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Toutouxc • today at 2:04 PM • 2 replies • view on HN

Having your own cable for AC (here it's Type 2) is the norm in Europe, so I'd say it's survivable.


Replies

amluto • today at 2:17 PM

AIUI, Tesla really screwed the pooch here. For the original Model S, Tesla really really wanted the US model to tuck the charge socket under the little hinged reflector, and they couldn’t figure out how to fit the Type 2 “Mennekes” connector their. So they invented their own socket (which evolved into NACS), and the Tesla one is rather inferior to Type 2, at least when used for AC charging.

And now every EV needs to have a different charge port configuration for North America vs Europe, and North America is stuck with NACS. (NACS is fine for DC but still sucks for AC. It cannot support 3-phase charging (which I admit has always seemed like a silly feature except in the limited case of 1 or 2 chargers in a single family residence), and cables and adapters cannot passively report their current rating. So you would need to build a kind of gnarly active MITM system to make a safe extension cable, whereas a Type 2 to Type 2 cable is built part of the Type 2 design.

Later, Tesla proved the whole thing pointless by successfully fitting Type 2 in the same location…

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numpad0 • today at 2:13 PM

The point is that EVSE plugs are safer and European dryer plugs under the rain out in the open is technically kind of dangerous.

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