Testing Tesla SuperChargers with the J3400 to CCS1 adapter

[Deleted member 19354]

Pretty much all of the above.

Tesla’s stations are much bigger than non-Tesla stations, usually offering 2-4X as many stalls, sometimes far more than that. In fact, Tesla will build Superchargers across the street from an existing Supercharger station if they see data that warrants the need. Yakima is a good example of this.

More importantly is that Tesla is considered best in class when it comes to uptime of their stations. EA and to a lesser extent, EVgo, have a poor record of maintenances of their hardware. EA in Ellensburg is notorious for having at least 1-2 chargers broken, even on the latest gen hardware.

Lastly, there are just hundreds more Tesla stations out there that will now be available to Mach-Es. Some stations may not be useful or redundant to current CCS stations, but others might be in some useful places (Entiat near Chelan is a good example).

Got it thank you. I’ll be traveling this spring Seattle to Missoula, as well as Seattle to Yakima (Miner burger as well). Also Cashmere next month. I’ve done the Seattle Wenatchee a few times and admit disappointed in lack of Level 3 stations. I have the adapter on order for May delivery. Thoughts about purchasing one from Amazon until the free one arrives?

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[Deleted member 19354]

I’ll be glad to have you teach me how.

Same here. I’m taking notes!

 

[silverelan]

Got it thank you. I’ll be traveling this spring Seattle to Missoula, as well as Seattle to Yakima (Miner burger as well). Also Cashmere next month. I’ve done the Seattle Wenatchee a few times and admit disappointed in lack of Level 3 stations. I have the adapter on order for May delivery. Thoughts about purchasing one from Amazon until the free one arrives?

It’s not clear yet if a MME with the appropriate software updates would be able to use an unapproved adapter on a NACS Supercharger. I’m sure it won’t be long til we see someone on here or YouTube give it a try.

If you drive to Spokane, then you’re fine even without the adapter since there’s already two Magic Dock stations along I-90, one in George and the other at Moses Lake.

The size difference between a regular EA station and Superchargers can’t be understated. I once charged at the 4-stall EA station in Sutherlin, OR and could see the 51-charger Tesla station next door.

 

[Deleted member 19354]

It’s not clear yet if a MME with the appropriate software updates would be able to use an unapproved adapter on a NACS Supercharger. I’m sure it won’t be long til we see someone on here or YouTube give it a try.

If you drive to Spokane, then you’re fine even without the adapter since there’s already two Magic Dock stations along I-90, one in George and the other at Moses Lake.

The size difference between a regular EA station and Superchargers can’t be understated. I once charged at the 4-stall EA station in Sutherlin, OR and could see the 51-charger Tesla station next door.

Magic Dock?

 

[silverelan]

Magic Dock?

it’s a Supercharger with the CCS adapter built into the unit. You’ll still want to have either Plug & Charge enabled in Ford Pass or you can activate it thru the Tesla app.

 

[stealthytolkien]

150kW means it’s a V2 station and not available to non-Teslas. This is different than in Europe where V2s can charge non-Teslas with no issues.

Oh ok. That’s strange as to why this difference exists.

 

[Mach-Lee]

How about a Lightning pulling a travel trailer?

Oh boy, the Tesla fanboys are going to go NUTS for that trailer! ??? Hahaha

Can't wait to see it show up Tesla forums.

 

[elmedico27]

Oh ok. That’s strange as to why this difference exists.

It’s the communication protocol. Our cars “speak” CCS but only the V3 and V4 Superchargers speak CCS as well. The earlier Superchargers used a different protocol that only Teslas know.

 

[Tampamike]

They also knew I was leaving on a two-month road trip today. That means lots of testing across the southeast and midwest. When you pull a trailer behind a Lightning you get about 1 mpk. That's a lot of charging stops!

Test it well. Keep us posted on your experiences.

