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The Most Used Electric Vehicle Connectors
About Electric Vehicle Connectors
When connecting your electric car to a charger, you need to know what will work.
The AC chargers used at home have different power outputs than public DC fast chargers, who have two connector variations used in North America.
Whether you call them pistols, connectors or pulg-ins, we have you covered!
Alternating Current (AC) Connectors
SAE J1772
The standard universal electric vehicle connector. You will find this connector on Level 1 and 2 charging units, using AC electricity up to 240V. This is a SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) international-standard.
This will be the main connector for your car and household charging units. Not as robust as a Level 3 DC fast charger design, but perfect for residential use.
Direct Current (DC) Connectors
CCS – Combined Charging System
Combined Charging System is a connector with the J1772 combined with two larger pins for Level 3 DC charging. This is not an international standard, but widley adopted Europe and increasing in North America. Supported by manufactures such as Ford, GM, Kia, Hyundai and Volkswagen.
This connector allows for both DC and AC charging in one package (But not at the same time).
Europe has another variation of this, called CCS Combo 2.
ChaDeMo
Another DC rapid or fast electric vehicle charger connector, developed in Japan.
ChaDeMo, short for “Charge de Move” is a competing design to the CSS above and used in Japanese vehicles such as Mitsubishi, Nissan and Lexus. There is continous work on ChaDeMo as a standard with new innovations in Japan and China.
Tesla Connector
It’s its own thing…
With its own proprietary connector, Tesla combines AC and DC chargingin to one package.
Although this connector is different, you can buy adaptors. The use of the Tesla network for charging is slowly being opened up to other auto manufacturers. Despite a different connector, you can use many types of charging units with Tesla vehicles.