NACS and painfully low CCS current limits - a technical discussion

[gsmith123]

The CCS-1 chargers in the wild today have a couple things that, in my opinion, are really poor technical decisions.

1. The CCS-1 standard is, per the standard, limited to 500A. This doesn't make much sense. Tesla pushes 700A through smaller connector with smaller DC pins, and limits dynamically based on thermals.

500A to a Model 3 is only about 180kW when the car can take up to 250-260kW.

2. A lot (not all) CCS-1 chargers branded as "350 kW" units are limited to 350A. EA does this a lot. Chargepoint does too, sometimes with 200kW installs as well. On cars with 400v architecture (Tesla, Mercedes, Rivian, others) this limits you to about 135kW.

I really hope that with NACS charger manufacturers and operators embrace higher current limits. They could choose to still be excessively conservative, but I hope they don't. With a large potential customer base of NACS Tesla's they have a bit more incentive to offer a more competitive experience today.

It's a bit disappointing that third party charging with a Tesla in north america can only do about 180kW in the best case scenario, and often far worse. And it's super confusing for anyone that isn't a charging nerd and understands how both power and current limits can be the limiting factor.

 

[moa999]

Whole heap of other factors including cable thickness, whether they are liquid cooled and the rating on the handle itself.

Here in Australia one of the fuel companies has installed a bunch of ABB 180kW units. But the cables are only 200A, so practically cap at about 70kW for the majority of 400V EVs.

 

[JeremyWhaling]

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electrek.co

There's CCS stuff out there above 500A. The original ISO 5118 specification actually has listed 400A as a limit, but it's no longer relevant.

 

[eevee-fan]

I get 55 kW on CP 62.
I get 43 kW on EVgo ABB 150 kW.
Are you getting higher charge rates?

 

[miimura]

New market entrants like Alpitronic will be offering stations that do "boost charging" where they offer higher currents for a short period of time. I don't recall the amperage numbers that they might offer, but I seem to recall hearing that in an Out of Spec video.