During CHAdeMO’s annual General Assembly in Tokyo, Japan on 1st june 2016, the Association’s management has announced its plans and ongoing activities toward bringing high power CHAdeMO chargers to the market in a bid to stay relevant despite newer standards like CCS keen to takeover.
This year, the Association plans to release an amendment to the current protocol, which will enable charging up to 150kW (350A). The revision of the protocol (that was already announced to the Regular Members last year) is still ongoing with technical consultations held with members both in and outside of Japan.
CHAdeMO’s Secretary General Dave Yoshida said:
“One of the purposes of the Association is to evolve CHAdeMO protocol so that it can better respond to market needs. We see a movement towards mass market EVs with higher capacity batteries and we, as the Association of fast charging protocol, prepare for it by working on the high power protocol. This will enable faster deployment of the high power charging infrastructure, in preparation for EVs that can charge with higher power.”
Recognising that the upward trend in EV autonomy will lead to a need for higher power charging at key locations, especially along motorways, CHAdeMO mandated its Technical Work Group to tackle issues such as the size of the high power cable or managing the temperature increase of the charger that may come in contact with users. Effectively, they were tasked with making the standard for you and I to use safely and without cumbersome undesirable features, like heavy wide cables.
The ‘plug’ itself will remain exactly the same as the current one meaning the high power CHAdeMO chargers can feed power to both current EVs as well as forthcoming EVs with higher battery capacity. Current CHAdeMO EVs will also be able to use the 150kW charger, but as today’s EVs are configured to charge at around 50kW, they will be limited to charge rates at the current speed despite the charge point capable of delivering more power.
Dave Yoshida added:
“We are very pleased that, thanks to the hard work of our technical team, we will soon be able to release the new version of the protocol to our members. We expect first 150kW standardised chargers to be deployed in 2017.”
CHAdeMO technical representatives are also actively involved in the IEC Committee working on high power charging where, together with other international experts, they are preparing a revision of the DC high power standards based on the IEC standards published in 2014.
Looking beyond the immediate future, technical studies are ongoing to achieve a CHAdeMO 350kW (1 000V x 350A) charging rate and the Association will determine its further development in or around 2018, should there be market demand.
Source; CHAdeMO
