Comment by kristopolous

Comment by kristopolous a day ago

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But globally it's not a single standard. I believe with NACS, the US once again, sits alone, like it does so often.

Basically every other country is doing CCS, the US was deploying CCS but then the government said "nah, let's go with this other one".

I remember when I saw companies switching to it, I seemed to be the only person who thought it was a bad idea.

On the side of International Standardization it's me, a couple crickets, and a bunch of people telling me how wrong I am.

tw04 a day ago

That’s not really accurate. Europe uses CCS2 which is completely different and incompatible with CCS1 which is what we have in the US. Recently the US agreed to move to J3400 for dc fast charging with the expectation CCS will eventually go away. China uses a fourth standard GB/T which is incompatible with any of the above.

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  • kristopolous a day ago

    Right, China and Japan are different. Here's an older map: https://insideevs.com/news/333637/european-ccs-type-2-combo-...

    The US went NACS instead of CCS2. Canada and Mexico haven't made a commitment either way.

    It would be nice if we could work together and do just one in the same way that we didn't have to worry about fuel pump nozzle geometry being country specific with ICE cars.

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    • tw04 a day ago

      > fuel pump nozzle geometry being country specific with ICE cars

      But they are? Diesel nozzles in the US are significantly larger than in Europe.

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      • toast0 a day ago

        US Diesel cars before about 2013? didn't really care aboit nozzle size. Some diesel pumps had the old standard nozzle size; some had the new, smaller, nozzle size intended for unleaded gasoline. VW started putting in anti-misfueling devices into their cars (via recall for mine), and then you could find which stations had unleaded sized nozzles because it was hard to use those. Presumably, nearly all of those have been replaced with the old standard size.

        But then truck stops have giant nozzles for the giant tanks on semi trucks. Those won't fit in a regular car.

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      • kristopolous a day ago

        I didn't know that about diesel. Regardless, I was hoping we could find some agreement globally .

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mattmaroon a day ago

What do we need it for? Are you driving your car across the Atlantic? We don’t have an international standard for what side of the road to drive on.

Being something you practically always don’t take with you when you travel, as long as we’re standardized by continent what would even be the benefit?

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  • prmoustache a day ago

    Except sometimes campers.

    There are still people doing world trips. We might collectively decide they need to keep using diesel forever or stop doing world trips with vehicles altogether but that is still currently a thing, even though it is very very marginal.

    Also, the USA has borders with 2 countries with I imagine people crossing the border daily on both side to simply go to work. It seems weird to me that these 3 countries would not talk to each others about standards.

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    • vel0city 19 hours ago

      Are people driving campers from New England to England? Or San Francisco to Tokyo? Semes like a challenging drive to me.

      > the USA has borders with 2 countries with I imagine people crossing the border daily on both side to simply go to work

      US, Mexico, and Canada all use the same charging standards. I can today drive an EV from Mexico through the US to Canada and use their chargers. They all originally agreed on CCS1. Small adapters from NACS to CCS1 are entirely passive and exist already.

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    • mattmaroon a day ago

      They do. It’s literally called the North American Charging Standard. I specifically said “as long as they’re standardized by continent”.

      But good take.

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  • kristopolous a day ago

    I think cars will be more commodified internationally as EV efficiencies continue to drive the prices down and new lower cost tiers for different vehicle classes open up.

    This has certainly happened in China and arguably manifests itself as scooter/motorcycle culture in places like Taiwan, Vietnam and Indonesia. (In Shenzhen, the scooters were almost universally electric when I was there last month)

    Imagine the container-ship car - packed efficiently and treated like any other international good that can be ordered online.

    The manufacturer produces them ready for the world market in 2 technical variations, right and left - everything else is personalized. (The motorcycle avoids even the right/left problem) Essentially I don't think we're at the end game of the Toyota Production System.

    So it's more about being compatible with a vision of how we'll be interfacing vehicles 10-20 years from now. That's when making these decisions wrongly will really start to bite us - after the infrastructure is rolled out and long established.

    Or who knows, by then there might be an even newer plug and we'll all be on a single system.

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    • vel0city a day ago

      > The manufacturer produces them ready for the world market in 2 technical variations, right and left

      There are so many more regulations about cars than just what side the wheel is on or what kind of plug is used. Things like bumper design, headlight design, light positions, and more. Many are conflicting meaning being compliant in one market necessitates being non-compliant in another.

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      • kristopolous 16 hours ago

        Right, I'm aware of all of these when I said that. This is a vision for what they'll look like at a lower pricing point. The $5,000 car I think will have fewer of these barriers than the $50,000 one. People tend to be less precious with cheaper things. Look at how much more universal cell phones have become after the bottom of the market fell out.

        I'm pretty sure Christensen made this point in one of his less lauded followup books - the market disrupts with more universal implements. That's probably where I'm stealing this from.

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  • spookie a day ago

    Ease of manufacturing and export of vehicles globally.

    Also, with everyone on the same standard, all companies have an incentive to optimize their hardware to accomodatte it.

    It might not be that important short term but it is on the medium to long term to complete a proper transition.

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    • vel0city a day ago

      It's the same signaling standard. It's just a different plug on the side.

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      • kristopolous 14 hours ago

        I mean sure, they do this with electrical outlets fine. But that doesn't mean having a dozen or so different outlet standards is the enviable state of affairs.

        That's too late to fix.

        This currently is not. We are for some reason, however, voluntarily doing it again.

        I am a steadfast engineering internationalist so in practice a single standard is always going to be my bias

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        • vel0city 12 hours ago

          It's a bit different from normal electrical outlets though. For DC fast charging, it needs to negotiate exact DC voltages. The dispensers are all designed to operate at a range of DC voltages to match the state of the battery and are constantly adapting to the battery.

          In AC charging, the chargers are probably just designed to be way more tolerant of a wide range of input AC voltages.

          So in those instances a purely passive adapter works fine. Or probably a cheap-ish retrofit of the outlet in the car since I doubt many cars go on intercontinental voyages very often.

          And that's kind of the thing. The extreme majority of cars aren't going to go past their original target market continent. Taking a car from one continent to another often involves a lot of import duties, inspections, regulations modifications, and is generally very expensive.

          Meanwhile with regular home devices you usually need to be sure you're supplying the right voltage as most home devices can't deal with other voltages. So adapters are more complicated and improper adapting is disastrous. Lots of things are small enough and unregulated enough to send through the post or carried on an airplane. It's a much more common hassle trying to plug in a shaver when travelling than figuring out what to do with the car you packed in your carryon.

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  • ponector a day ago

    You will be surprised how many used US cars are exported overseas.

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    • mattmaroon a day ago

      Ok that’s the only good point I’ve heard, but I assume those countries will be fine with adapters.

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vel0city a day ago

Oh no I won't be able to charge my car when I do my yearly road trip from Texas to Croatia? What ever will I do.

It's such a non-issue.

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