[Cptn_penguin]

I agree, tethering fast charger cables is stupid. As well as creating a problem for Type 1 owners, who could happily use a Type 2 socket, tethered cables and plugs are far more easily damaged meaning a much more demanding maintenance regime for the owner and much more downtime for the operator.

Local authorities should be held to account for wasting public money buying things they don’t understand.

It might be related to accessibility concerns. Not everything is as simple as "this is the only common sense solution because I'm only considering the longevity of the plug versus a socket".

It might also have been in response to a survey of potential users; tethered cables are significantly more convenient, despite the downside of the potential higher maintenance.

They could have been supplied at a steep discount and thus allowing more chargers to be installed for the same budget.

They might be the property of the company that supplies and services them on contract from the council and so the local authority has no actual say in what model the EVSE is.

There's many reasons beyond just "socket is obviously better than plug".

 

[BurningNaturalGas]

Local authorities should be held to account for wasting public money buying things they don’t understand.

Amazing! Wasting public money is a breach of the Civil Service Code of Conduct!

 

[BurningNaturalGas]

This is a bit disingenuous. The reason the Type 2 connector is preferred over the Type 1 in the EU is because of the prevalence of 3 phase supplies there compared to other parts of the world. The Type 1 connector doesn't have the pins for that, so the Type 2 exists.

It wasn't just to be different for the sake of it.

Is the Type 2 overkill for most single-phase supplies in the UK, or even for home charging on three phase? Yes. Does it offer a tangible benefit over the Type 1? Arguably yes, especially for use in destination chargers if your EV has an on-board three phase charger.

Thank you for elaborating. I clearly know little about standards in EU, and I suppose a UK local authority could be encouraging EU tourists to bring their own EVs to their city but if that means UK drivers cannot plug-in then I am going to whinge!

Not sure why the Germans could not adapt Type 1 output to support phase 3 input.

 

[Mark I]

Type 2 charge points which can deliver more than 32 amps are (always? normally?) tethered. That's a fast charge for the Zoes which can make use of it. I agree that for 32 amp and slower (22 kW and 11 kW 3-phase, 7 kW and 3.6 kW single phase) public charge points, a socket is much better and should be normal, as discussed earlier in this thread.

Tethered type 2: completely unusable by very roughly 70,000 EVs with Type 1 connectors (that's in the UK).
Socket: less convenient for the majority, perhaps very difficult for some disabled drivers.

 

[BurningNaturalGas]

Fortunately Rapids have tethered chargers which sadly seem to suffer the same fate ......

Indeed. In 5 years I have not come across a working CHAdeMO. I recall one was always smashed where the incompatible EVs had driven over the plug, and the others just haven't worked

 

[BurningNaturalGas]

Socket: less convenient for the majority, perhaps very difficult for some disabled drivers.

Usability among disabled drivers is a very valid discussion point for a public benefit such as a free charger, but disabled drivers tend to need bigger bays with more freedom of movement so until corrected I will suspect the problem resolves itself when all factors are taken into account.

 

[cDy]

Point being, there are decades (and several generations) of EVs with Type 1 sockets in circulation. I doubt its very hard for manufacturers to swap the sockets (as demonstrated by there being Chinese adapters of low complexity) but the big problem with changing is that Type 1 (2008-present) remains the only plug that has ever been a global standard. Afaik, there is no Type 2 in Japan and there is no sense in Japanese car makers equipping their cars with a socket that is not supported so every Japanese car for the foreseeable future is going to be equipped with a Type 1 socket.

To be awkward the EU, China, and Tesla each wanted to set their own standards: Their only common goal was to be different to Type 1, which has resulted in different types of Type 2 plugs (EU and China look physically the same but the pin-outs and ratings and compatibilities are different, and Tesla has proprietary standards with Type 2 adapters).

My understanding is that the Type 1 remains the industry standard for AC charging outside of the EU, China, and Tesla. Not sure where the UK is going but Brexiteers seeking independence of foreign influence should not be backing any of the Type 2s

P.S. I have a 2017 Outlander, and that is not very relevant as there are older and newer cars of various marques and origins with Type 1 sockets.

