Charging Plugs Explained - How Do Electric Cars Work

Welcome to today's video. Today's video is about how do electric cars work and in this series of videos and this one in particular we're going to be going into how charging works. Now we're going to be going into the different types of charge plugs, type 1, type 2, CCS, CHAdeMO and any other plugs that you're going to be using in UK, Europe and North America. So if you're in any of those regions these are the videos that you want to watch to understand literally how does charging work, what is AC, what is DC and which plug you need when you're plugging your car in in a public charger. Let's start off with the type of electricity you're going to be using at home and that is AC, alternating current. So if you're charging at home or your work the electricity that comes into your property is AC electricity and if you're charging at home you're going to be using one of these two plugs. If you're in North America you'll be using type 1 this plug here and that is all of North America unless you're a Tesla owner which have their own priority plug but we'll get into that in a bit and then in Europe if you've got a very very early Nissan Leaf so the early bug shape one you're going to be having this type of plug again because the early Nissan Leafs came with a type 1. If you're in Europe and it's a later car or not a Leaf you'll be using type 2 which is this plug. Type 2 now has to be fitted on all cars made in Europe and even the new shape Nissan Leaf now has type 2. So these two plugs will charge you at home they plug straight into the car either directly from your tethered unit from your house or an un-tethered unit which will have the corresponding plug at the other end. In Europe the other side of your type 2 plug is another type 2 again in Europe the other side of your type 1 plug is a type 2. So type 1 in Europe goes straight to a type 2. It's different in North America it's type 1 to type 1 but in Europe type 2 is the standard so always the public end always has that shape on the other end. Now AC has several speeds, several. Now let's start off with what we call single phase electricity that's one source of electricity direct from the grid, one phase. We won't go into all the phases too much it's a little bit complicated. First of all this is a granny cable this is by far the slowest way of charging. In the UK it's a 3 pin plug, in Europe it's the standard 2 pin domestic socket and in America again it's another domestic socket. Slowest way of charging by far in the UK will only pull 10 amps from the 13 amp socket very slow and in my mind it's only supposed to be used in emergencies. I've seen fires and damage to 3 pin plugs and all sorts of issues. If you're using this as a daily way of charging your electric car don't upgrade to a proper unit which there's a link top right to a list of units that you can get that will work with an electric car. The next method which is my preferred method is having a dedicated wall unit. Now some of them have your cable built in and at the end it will have your type 1 or type 2 plug depending on what market and what car you've got. Some of them are untethered which is where you plug this straight into the front of the unit and then obviously the unit will then send electricity to your car. Now these are available in several different amperages. The lowest starting at 16 amps then moving up to 32 amps and then the super high powered ones that you get at motorway service stations are three phase and I think they're 64 amps but I'm sure someone will correct me in the comments if I'm wrong on that one. So AC can be single phase and three phase. The majority of electric cars are single phase and can only charge at 7 kilowatts or below. Some of them are capable of doing more and especially a lot of the new ones that are coming out this year are capable of more and my favourite one the Renault Zoe some of them are capable up to 43 kilowatts which is using three phase and some of them are only capable up to 22 kilowatts three phase but that is still a lot higher on AC than some other manufacturers. Now if you're going for a chat home charger my recommendation as per my video that was on top right is to get a seven kilowatt phase charger single phase but like I said you are able if you have a work property I've done a install of my property here at work I had a three phase charger installed which is capable of 22 kilowatts so on one of these Zoe will charge at 22 kilowatts and then on my BMW that's only capable of three phase at 11 kilowatts. So if you're not sure which electric car what your car charges at have a look at the specs it should tell you and there's a database EV database link down below in the description which tells you basically what phases they charge at but the quicker that is at AC the quicker it will charge at home and the quicker it will charge at some public charging stations because a lot of public charging stations are AC three phase because it's quite cheap to install. Now we're going to move on to the more complicated thing which is DC. Now DC in American Europe comes in three flavours. In Europe it just comes in two flavours and in the USA it only comes in two flavours again. So let's first start off with our American friends. Our American friends DC will be CHAdeMO which is on the Nissan LEAF and Japanese built cars and this is a CHAdeMO socket. They are DC electric they are they can do various charge speeds they are usually a minimum of 50 kilowatt charge speeds and they can go up to some you know high speeds 150 I think the highest I can recall from memory of what CHAdeMO is capable of. If you know of a faster CHAdeMO charge speed leave it down in the comments. Your next charge speed charge sort of socket you can use on a American market is what we call CCS. Now CCS in the US is going to confuse my European viewers now. CCS is a type one plug in the USA with two big prongs at the bottom for your DC charging. Now DC charging is usually started at 50 kilowatts and ramps all the way up to really high speeds again 350 kilowatt charge speeds so that is a very very very capable system of providing future-proof sort of charge speeds for DC. Now DC means direct current it's the same electricity that your battery has so if you're charging AC your car will convert that AC electric to DC to charge the car up and if you're DC it's basically just going from DC to DC converter and going straight into the battery and DC does allow them to ramp the charge speed etc to a much higher kilowatt base and there's a lot of physics behind that and we'll discuss that as we go later into the series which probably when I see you and McTuck you can probably explain it a lot better than me. Now back to my European viewers. My European viewers again we have CHAdeMO same as the Americans I've just mentioned but we then have RCCS. Now RCCS plug is a type 2 plug with two prongs at the bottom and again the two prongs are capable of those high charge speeds. Now the reason why the Americans have a type 1 and we have a type 2 is because this is our plug and this is their plug and it means that you can fit one plug to a car that's capable of doing AC at the top and DC at the bottom. The top half of both these plugs just does the cars communication and the bottom pins at the bottom will do the DC fast charging and if you're using a normal sort of slow charge AC charger you'll just use the normal plug at the top so the idea is you fit one plug that does the job of two. It's a very good idea and it's very very neat and that's why we are in the Europe using only type 2 it simplifies things makes things easier and it's why in America they've stuck with a type 1 plug. Here in the UK Tesla's use type 2 and we also see Model 3's now have type 2 with CCS. As I said my American viewers will know that Tesla have a priority plug it's their own special plug that works on superchargers and they get a type 1 to Tesla connector adapter when they buy the car and they can also get CHAdeMO adapters and same in the UK you can get CHAdeMO adapter for your Model S for example and you can also now get a CCS adapter for your Model S in Europe. So I hope this clears up a lot of the questions about plugs and charges and AC and DC. Please follow me, click the subscribe down below, check out my Twitter, check out my Instagram, there'll be more in this series about how do electric cars work. Thank you very much for watching this week's video and I'll see you again next week, goodbye.