 

[AZBill]

Please accept my apology for being ignorance . What’s the hype of Tesla Superchargers? Is it more stable? More affordable? Another option to consider?
Is the Blue Oval network not enough?

Consider Quartzsite Arizona along I-10 between Phoenix and LA. It is about 120 miles in each direction to get to other charges, yes a "real" charging desert.

EA has 4 chargers there, on holiday weekends lines can be 2-4 hours to charge there. Rivian has 6 chargers there, but do not support any other models. GM/EVGO/Pilot are adding a couple of sites on the route, but only 4 plugs at each one. Tesla has two sites there with a total of 120 chargers. The new site with 84 Superchargers is now open to CCS cars with the adapter.

This is the line at the EA Loves Truck Stop site on a holiday weekend. The Tesla Superchargers are on the other side of the Freeway at the same exit.

 

[AZBill]

Oh boy, the Tesla fanboys are going to go NUTS for that trailer! ??? Hahaha

Can't wait to see it show up Tesla forums.

All the new Tesla sites have pull through stalls just for trailers.

 

[AhardFSU]

Consider Quartzsite Arizona along I-10 between Phoenix and LA. It is about 120 miles in each direction to get to other charges, yes a "real" charging desert.

EA has 4 chargers there, on holiday weekends lines can be 2-4 hours to charge there. Rivian has 6 chargers there, but do not support any other models. GM/EVGO/Pilot are adding a couple of sites on the route, but only 4 plugs at each one. Tesla has two sites there with a total of 120 chargers. The new site with 84 Superchargers is now open to CCS cars with the adapter.

This is the line at the EA Loves Truck Stop site on a holiday weekend. The Tesla Superchargers are on the other side of the Freeway at the same exit.

It must be a relief to have the Tesla site open. Rivian is opening all of their chargers to other EVs this year so that route will have more options.

 

[AZBill]

It must be a relief to have the Tesla site open. Rivian is opening all of their chargers to other EVs this year so that route will have more options.

I have a Rivian and used that site three times, on two different trips, last year. At that time the new Tesla site was still under construction, but even the older Tesla site has 36 chargers. Looks like the old site, a mix of V2 and V3 remains Tesla only.

Tesla also has a site in Ehrenburg, and Pilot is adding the GM/EVGO chargers there, It is 21 miles away. Then there will be another GM/EVGO/Pilot site between Quartzsite and Buckeye, that is needed to meet the NEVI requirements of 50 miles apart.

 

[timbop]

I, for one, am happy to wait for others to do the testing of these.

I hope I'm wrong, but I bet we'll see several OTA updates related to these between now and June when my adapter is supposed to ship. I also expect there will be several updates to the chargers themselves.

There are likely a lot of untested edge cases that these "lucky" first-receivers are going to be experiencing. I would be surprised if it were completely glitch-free.

I was/am looking forward to having fewer people at "my" chargers and wasn't even going to order an adapter. But my partner insisted and pointed out that we rarely wait on a Ford vehicle at the CCS1 chargers: it's usually other brands.

Someone has to receive these first. It's not like Ford has invented Star Trek replicators and transporters... And even if they had, there are still >150,000 vehicles that were promised these adapters. Even Geordi couldn't recalibrate the transporters enough to transport 150,000 objects to nearly 150,000 separate destinations all at once.

Sounds like someone with experience who understands how complicated systems like this can be.

@david_quick : The manual was written by a technical writer, not the engineers who implemented the requirements. It is entirely plausible that the manual is wrong

 

[RickMachE]

Got it thank you. I’ll be traveling this spring Seattle to Missoula, as well as Seattle to Yakima (Miner burger as well). Also Cashmere next month. I’ve done the Seattle Wenatchee a few times and admit disappointed in lack of Level 3 stations. I have the adapter on order for May delivery. Thoughts about purchasing one from Amazon until the free one arrives?

Plan your route using ABRP. If it works, no Tesla charging necessary.

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