A few facts:

• The Type 1 and Type 2 specifications are the work of an international standards development process: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_61851 and are both global standards (where's this 'has ever been' come from). They are variants to support single phase and 3-phase AC charging. 3 phase is common in much of Europe, so you need a 3 phase connector to get a reasonable charging speed and 3 phase is needed. With a good enough supply you can get 22kW - though most houses don't have that good a supply and so cars tend to be limited to 11 kW 3 phase, 7 kW single phase (and additional engineering and economic drivers lead to this). The US (and I think Japan) only support slightly weedy single phase (they need special connectors for more powerful domestic appliances) so Type 1 makes sense for them. UK cars, surprisingly, tend to go over the channel at times, so anything other than type 2 would be fun. There's nothing in any of this about being 'different' for the sake of it - just reasonable engineering decisions.
• Most Japanese cars sold into Europe now come with Type 2 CCS. Even the Nissan Ariya. None will have a Type 1 socket and it won't be a problem for them. EV manufacturers seem to have reached the point of fitting the appropriate socket for each region they ship to, and I think there are only 4, including covering DC charging.
• The Chinese are the ones that introduced their own non-standard standard, late in the game.
• I think (happy to be corrected) that the only EVs with Type 1 connectors ever sold in any volume in the UK were the Nissan Leaf and the Mitsubishi Outlander. It's been clear since well before 2017 that Chademo and Type 1 AC connectors would not become the standard in the UK. We bought a ZOE, rather than a Leaf, in 2017 partly for that reason.
• According to evdatabase there NO cars still being sold in the UK with Type 1 connectors. Even the Leaf has been sold with Type 2 AC (Edit: CCS) for a couple of revisions.
• If I drove an Outlander then I don't see how this is a problem at all. The car has another socket that takes liquid propellant. Why spend hours trying to connect to an isolated tethered 7kW charge point?

 

[Duncan]

Tethered type 2: completely unusable by very roughly 70,000 EVs with Type 1 connectors (that's in the UK).
Socket: less convenient for the majority, perhaps very difficult for some disabled drivers.

Socketed type 2 are also completely unusable by an unknown number of plug-in drivers who don't have a type 2 cable.

The Oxfordshire scheme, installing mostly tethered chargers in council car parks is intended to benefit people who live close by with no options for off-street parking with their own chargers. A lot of those people will be buying their cars second hand rather than new so they won't necessarily have their own cable even when one was included with the new car. Older EVs and some PHEVs may not even have come with a cable when new and even when they did how many will be passed on when the car is sold?

And I don't know how accurate is your 70,000, but that would make it just about 6% of all plug-in drivers so they probably reckon a site with 10% socketed will cover it.

Usability among disabled drivers is a very valid discussion point for a public benefit such as a free charger, but disabled drivers tend to need bigger bays with more freedom of movement so until corrected I will suspect the problem resolves itself when all factors are taken into account.

Again with the Oxfordshire scheme, all those tethered chargers have wider than usual spaces with a cross-hatched area down at least one side of the space.

 

[Anahata]

The Chinese are the ones that introduced their own non-standard standard, late in the game.

At least for them it's a proper standard. All cars and all charging connections use it, all over China. I believe it's also capable of high charging power, and being based on ChadeMO may support V2x easily.

 

[Viridian EV]

this might be the wrong way round, but may be useful to someone here..

Type 1 To Type 2 EV Car Adapter

EV Charger Type 1 To Type 2 Adapter Convert your existing Type 1 Tethered cable to Type 2. Ideal if you have swapped your car and don't want the hassle of upgrading the charge point. Rated Current: 16A, 32A, AC Operation Voltage: 250V Withstand Voltage: 2000V Size: 15cm*6cm*6cm Material...

ecoharmony.co.uk

David

 

[wyx087]

Even the Leaf has been sold with Type 2 CCS for a couple of revisions.

The 2018 refreshed Leaf, which are still being sold today, are using Type 2 for AC charging and Chademo for DC rapid.

 

[Mark I]

In 5 years I have not come across a working CHAdeMO.

I've used a fair few of those in the year and a bit that I've owned an EV. The two or three broken ones have been broken for CCS as well. But this thread was about AC charging, not rapid/DC.

According to evdatabase there NO cars still being sold in the UK with Type 1 connectors. Even the Leaf has been sold with Type 2 CCS for a couple of revisions.

No cars being sold new, but there are plenty of slightly older cars with Type 1 still in use. The Nissan e-NV200 was still being sold new up to the beginning of 2022.

Socketed type 2 are also completely unusable by an unknown number of plug-in drivers who don't have a type 2 cable.

But those drivers can buy a second-hand cable for a 2-figure price, and just plug it in. While technically possible to convert a Type 1 car to Type 2, it's likely to be a 4-figure price, would invalidate what remains of any warranty, and needs a bit of a specialist to fit it (the control circuitry is different, because of adding the motorised latch, and the connector is bigger).

And I don't know how accurate is your 70,000, but that would make it just about 6% of all plug-in drivers so they probably reckon a site with 10% socketed will cover it.

From memory (information dug out last year some time and I can't be bothered to look it up again), about 50,000 Leaf, 10,000 e-NV200, and a smaller number of Mitsubishi i-MIEV and its clones; some PHEV models, and a continuing trickle of imported used vehicles from Japan ("JDM" for Japanese domestic market).

