chargers, and word is that the Tesla standard is similar enough to SAE Combo that an adapter wouldn't be hard, but AFAIK there isn't one yet. There is no adapter that goes the other way, i.e. letting you plug a non-Tesla into a Supercharger. Tesla has had discussions about licensing with other manufacturers, and has generally opened its patents on this stuff, but the company has been more focused on building out its network so it can sell its cars than licensing the tech. It's all fairly complicated, but part of what's going on is that legacy manufacturers have, until recently, not been at all serious about selling EVs. As a result, they haven't really cared about building out DC fast charging infrastructure. That's part of the reasons why the incentives just aren't there to make them sit down and hammer out a deal. To give you a sense of the head start Tesla has here, they were developing the plug for the White Star (what became the Model S) before the J1772 standard was finalized, so this isn't just* about them being bloody minded and trying to do a proprietary plug. **Because Tesla has a proprietary plug, the wall-mounted charging equipment that Tesla sells for AC charging is not compatible with other EVs. If you buy a Tesla wall-mounted charging cable, you will have to get a different one if you got a different EV.