- Mercedes-Benz High Power Charging will unveil a new “multi-port” charger: two NACS sockets and two CCS sockets on each side.
- Each Alpitronic HYC 400 can provide up to 400 kilowatts of charging power, the upper limit for US fast charging.
- The Mercedes network serves all electric vehicles, and the plugs represent one solution to the sometimes awkward transition from CCS to NACS.
While Mercedes-Benz has decided to launch its own charging network in 2022, Tesla dropped a bomb. The electric automaker said it will open source its component design — called the North American Charging Standard, or NACS — and expand access to its vaunted Supercharger network to outsiders who don’t drive Teslas.
The dominoes fell quickly. In May 2023, Ford was the first The manufacturer is adopting the Tesla plug standard for its future electric cars. Then came General Motors, and GM eventually followed suit Just about every company that sells cars In North America. The idea was that by adding seamless access to Tesla’s already expansive and generally reliable Supercharger network, these automakers could drive EV adoption more quickly.
“All of a sudden, I think within a week or two, North America will have a new charging standard,” said Madeleine Ebert, who leads product development at Mercedes-Benz High Power Charging.
For now, though, the shift is on Very much in its critical stage. Some of the latest non-Tesla electric cars now come with NACS ports and easy access to Tesla Superchargers, while many other cars on the road don’t. Drivers need to know which inverters to buy and when to use them, which is a daunting challenge for those new to electric vehicles. Charging providers are in the middle, and they’re trying to figure it all out, too, by making sure drivers with older CCS ports aren’t left behind.
For high-power charging from Mercedes-Benz, the answer is the new “multi-port” charger, which is now rolling out in full force across its network.
Typical DC fast chargers offer one or two plugs, the latter often allowing a single unit to service two cars simultaneously. Multiport chargers have four: two NACS and two Combined Charging System 1 (CCS-1), with one set on each side.
Mercedes told InsideEVs that it plans to offer multi-port chargers exclusively from now on, retrofitting all existing locations.
Photo by: Mercedes-Benz
The idea is that any electric car — whether it’s using the new standard or the old, whether it’s a Tesla or another — can pull up to either side of a multi-port unit and power it without needing a converter.
Ebert said Mercedes began looking for a solution to make fast charging directly available to the public in this new era InsideEVs. This was important because there were still a lot of customers who were reluctant to switch to electric cars, and because CCS-equipped electric cars would remain on the road for a very long time.
“We as an industry need to solve this problem so they don’t have to worry about it,” she said. “We’re going to have some older cars on the market for the next 10 years or so. So it’s a challenge we’ll need to solve for the better part of the next five to 10 years.”
Photo by: Mercedes-Benz
Mercedes approached Albitronic Ebert said the idea came around the time the European charger manufacturer was planning to enter North America. The multi-port charger is the end result of this collaboration. Each Alpitronic HYC 400 can provide up to 400 kilowatts of charging power, which is the upper limit for most of America’s high-end electric models.
Today, about 30 Mercedes stations — about half of them — have multi-port chargers. But this number must grow quickly.
From now on, all new Mercedes stations will contain multi-port chargers only, Ebert said. That effort began in earnest last quarter and includes three Canadian locations that opened for business on Tuesday. The company is also retrofitting all of its existing hubs with the new hardware. So, one day, every Mercedes charger will be available for any electric car – without the use of an e-hook.
The Mercedes-Benz charging network includes about 30 sites equipped with multi-port chargers today.
Photo by: Mercedes-Benz
This last part was crucial to eliminating confusion from shipping and also because adapters are a “black box,” Ebert said.
“You don’t know what people are doing with it,” she said. “You don’t know how carefully they are handling it or not. All of that can ultimately lead to frustration on the part of customers.” Some people may also buy an adapter with the wrong amperage rating, which can slow charging times, she said.
Ebert said Mercedes and Petronic had to work out some kinks to get everything working properly. Work needed to be done on cooling, and companies needed to know the correct configuration and cable length to accommodate any vehicle’s port location.
Ebert believes Mercedes did just that, thanks to shorter and longer cables of each flavour. The chargers needed firmware changes so that in-car navigation systems could see the correct number of stalls available at each station and not be thrown off by extra plugs.
This is just one solution for What was called the “Transformers Hell” era.when electric vehicle drivers may need Any of four different dongles Depending on the car they own and the chargers they use frequently. But it is one of the most elegant and easy-to-use methods.
Other networks are incorporating NACS as well, to serve the growing number of non-Tesla electric models that now feature the port. EVgo and Ionna, the electric vehicle charging giant founded by several automakers, are rolling out CCS and NACS cables in their new stations, but in separate chargers. Walmart, another growing company in this space, deploys Alpitronic units with one CCS plug and one NACS plug each. ChargePoint introduced OminPortIt is an internal adapter that allows one cable to be connected to both CCS and NACS vehicles.
The HYC 400 quad cable isn’t exclusive to Mercedes either. The electrification of America, for example, is Experimenting with devices At two of its stations. But Mercedes is the first to commit to rolling it out across its entire network.
MBHPC has installed more than 650 outlets today, and the total number is expected to exceed 1,000 this year, the company says. This suggests that at least 350 multi-port chargers should soon be available.
Contact the author: Tim.Levin@InsideEVs.com