 

[Simon..Hewison]

To be awkward the EU, China, and Tesla each wanted to set their own standards: Their only common goal was to be different to Type 1, which has resulted in different types of Type 2 plugs (EU and China look physically the same but the pin-outs and ratings and compatibilities are different, and Tesla has proprietary standards with Type 2 adapters).

EU needed three-phase AC support, so that means that anything based on Type 1 or Tesla's proprietary North American connector was out (not enough pins in the connector).
China's GB-T wasn't ratified at the time, so Mennekes Type 2 it was ,and hence Type 2 CCS.
There were a number of Smart cars produced that had the reverse-gender GB-T style connector produced, before the Type 2 connector was standardised.
GB-T AC connector is a reverse-gender of Type 2, but yes, they have the different signalling as well as the standard pilot signalling, so their equivalent of Plug & Charge is a thing.
For DC, GB-T has a lot of similarities with Chademo, and as such the next version Chaoji, aka Chademo 3.0 will be the same, and older vehicles will need adapters because the connector design is different.

Think yourself fortunate you're not in Columbia, where some of the charging networks have decided that for DC charging it should be Type 1 CCS, or Chademo, but AC charging should be Type 2 tethered. That doesn't make sense.

New Zealand and Australia went through the confusion before their governments set standards, because a lot of vehicles in those countries are grey market imports. Now they're Type 2 / CCS as default. BMW did a free retrofit of vehicles they had imported when they had assumed that Type 1 was going to be standard in NZ, and this made life easier for the public charging networks (for a small inconvenience of retrofitting some older charge points with type 2 CCS connectors)
Africa is Type 2, with a smattering of GB-T for chinese imports.
South America is mostly Type 2, with a smattering of GB-T for chinese imports for things like buses.
Indonesia and Malaysia is Type 2.
Middle east is Type 2, except for Jordan, which doesn't seem to have a standard.

Type 1 is only actually officially declared as required standards in North America, Japan and South Korea. The rest of the world is Type 2-based, or GB-T, or if you're in India... Good luck... There's even more standards to choose from there for charging electric rickshaws etc, but the normal-size cars are Type 2 / CCS, or GB-T.
Japan has Type 1 / Chademo, North America has Type 1 / CCS.
Ukraine had no defined national standard, so the public charging stations there are a bit unweildy having way too many connector variants. What will happen after the dust settles remains to be seen, but they're more likely to align to the EU standards given that they've put in an application to join.

 

[BurningNaturalGas]

A few facts:

• The Type 1 and Type 2 specifications are the work of an international standards development process: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_61851 and are both global standards (where's this 'has ever been' come from). They are variants to support single phase and 3-phase AC charging. 3 phase is common in much of Europe, so you need a 3 phase connector to get a reasonable charging speed and 3 phase is needed. With a good enough supply you can get 22kW - though most houses don't have that good a supply and so cars tend to be limited to 11 kW 3 phase, 7 kW single phase (and additional engineering and economic drivers lead to this). The US (and I think Japan) only support slightly weedy single phase (they need special connectors for more powerful domestic appliances) so Type 1 makes sense for them. UK cars, surprisingly, tend to go over the channel at times, so anything other than type 2 would be fun. There's nothing in any of this about being 'different' for the sake of it - just reasonable engineering decisions.
• Most Japanese cars sold into Europe now come with Type 2 CCS. Even the Nissan Ariya. None will have a Type 1 socket and it won't be a problem for them. EV manufacturers seem to have reached the point of fitting the appropriate socket for each region they ship to, and I think there are only 4, including covering DC charging.
• The Chinese are the ones that introduced their own non-standard standard, late in the game.
• I think (happy to be corrected) that the only EVs with Type 1 connectors ever sold in any volume in the UK were the Nissan Leaf and the Mitsubishi Outlander. It's been clear since well before 2017 that Chademo and Type 1 AC connectors would not become the standard in the UK. We bought a ZOE, rather than a Leaf, in 2017 partly for that reason.
• According to evdatabase there NO cars still being sold in the UK with Type 1 connectors. Even the Leaf has been sold with Type 2 CCS for a couple of revisions.
• If I drove an Outlander then I don't see how this is a problem at all. The car has another socket that takes liquid propellant. Why spend hours trying to connect to an isolated tethered 7kW charge point?

Sorry, but this quote is complete drivel because the UK charge networks today are for the UK cars today that are actually on UK roads today and that park in actual UK bays today. All of your nonsense about the French & German national grids, and how EU houses are often limited to 11kW, or whatever else you conjure up, will be irrelevant to driving in the UK.

If you drove an Outlander PHEV and you question why Outlander PHEV drivers would refuel with electrons rather than petrol, then you are in the wrong forum. You are the driver who gives Outlander PHEVs a bad name. I am glad you don't drive one anymore.

