Before we were talking about the SAE Combined Charging System (CCS) versus the Tesla North American Charging Standard (NACS), there was another DC fast-charging protocol that had a real shot at becoming the winner: CHAdeMO (which apparently stood for Charging de Move). It was adopted by Nissan and other Japanese automakers, with it appearing as far back as the first-generation Nissan Leaf. But many other automakers settled on CCS instead, before eventually choosing NACS. Some other compatible vehicles became available with the standard in the U.S., such as the Mitsubishi i-MiEV and Kia Soul EV, but the Leaf was the volume offering using CHAdeMO. While many stations current and upcoming still have CHAdeMO compatibility, it’s definitely the least representative format, and likely won’t be as easy to find in the future. The really big issue is that Nissan does not offer any sort of adapter to utilize other DC chargers. In fact, adapters for the format have been quite rare across the board due to complications in getting the different protocols to communicate. Tesla actually made an adapter to connect its cars to CHAdeMO fast chargers, but that’s long since been discontinued. And the lack of adapters has been extreme enough that some Leaf owners have been working out ways of simply removing the CHAdeMO system and retrofitting CCS charging hardware. But it seems another company has risen to the challenge.
The company in question is Dongguan Longood Technology Co., Ltd., a Chinese company that seems to make a variety of EV charging equipment from complete chargers to connectors and adapters. And indeed, the company now has listed in its Alibaba online store both for the American CCS1 connector and the European CCS2. These are in addition to a variety of other format adapters, and it seems the company might even make a NACS to CHAdeMO connector if requested (the item listing only shows renderings, though). We haven’t had our hands on the adapters, but YouTuber Dala’s EV Repair has. In his video, he takes his first-generation Nissan Leaf to a CCS charging station and demonstrates how it works, which is extremely simple: Plug the adapter into the charger end, press “Start” on the adapter, and then plug it into the car end.
As Dala notes, and we agree, the charger adapter is not cheap. The price for the CCS1 version is $1,050 in the minimum order quantity of 2 to 9. The price goes down when ordered in bulk. The reason for all this is that sellers on Alibaba are generally selling to businesses that will resell their products, possibly under other brand names. However, Dala notes that you can purchase a single example from the company for personal use, simply by contacting the company directly, and there is contact information on the Alibaba page. Also, while $1,050 isn’t a small amount of money, we can imagine that there are many owners of Nissan Leafs in particular that would be happy to pick up this piece of equipment for some serious charging anxiety relief.
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