...in America. Europe here quite nicely standardising on CCS2.
NACS does everything CCS1 does in a more compact package with an internal vehicle locking mechanism similar to what CCS2 uses. It also doesn't support 3-phase AC charging but this isn't very common in light commercial or residential service in the US.
NACS / J3400 will likely stay a North American standard though, or maybe migrate to a few other markets like S. Korea which have also used CCS1. That lack of 3-phase support makes it a non-starter in Europe and CCS2 works perfectly fine there.
More manufacturers may be moving to NACS, but it’s not like chargers are moving away from CCS. If anything, the CCS infrastructure is growing.
I do expect them to stop eventually though. IMO, part of the reason they exist is that it lets them collect real world data on supercharger and adapter usage before the bigger rollouts next year.
This isn't actually the case; while the tech press made a big deal about the project when announced, hardly any Super Charger sites have the Magic Dock. As of this month, it's only at ~50 Super Charger locations. I also think with widespread NACS adoption the rollout will slow down even more - what is the point of the project if almost all new EVs sold in the US will have NACS? There are over 2000 Tesla Super Charger locations in the US.
I have never seen a Magic Dock in the wild personally, for what little additional it's worth.
> https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-magic-dock-supercharger-inta...
Interestingly, the new NACS standardization process seems to be encouraging that as well.
In contrast, in Europe 3 phase AC is the standard, so it makes sense to support that advantage (especially the 400V across the legs) in charging vehicles.
Where it isn't the default, it's generally available for an extra fee, and may well be the default for buildings slightly larger than a house — a shop, mechanic, etc.
My home, built in 1971, had 1 phase connected to it but the power company already buried the 2 extra copper wires for 3-phase hookup, requiring only a new meter for 3 phase to be installed.
Our transmission grid (that actually extends even down to Africa and parts of Asia!) is already three phases, we're not sparsely settled to require SWER anywhere, so it doesn't save the utilities any money to not lay three-phase AC to every building by default.
I personally don’t mind using CCS vs NACS. I didn’t feel super inspired by the flex I felt when inserting a supercharger’s plug into a Model 3 but clearly it works fine in practice.
My guess is that Electrify America with NACS plugs will still be just as problematic if they’re unreliable in your area. Plug vs Network vs Hardware are being conflated in this discussion. Adding CCS to Superchargers would have worked just as well but that’s not how America works in this case.
https://electrek.co/2018/11/14/tesla-model-3-ccs-2-plug-euro...