 

[BurningNaturalGas]

EU needed three-phase AC support, so that means that anything based on Type 1 or Tesla's proprietary North American connector was out (not enough pins in the connector).
China's GB-T wasn't ratified at the time, so Mennekes Type 2 it was ,and hence Type 2 CCS.
There were a number of Smart cars produced that had the reverse-gender GB-T style connector produced, before the Type 2 connector was standardised.
GB-T AC connector is a reverse-gender of Type 2, but yes, they have the different signalling as well as the standard pilot signalling, so their equivalent of Plug & Charge is a thing.
For DC, GB-T has a lot of similarities with Chademo, and as such the next version Chaoji, aka Chademo 3.0 will be the same, and older vehicles will need adapters because the connector design is different.

Think yourself fortunate you're not in Columbia, where some of the charging networks have decided that for DC charging it should be Type 1 CCS, or Chademo, but AC charging should be Type 2 tethered. That doesn't make sense.

New Zealand and Australia went through the confusion before their governments set standards, because a lot of vehicles in those countries are grey market imports. Now they're Type 2 / CCS as default. BMW did a free retrofit of vehicles they had imported when they had assumed that Type 1 was going to be standard in NZ, and this made life easier for the public charging networks (for a small inconvenience of retrofitting some older charge points with type 2 CCS connectors)
Africa is Type 2, with a smattering of GB-T for chinese imports.
South America is mostly Type 2, with a smattering of GB-T for chinese imports for things like buses.
Indonesia and Malaysia is Type 2.
Middle east is Type 2, except for Jordan, which doesn't seem to have a standard.

Type 1 is only actually officially declared as required standards in North America, Japan and South Korea. The rest of the world is Type 2-based, or GB-T, or if you're in India... Good luck... There's even more standards to choose from there for charging electric rickshaws etc, but the normal-size cars are Type 2 / CCS, or GB-T.
Japan has Type 1 / Chademo, North America has Type 1 / CCS.
Ukraine had no defined national standard, so the public charging stations there are a bit unweildy having way too many connector variants. What will happen after the dust settles remains to be seen, but they're more likely to align to the EU standards given that they've put in an application to join.

We can put this to bed. I have been corrected (many times) in this thread on a German business need that led to the Type 2 plug being developed for German cars. Repeating the correction will not add value. What might add value is explaining why German engineers were unable to feed the Type 1 plug from their Type 2 sockets.

Regarding the real world UK issues, whatever happens in Germany simply does not transfer to the UK charging network because the UK charging network exists to cater to UK cars (with a large number of already sold cars of Japanese origin), and the UK charging network generally meets all requirements by providing Type 2 sockets that work with Type 1 or Type 2 plugs.

 

[Simon..Hewison]

We can put this to bed. I have been corrected (many times) in this thread on a German business need that led to the Type 2 plug being developed for German cars. Repeating the correction will not add value. What might add value is explaining why German engineers were unable to feed the Type 1 plug from their Type 2 sockets.

Regarding the real world UK issues, whatever happens in Germany simply does not transfer to the UK charging network because the UK charging network exists to cater to UK cars (with a large number of already sold Japanese cars), and the UK charging network generally meets all requirements by providing Type 2 sockets that work with Type 1 or Type 2 plugs.

Yes, having owned a type 1-equipped car, as well as my current type-2 equipped car, I know the issue.
This is simply that there is no need for public AC charging in Europe ≤22kW to be tethered.
The added tethered cables are a vandalism magnet, and/or a trip hazard.
Having a socket rather than tethered cable also means that vehicles that don't have a Type 2-inlet, like the Outlander, ZE0/AZE0 Leaf, iMiev / Peugeot Ion/ Citroën c-zero, env200, Citroën Ami, can use an appropriate cable to connect to the vehicle's charge connector.

 

[wyx087]

Hang on a minute.

If Type 1 is so rare and this is a 90% UK forum, why is the banner image at top of the forum photo of a Type 1 plug?

 

[barneyd]

It might be related to accessibility concerns. Not everything is as simple as "this is the only common sense solution because I'm only considering the longevity of the plug versus a socket".

Surely a broken plug is usable by nobody. I guess at least that’s inclusive.

 

[Spiny]

Hang on a minute.

If Type 1 is so rare and this is a 90% UK forum, why is the banner image at top of the forum photo of a Type 1 plug?

The owner is Canadian and that's a north american image At least that's what I understand.

Ps I have a Type1 car, very rarely charged in the wild though.

 

[BurningNaturalGas]

Socketed type 2 are also completely unusable by an unknown number of plug-in drivers who don't have a type 2 cable.

You are bluffing! I know of no car that cannot use a Type 2 socket: Even a Scottish Aviation Scamp or Enfield 8000 (240v 50Hz 13A for 8 hours) could be plugged-in to a type 2 socket (by changing the plug or adding an adapter). The only unknown is the number of British citizenry who are unable to source or use a cable (of any kind).