CCS on the Leaf?

Lately, several companies starting to sell CCS to Chademo adapters, allowing Nissan Leaf owners (and those driving certain older Kia Soul’s and some Mitsubishi hybrids) to charge on CCS stations. Near Toronto, there are still ample charging stations that support Chademo cars, but along one of my routes (up to North-Bay), some of the older Chademo stations are starting to show their age. Sadly, the newer stations do not have Chademo support. So I went shopping and tried it out.

At the time of this writing, I am aware of three adapters on the market for Chademo enabled vehicles. These are: Wufein (source), A2Z EV (source), and Arcain (source). China based Wufein, was arguably first to market, interested parties would place their orders on Alibaba and with time, presumably receive them. The other two, are about the same price, A2Z is the one I wound up getting, mostly as they are based in Canada and thus presumably, exposed to the same charging networks my Leaf is. None of these are cheap, the going rate for the A2Z adapter is about 1300 CAD, but if it lets you keep going on your leaf for a few more years, it might be well worth it.

Needless to say, Nissan has at the time of this writing, not approved the use of any of these adapters. Thus, if there is a problem, you may face some headwinds getting Nissan to pay for needed repairs etc. if your vehicle is under warranty. Thus if you are driving a new Leaf (read expensive), I would be hesitant to use these adapters. Especially if you are leasing. Personally, my 2018 Nissan Leaf is just about out of warranty, thus I am not too concerned.

With that, I gave it a try at a nearby Flo station. To be fair, I could have just as easily reached for the Chademo handle, which was available there, but for science, I charged on the CCS.

The adapter goes into the car first, and it is stiff. It actually took me a couple of tries to seat the adapter properly in the Chademo port. That done, I authenticated at the charger, plugged the CCS into the adapter, turned it on and waited. And waited some more. While Chademo coverage is debatable, the handshaking is MUCH faster with Chademo, so be sure to give it a few minutes.

The charge started right away, and both charging station and car agreed with the charging rate, which was as expected for state of charge (~ 40%), battery temperature (~ 20 C, mid-range). I got about 45 kW, which climbed slightly to 50 kW as the charger added voltage to my battery pack.

After some shopping it was time to continue on our way, so we stopped the session, returned the CCS handle, and (eventually) got the adapter out of the Chademo port.

Overall it worked as advertised, and I was happy to have the option to use CCS stations now with my Leaf, which interestingly enough might include some Tesla Superchargers, in particular as A2Z also sells a Tesla to CCS adapter.