Is Chademo a dying standard?

Avid readers of this blog will note the importance of DC fast charging on long distance EV road-trips. As of 2022, very few new EV models offer Chademo connectors for DC fast charging, even Nissan appears to be switching to CCS for their fast charging connector on the upcoming Nissan Aryia. This might frighten some potential Nissan Leaf buyer’s, being concerned that at some point in the future, there may not be any Chademo fast charging stations around. While that day may come, in the near term, new Chademo stations continue to be built around Ontario.

The 2022 Nissan Leaf, and the 2022 Mitsubishi Outlander plug-in hybrid are the only new cars that happen to have the Chademo connector for DC fast charging. In the used market, we have the Nissan Leaf, Mitsubishi Outlander, some Hyundai Ioniq’s, Kia Soul EV’s and Mitsubishi MiEV’s that also use Chademo. Tesla has an adapter available (source) that allow some Tesla’s to use Chademo charging stations (source).

You might ask, why would a Tesla driver use a 50 kW Chademo station instead of a 250 kW Supercharger? Well, believe it or not, there are places in Ontario (such as Timmins, ON) where there is a Ivy Chademo station in town, but the nearest supercharger is hundreds of kilometers away. Alternatively, some Tesla’s do not have supercharging enabled (source), and thus cannot use Supercharger stations. That may be due to the car’s software settings banning all forms of DC fast charging, it is plausible that Tesla might decide for whatever reason to disable access on the supercharger side as well.

Hence, Tesla has turned into an unlikely Chademo champion. Recently the Ivy charging network went so far as to pormise “a built in Chademo-to-Tesla adapter” (source).

If Tesla follows through with a CCS adapter, that might change. South Korea seems to be the next market that might see a CCS – Tesla adapter ( source). The adapter looks very compact (so perhaps far cheaper than the $500 CAD or so for a Chademo to Tesla adapter). CCS also offers faster charging speeds than Chademo, thus if a Tesla owner were given a choice, CCS would probably win out. Tesla management is very capable, hence I am sure discussions on the CCS adapter availability is an active topic of discussion. Some smart person somewhere I am sure is working on quantifying the expected supercharging revenue loss if a CCS adapter were available.

While it is true, that fewer Chademo capable cars are being sold, demand from Tesla drivers is keeping Chademo alive for now. Particularly as there are rural spots in our large province of Ontario where a supercharger is hard to find, but an Ivy station with Chademo and CCS might be around.