More and more production-spec Tesla Cybertrucks are making their way to their owners, and in true Tesla fashion, it’s once again up to the community of enthusiasts and tinkerers to find out things about the car that the company could have simply mentioned on its website or even during the delivery event.
And this latest finding is a pretty big one, at least for those of us who like to keep an eye on the evolution of technology. It’s about the death of the CCS Combo 1 charging connector, at least in Tesla’s eyes.
According to Kyle Conner from Out of Spec Reviews, who managed to get his hands on a customer Cybertruck, Tesla’s first-ever electric pickup truck seems to be physically designed to reject a CCS1 to NACS adapter that one would use to top up the batteries from anything else but a Tesla Supercharger or Tesla Wall Charger.
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As you can see in the embedded post below, the adapter, which is quite bulky, just doesn’t fit because the plastic wheel arch is in the way and the adapter can’t be fully seated in the charging port. Now, Kyle found that if you rip off said plastic wheel arch, the adapter does fit, but then you’re left with a not-quite-complete EV, which isn’t exactly fitting considering the $100,000+ price tag for the Foundation Edition.
That said, the car doesn’t care if the charge port is removed. But here’s where the big issue comes into play. As per Kyle, the Cybertruck refused to recharge from a native CCS1 high-voltage DC stall from EVGo, even with the adapter fully seated. He goes on to theorize that it might be more willing to accept a charge from a low-voltage charger like a Level 2 unit, but that would only be useful for home charging.
This is a big deal because the Cybertruck is Tesla’s most advanced passenger vehicle to date, with an 800-volt architecture that might trickle down to more affordable models in the near future. And if the Cybertruck can’t charge from a CCS source, neither will the subsequent models that will borrow tech from the electric pickup.
Gallery: Tesla Cybertruck
The death of the CCS1 connector in the United States was first signaled when Ford and General Motors inked deals with Tesla to gain access to the Supercharger network. The two legacy automotive giants were followed by just about all the other carmakers that have EVs in the works, with the deals mentioning that cars made from 2025 will come with Tesla’s NACS port from the factory.
But before switching to NACS, every single EV sold in the United States that isn’t a Tesla will still come with a CCS1 connector. That means their owners likely already have a CCS1 Level 1 or Level 2 home charger to top up their cars’ batteries overnight. That same charger can be used to feed electricity to a Tesla-made EV with the help of an adapter, as long as it’s not a Cybertruck, it seems.