Is It Time to Give CHAdeMO a Mercy Killing?

By Edward A. Sanchez — April 27, 2024

Browsing the interwebs the other day, I came across the news story of a major fuel station chain deploying a number of EV charging stations across its network. Somewhat surprising is that the new installations (in 2024) still consisted of a CCS1 plug (which, despite a mass movement to NACS, is still understandable) and a CHAdeMO plug. Considering that there are all of two models currently on sale in the U.S. that still utilize the CHAdeMO standard, it’s a little puzzling why operators would be deploying CHAdeMO in new installations. The numbers back me up on this. Precise cumulative sales for U.S. models using CHAdeMO from its introduction to now are hard to come by, but is believed to be in the neighborhood of 200,000 units.

Let’s compare this to the cumulative number of EVs in the U.S. in total, as well as the subset of Tesla sales. There are approximately three million EVs on U.S. roads as of 2023, give or take. The majority of which use a CCS1 charger. The cumulative total of Tesla sales in the U.S. since 2012, is also a hard number to find precisely, as it doesn’t break out sales and deliveries on a per-market basis, is likely well over 1 million units.

The point I’m getting at is there’s a small and shrinking number of cars in the U.S. that still use the CHAdeMO charging protocol. Even Nissan itself, one of the founding members of the CHAdeMO Association, has announced its adoption of the NACS protocol in the U.S. going forward.

So wouldn’t a more logical approach for EV charging station deployment be CCS1 and NACS? CHAdeMO adapters in particular are bulky and expensive, and the protocol is effectively limited to a maximum charging rate of 50 kW by design. Even with an adapter to use with CCS1 or NACS, the charging rate would be much slower than CCS or NACS.

You may think I’m just picking on Leaf (and Outlander PHEV) owners by proposing CHAdeMO plugs be phased out. I’m not. But neither do I think it’s fair to make accommodation for a very small subset of EV drivers at the expense of the majority, and soon to be another majority (NACS). I feel fairly certain over the next five to seven years, many of the CHAdeMO plugs will ultimately be replaced by CCS1 or NACS. For the manufacturers of the charging stations, I hope their designs are modular enough to be able to accommodate retrofits to the new protocols.

For those in the purchasing departments of fueling chains, convenience stores, restaurants, hotel, and retail locations, perhaps they don’t know enough about the different charging protocols to request a certain configuration. It could also be that perhaps the charging station manufacturer representatives are not being proactive enough in recommending a certain configuration.

Truth be told, third-party NACS plugs are just starting to come into the market, so it could just be a matter of a supply shortage, and a gold rush of companies trying to get NEVI funds to just get stations installed in time to qualify for the infrastructure funds, and as soon as they’re available, the CHAdeMO plugs will be swapped out for NACS.

CHAdeMO still has a large installed base and user pool in Japan. In most all other markets, it has been surpassed considerably by CCS, and soon to be in North America by NACS. This reality needs to be reflected in the installation of new charging stations.

(Image courtesy Nissan)