Monday, May 16, 2016

New dual FASTDC Charging stations sprouting within Nrg EVgo network

At first, in the north east, there were only fast charging stations with CHAdeMO but a look at plugshare there are more dual SAE J1772 Combo and CHAdeMO stations replacing the old infrastructure. This comes as no surprise as the recent announcement of the Tesla Model 3 is sparking competition among top shops such as GM, Mercedes Benz, BMW, and many others. Tesla uses a proprietary charger which needs adapters to communicate with Level 2 chargers and more recently a CHAdeMO adapter for trips where no superchargers are available.
There has been heavy competition for a Level 3 charging standard. In the U.S. they are CHAdeMO and SAE J1772 Combo (we'll leave out Tesla's charger for now). Announcement from GM on being the first to roll out a 200 mile car with a quick charging option of SAE J1772 Combo is no doubt one of the reasons that more charging stations are adopting this port. A look at the current infrastructure in the tri-state area shows a glimpse of the Nrg EVgo network where the old infrastructure has been retrofitted to meet the needs of other charging ports.

Nrg EVgo Chademo DCFCfiltered
Note: some stations that are non EVgo have not been properly filtered by plugshare

Nrg EVgo CCS DCFC filtered
Note: some stations the are non EVgo have not been properly filtered by plugshare
As you can see some of these stations share a similar location. Those stations have been retrofitted for the CCS DCFC port. One of the many locations I have looked on plugshare is located in Township, NJ at a Holiday Inn. Here it shoes how the new stations look. 

New station

Old CHAdeMO only
By comparison, some Nissan dealers have also started installing CHAdeMO DCFC as pictured below:

Nissan of Garden City dealership
It looks like most new DCFC stations are coming with dual ports. As you can see here the dealership has opted not to install a CCS adapter which to be fair their Leaf only uses CHAdeMO and many dealerships frown upon cars from other makes charging there. It will be interesting, however, to see if they will install a CCS adapter as the war on a standard gets heated to encourage electric vehicle usage and perhaps pitch to owners from other makes.

Let's talk Tesla for a bit. Tesla came out with a CHAdeMO adapter not too long ago and what is to stop them from moving onto a CCS adapter in the near future as well? It looks like CCS is on the rise and with more cars adopting this adapter the right move would be go that route. Tesla's supercharger charges at about 100kWh and CCS and CHAdeMO 60kWh-50kWh respectively. For Tesla they have the better technology and their own network that they maintain. They are a different species that can potentially take advantage of an ever growing network by simply making adapters for them so who cares if they battle to be a standard when Tesla can simply come out with an adapter for the network. 

The number of quick charging stations is only going up. It seems that Nrg EVgo is not gambling on one port and opting for dual ports for new installations. It will be interesting to see other makes such as Nissan make adapters to use the CCS ports and vice-versa. As the number of stations increase so too the battle for a standard will come to play. It seems that with providers opting for both leaves little room for discussion. I guess we'll have to wait and see when the Chevy Bolt comes out and other makes roll out similar 200 mile cars.