Hey y'all ... There are
quite a few threads on TMC that touch on the concept of an SAE Combo / CCS adapter for Tesla cars, and I picked this one to bump up.
As you may know, Volkswagen is currently funding, via their Electrify America program, a major rollout of DC Fast Charging across the country. The first stations opened in early May, and feature
150 kW charging at minimum, and even
350 kW charging, although the latter obviously still awaits a car that can absorb it. Currently there are 5 sites online, 31 sites under construction, and hundreds more planned for the next year.
They are supporting both SAE Combo and Chademo plugs at their sites. However, crucially, each site will have only one Chademo plug. They will have at least four pedestals at each site, and usually more than that (e.g. 8, 10, etc.), but only one of those will support Chademo.
Further, the Chademo plugs only support 50 kW at launch. They are supposed to be supporting 100 kW eventually, but they are waiting on cars to test with, or something like that. Until today, I've been wondering how angry the Leaf and Tesla owners were going to be about being limited to just that one plug.
OK, so all that is background for a bombshell ...
I heard from someone today that a SAE Combo to Tesla adapter now exists. They saw a Tesla at one of the Electrify America sites under construction, and that Tesla owner had an SAE Combo to Tesla adapter to show off.
They weren't able to test it, since the site isn't powered up yet. Also, this is second hand info; I did not see it for myself.
An SAE Combo adapter should actually be much easier to develop than the Chademo adapter. The former's interface is already (electrically) fairly close to Tesla's, whereas the latter's interface is completely different and that's why the Chademo adapter took so long for Tesla to develop.
Any speculation? I think Tesla is testing prototypes. They certainly will want to be able to use these new EA sites, since they will offer far higher power levels than any Chademo site.