Ford and Tesla lately reached an settlement that may give Ford EV prospects entry to Tesla’s community of 12,000 North American Superchargers beginning in 2024. What’s extra, Ford says it should equip future EVs with Tesla’s NACS charging port beginning in 2025.

The deal is the speak of the EV trade, and many of the opinions we’ve learn are broadly optimistic—the extra entry to chargers, the higher. My preliminary take was that it’s a publicity coup for each firms, however technically simply one other step towards Tesla’s purpose of opening up its Superchargers to different manufacturers.

Nonetheless, there’s at the least one necessary participant that’s lower than thrilled by the information. CharIN, the worldwide charging trade affiliation that developed CCS and the brand new Megawatt Charging System (MCS), issued an in depth response to Ford’s announcement, which is effectively price studying in its entirety.

“The worldwide EV trade can not thrive with a number of competing charging programs,” reads the assertion partially. “CharIN helps world requirements and defines the necessities primarily based on the enter of its worldwide members. CCS is the worldwide customary and due to this fact focuses on worldwide interoperability and, in contrast to NACS, is future-proofed to assist many different use circumstances past public DC quick charging. Early, unconsolidated bulletins of adjustments create uncertainty within the trade and result in funding obstacles.”

A few of us have opined {that a} requirements conflict may be prevented by merely utilizing adapters, or by equipping charging stations with twin charging cables, as Tesla and EVgo are already doing. CharIN is having none of it: “CharIN additionally doesn’t assist the event and qualification of adaptors for quite a few causes, together with the unfavourable influence on the dealing with of charging tools and, due to this fact the person expertise, the elevated chance of faults, and results on the useful security. There are additionally quite a lot of technical challenges associated to decrease present rankings, variations {of electrical} necessities, and mechanical masses brought on by the burden of the adaptor which can result in put on and mechanical malfunctioning of the automobile inlet (see CharIN’s place paper).”

A couple of pundits are calling the Ford/Tesla deal the start of the top for CCS, a place that appears far-fetched to say the least. Over 300 CharIN members all over the world are utilizing or investing in CCS, together with the overwhelming majority of automakers. Within the US alone, CCS is utilized in over 50 passenger automobile fashions, and extra are on the best way.  Worldwide, there are at present round 81,000 DC quick chargers utilizing the CCS connector, in comparison with 45,000 Tesla Superchargers.

Moreover, no matter Tesla might say, in contrast to CCS, NACS will not be a regular within the sense of one thing that a lot of firms have agreed to make use of. As CharIN factors out: “CCS has gone by a few years of rigorous standardization processes, which is a required exercise for any new customary proposal. After a decade of collaborative work, the home and worldwide EV trade has aligned round CCS.”

One highly effective argument in Tesla’s favor is that Supercharger customers usually give the system excessive marks for reliability, in distinction to different public charging networks, which…let’s simply say haven’t earned the same stage of person satisfaction. CharIN assures us that it’s engaged on the reliability subject. “CharIN joined the Joint Workplace of Vitality and Transportation and the Nationwide Laboratories to assist the launch of the Nationwide Charging Expertise Consortium [which] will handle charger interoperability and reliability points in public CCS deployments. CharIN will announce different main interoperability initiatives within the coming weeks, together with upcoming interoperability testing occasions.”

This appears like a step in the appropriate route, however some are skeptical that one more consortium will be capable to repair the reliability issues. I’ve requested at the least a dozen charging trade execs (together with officers from CharIN) why public charger reliability is so dangerous, and I’ve obtained a dozen completely different solutions, none totally passable. The truth that a typical public EVSE set up can contain a dozen completely different firms would possibly simply have one thing to do with the issues. At present, there aren’t any requirements for charger reliability (SAE is engaged on this) and no actual penalties for suppliers that fail to maintain their chargers in working order (reliability requirements within the IRA and BIL would possibly start to deal with this).

There are sturdy arguments on either side of this subject, and cheap individuals will most likely proceed to disagree. For our half, we’d wish to see quick charging rolled out rapidly, however we don’t need to see one firm dominate the market. We’re in favor of extra cooperation, however that shouldn’t imply the entire trade has to maneuver on the pace of the slowest gamers. Extra and higher public charging can be a very good factor, however a requirements conflict wouldn’t.

Supply: CharIN