CCS Fast Chargers in Chicago & suburbs

[dw81]

We are coming up on the end of our two year Nissan Leaf SV lease. Overall we've been extremely happy EV drivers.

Since most of our driving is within the city limits and inner ring suburbs of Chicago the Leaf has been a great fit for about 85% of what we do limited only by a lack of a good quick charge network in the area. For the other 15% or when the EV is otherwise unavailable we do have an ICE vehicle (a VW EOS convertible) that handles that. On average the EOS is driven once every two weeks while the Leaf is used almost daily.

I have family in the far north suburbs (50 miles away) and I took the Leaf on that trip once, learned that 80mph most of the way isn't a good idea and spent a couple of hours waiting for it to charge enough via L2 at the Nissan dealership in Gurnee . . . On a cold night, after closing. Thankfully they didn't turn the WiFi off. I have been meaning to try the trip when the weather is perfect for the Leaf .... Unfortunately the desire to drive the convertible when the weather is like that outweighs my desire to test the Leaf with a more conservative driving style. I may yet get my opportunity assuming Chicago gets out of the deep freeze before our lease is up.

My spouse has family in Green Bay, WI which is about 180 miles away. That trip appears impossible at this time using an EV without spending an additional several hours during the trip at L2 chargers.

I made sure that our Leaf was equipped with the optional CHAdeMO fast charge capability when we leased it and ... I've been very disappointed. I've not had ANY occasion to use CHAdeMO at all in our two years of ownership. I've only seen them at a couple of Whole Foods stores but when I attempted to sign up for an account to take advantage the owners of the stations had appeared to be out of business. I had visions of being able to take that car up to Green Bay and back which a couple of quick charges on the way and ... That just hasn't materialized.

Worth noting we could with a Tesla vehicle. There are several Tesla superchargers between Chicago and Green Bay.

That said I just checked Plugshare for the first time in a while and found that another company now has some working CHAdeMO chargers around the Chicago area. Excellent! Yes, it needs to fan out a bit to the outer North suburbs but it's progress.

No, wait, not excellent if we decide to go with an i3 for our next EV. BMW (along with GM, VW and other manufacturers) is using a different standard, CCS. It also doesn't appear that it's a matter of an adapter for CHAdeMO to connect to CCS. Adding to this there are NO CCS quick chargers available in or around Chicago.

So, finally, here are my questions on this.

1 - Are there CHAdeMO to CCS adapters available? Is that even technically feasible?
2 - I see that a network of CCS quick chargers have been set up along the West and East coast .... Has anyone heard of any plans to set this up along the ... left middle coast? Along the bottom and right middle coast would be nice too since we do take trips to Michigan as well. If anyone has heard of this would they also have heard of a timeline of any kind?
3 - There's a third standard for quick charge, Tesla's own supercharger. With Tesla opening up their patents are we going to see CHAdeMO and CCS go away in the next few years? How likely would it be if BMW were to adopt this that a conversion kit may become available for older i3s?

I do want to add that we're only looking at 100% EVs and are not interested in the range extender gas engine option on this next purchase.

 

[Tomasz]

1 - Are there CHAdeMO to CCS adapters available? Is that even technically feasible?

No and no. They use completely different standard of communication, which would require black box in the middle capable of translating signals.

2 - I see that a network of CCS quick chargers have been set up along the West and East coast .... Has anyone heard of any plans to set this up along the ... left middle coast? Along the bottom and right middle coast would be nice too since we do take trips to Michigan as well. If anyone has heard of this would they also have heard of a timeline of any kind?

CCS quick chargers are going to get more and more popular, It this point though they seem to be about 2 years behind CHAdeMO in rollout. Good thing is that now most newly installed DCFC are combo (both standards).

3 - There's a third standard for quick charge, Tesla's own supercharger. With Tesla opening up their patents are we going to see CHAdeMO and CCS go away in the next few years? How likely would it be if BMW were to adopt this that a conversion kit may become available for older i3s?

No. It's not a matter of patents, it's a matter of MONEY. Tesla is open to letting others to use supercharger network if they agree to several points:
- The time to charge must be very short (heard about 30 minutes requirement) to not block stalls for others to use, that's actually the easiest one to fulfill since almost all EVs on the market can be DC charged in less than that.
- It must be free to use for owners, which means
- The car manufacturer must pay up front (remember, every single Tesla is charged with $2000 up front supercharger prepayment).

I'm sure the last point is the biggest obstacle. Can't see BMW, Nissan or any other manufacturer sending $2000 per car into Tesla's vault any time soon.

 

[dw81]

Tomasz - This is VERY helpful. I had no idea what DCFC was, I didn't think it was a combo charger.

It looks like the L3 chargers I was seeing are CHAdeMO DCFC chargers which means we're covered. It's still not as complete of a network as I would like but ... At least now there's a network!

 

[Blue20]

.... Good thing is that now most newly installed DCFC are combo (both standards).
....

This is the party line from BMW. According to Plugshare, the last five DCFC installed around my area in the past month are all Chademo only.

BMW do have plan to push out CCS, but only in certain regions. Check your local situation.

 

[Tomasz]

BMW do have plan to push out CCS, but only in certain regions. Check your local situation.

Keep in mind that setting up a DCFC charger is a time consuming process (especially on the permissions side). I wouldn't be surprised if those that you are mentioning were in the works for more than 6 months. I expect BMW's CCS chargers to start popping up no sooner than July.

 

[jadnashuanh]

CHADEMO uses the CANBUS to communicate with the car (similar to Ethernet)...the CCS system uses the low-voltage DC signal lines normally used during levels 1-2 charging and superimposes a 20MHz signal on them, so to get DC fast charging, you only need two additional pins, whereas the CHADEMO connector is an entirely different connector on those cars that do use it. As opposed to levels 1-2 where the EVSE is essentially a smart ac power switch...a DC fast charger is a HUGE DC high voltage power supply. In the case of the i3, it can handle 50Kw at somewhere near 400vdc - that's over 100 amps. The Leaf can't handle that much as I remember, and neither can it handle the same power input the i3 can on the level 1-2 port. As a result, it is not trivial - you have to have access to commercial grade power systems, and a dc power supply that can work in all weather. IOW, they are not inexpensive either to buy or install!

There is an incentive to put them in since the consortium chose the CCS system over CHADEMO. I think it is a cleaner implementation since you only need one port into the car, rather than two. With the 7-8 companies that are all using the same system, each of them has an interest in getting more traction from EVs, and I think you'll see more of these things showing up. Keep in mind, the standard wasn't finalized until about a year ago whereas CHADEMO has been around for much longer, and still doesn't have great coverage. Volume-wise, I think you'll see a lot more vehicles produced that can use the J1772 spec in the next few years than can use CHADEMO for DCFC.

 

[dw81]

I haven't had time to check out any of these chargers but was able to call NRG EVGO to verify that these were dual chargers (both CHADEMO and CCS) Despite Plugshare listing them as DCFC it looks like these are only CHADEMO type chargers. No current plans to upgrade to dual so it would have CCS that the rep could offer but she did mention that they only JUST took these chargers over.

I'd guess within 12 months? Maybe? Depending on the demand I'm sure ...

I only asked about the one that's the most convenient to the route I take North, didn't have her go through every other charger http://api.plugshare.com/view/location/57644