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Tesla is pushing for its own >1 MW high-power charging standard for electric trucks

Tesla and a few other companies are currently competing to push their own >1 MW high-power charging standard for electric trucks within CharIN, an industry association behind the CCS standard.

CCS has become the electric vehicle charging standard most popular with global automakers and those automakers created the CharIN organization to work on the standard and promote it within the industry.

Tesla was a little bit late to the game when it comes to CCS, but the California-based automaker still ended up joining the organization and made the CCS connector standard on its Model 3 in Europe.

Now CharIN is also working on High Power Charging for Commercial Vehicles (HPCCV) with its members in order to create a standard for interoperability of vehicle charging stations for electric trucks.

An Electrek reader sent us a presentation (embedded below) from Rustam Kocher, Electric Mobility Ecosystem Leader at Daimler Trucks North America, that highlights progress made toward establishing the standard and it reveals that Tesla is amongst five companies who submitted a proposition:

“There were five submissions, from Tesla, Electrify America, ABB, paXos, and Staubli.”

Tesla is the only automaker in the list as the other companies are charging network operators or charging station suppliers.

With the unveiling of the Tesla Semi in 2017, Tesla unveiled its plan to deploy ‘Megachargers’, a more powerful version of its Supercharger network to charge its electric trucks.

Daimler is working on its own electric truck charging system with a capacity of ‘up to 3MW’.

However, fleet operators would like to see a standard within the industry to help with interoperability of vehicle charging stations.

Brian Hard, President and CEO of Penske Truck Leasing, commented:

“As a leading services provider to commercial fleets, we feel standardization around electric vehicle charging and charging stations will help accelerate the use of electric vehicles within the transportation industry. The interoperability of vehicle charging stations over the road is essential for commercial fleet uptime, efficiency, maintenance, and general ease of use for the industry.”

The document reveals that a task force within CharIN has already chosen a winner but it has yet to be announced:

“Ranked choice voting was used to select a winning submission. That winner has not yet been announced due to some further discussions taking place.”

Here’s the full Daimler presentation about the status of the High Power Charging for Commercial Vehicles (HPCCV):

[scribd id=416424124 key=key-3F5iWDSrbihmTlnx2QoI mode=scroll]

Electrek’s Take

It sounds like Tesla is trying to make its Megacharger the standard for electric truck charging, which would be great for Tesla Semi as it would become compatible with third-party chargers for trucks that will inevitably come at some point.

Based on Tesla’s success with the Supercharger network, which I believe is by far the best charging network out there, I think CharIN should probably listen to Tesla’s input at the very least.

However, the group was founded by German automakers and it is based in Germany. It might be hard for Tesla to push for its submission to become the standard.

We will keep an eye out for progress on adopting a HPCCV standard for electric trucks and we will report back with updates.

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Avatar for Fred Lambert Fred Lambert

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