China has developed a new charging standard in order to more efficiently deploy a charging infrastructure capable of supporting the up to 5 million electric vehicles it hopes to get on the roads by 2020. Tesla is now fully on board and announced today the launch of the ‘Tesla Charging Partner Program’ in China to promote the national EV charging standard.
Tesla’s Vice President of Asia-Pacific, Ren Yuxiang introduced the program at the new China Quality Certification Center (CQC):
“Although the new national standard has been published, but the implementation of standards in the ground still face many challenges, Tesla actively support the new national standard, co-sponsored with the CQC ‘Tesla charging Partnership Project’, and charging partners to promote the implementation of the new national standard, as always, including China, to make positive efforts to change global sustainable energy. “
Tesla shared a few pictures of the event on its Chinese blog:
The program helps partners get certified for the new standard with interconnection tests conducted at the CQC. Tesla writes:
“Tesla charging Partnership Program” encourages partners to get the voluntary certification by CQC, Tesla will preferably go through CQC certified enterprises and products, and further testing center in China to accelerate the newly established interconnection standard.
The program behind the new Chinese charging standard, which supports both DC fast-charging and level 2 charging, is by far the most ambitious EV infrastructure program currently in development. It is expected to create roughly 12,000 public charging stations and deploy 4.5 million chargers across China, which could require an investment of up to $20 billion USD.
Tesla already operates a great number of charging stations across mainland China, though not necessarily based on the new standard. The company is expected to adapt these stations for interconnection compatibility between standards and to develop more charging points – Above you can see Tesla’s current charging stations in China with the Superchargers in red and Destination Chargers in grey.
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There’s an article on this website about why L1 chargers are garbage bags. The abolition of J1772 for ChaDeMo in both the US and China would greatly help automakers. In some places, a 120v outlet will charge a MS faster than L1J1772. Most businesses waste time and $$$ installing worthless chargers that really only help if you have a Volt and plan on spending 2 or more hours hanging around. And the new Bolt in going to ship with L3 DC SFC (DC super-fast-charging) straight out of the SAE crock. Come’on why don’t you make ChaDeMo a standard on your vehicles? to the answers of “there are only 1600 ChaDeMos in the US, make an adapter!
L1 chargers aren’t meant to be fast chargers anyway, it’s more “just in case” than anything else. J1772 is fine for all current EV and next generations EV, because its speed allows for overnight charging, or charging at work, which is what most people do anyway. For 350+ km range, another type would have to be used, yes. But in the meatime, a L2 charger costs between 500$ and 2000$, while a fast DC charger with currently different standards costs over 30000$. A bit pricy for a convenience. And anyway, there are uses for destination chargers, where you usually spend a couple of hours at the same parking place, and DC chargers, where you don’t want to spend time there. Both have their use.
And don’t forget that between J1772 and CCS, the difference is only two DC pins, where ChaDeMo needs another port. So if CCS is here to stay for L3, J1772 will stay too.
Your statement about Model S charging speed being faster than L1J1772 doesn’t make any sense because they both use the safe limit of a regular 15 A NEMA 5-15 connector, which is 12 A. So they charge at the same speed on the same plug, even on a low power 3,3 kW charger.
I have a Nissan Leaf and think ChaDeMo is a better design for communication between the car and the L3 charger, but I guess it will be phased out in the long term because of the need to have a completely different port than J1772, which is the L2 standard in North America for now.
The best plug I’ve seen so far is Tesla’s European plug… This one is fully compatible with 1,2 or 3-phase AC charging and also DC Supercharger fast-charging. Does not need any additional pins for DC unlike CCS Combo. And it supports 3-phases unlike J1772.