You want Tesla's Chademo Adapter for road trips, it's like more range

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I just completed a 5,000 mile road electric trip from California to British Columbia which was made possible by using Tesla's CHAdeMO adapter which lets me use the "other" network of DC Fast charging stations. Turns out this adapter is much more useful than you think, even though that network is inferior in just about every way. It's a must to roam British Columbia (where the DC Fast network is much larger than the Tesla one) but also very handy even in places where superchargers are common.

I have a few articles to write on this road trip. The first is about this adapter and using two networks. It can be found at Forbes.com at:

You want Tesla's Chademo Adapter for road trips, it's like more range

Plus enjoy a video from the trip with no connection to electric cars, other than no gasoline was burned to shoot it.

Comments

Spot on article. I came to the same conclusions, and this past week bought an adapter along with two other local Tesla owners in New Mexico. The adapter is also going to be available for rental as a service to my local community. I originally opened up the rentals to anybody but I'm heavily leaning to restricting rentals to local pick-up/drop-off to reduce the risk of someone deciding to keep the adapter.

Very interesting article. Our company is in the grocery, restaurant, and convenience store business. We have installed two DC Fast chargers at our newest convenience store that has a restaurant included. It would be great if we can attract Tesla drivers to charge at our site, and we have been considering purchasing an adapter for Tesla vehicles. I have a question we are hoping you can answer; does the CHADdeMO adapter work on all Tesla vehicles and all model years? Or, will we need to purchase multiple types of adapters to cover all models.

The Tesla CHAdeMO adapter is discontinued. On eBay they sell for $900 now. However, it is discontinued because Tesla will shortly sell a CCS adapter which should be only about $200 -- it is about $250 in Korea now. Everybody is itching to know when they can get it. It will be superior.

BUT, it won't work on older Teslas prior to 2020 and even doesn't work on some 2021 models without a replacement of an internal circuit board. It is unknown how much the board upgrade will cost but that's not going to help you.

When the CCS adapter comes out, the CdM should drop in price. It's the only one that will charge all Teslas. However, you may find that supporting only the recent Teslas is fine for you. It is true that for many CdM chargers, the majority of users are Teslas with adapters, not Nissans.

When you get your adapter, promote on plugshare that you have it and welcome Teslas. They now have a way to do that I think.

But the CCS2 DC fast charge connector, despite having two more pins for DC fast charge than CCS1 is nearly 3x the form factor of a Chademo connector (while the Chademo is 2x the form factor of a Tesla super charger connector)

But the CCS2 DC fast charge connector, despite having two more pins for DC fast charge than CCS1 is nearly 3x the form factor of a Chademo connector (while the Chademo is 2x the form factor of a Tesla super charger connector)

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