What’s the different between J1772 plug and other plug?

Type 1, type 2, J1772 and Mennekes you would have probably heard of those terms before, but if you haven’t chances are you will come across them very soon because what those are electric vehicle charging plug types.

What the different between J1772 plug and other plug?

Today, I’m going to go over the different charging standards that are currently being used in Australia and the differences between the varying plug types.

As electric vehicle is constantly evolving so does the technology behind the batteries and the way in which we charge them and this is very similar to the phases, when smartphones are switching over to usbc and lightning port to support faster charging, depending on which part of the world you’re in the plug types for both ac and dc changes to find out more about the differences between ac and dc click up here on the pop-up banner where I did a video on different levels of charging in Australia.

Currently, europe has adopted the type 2 also known as Mennekes for the ac charging and CCS2 for their dc Japan however uses a type 1 also known as J1772 for ac and CHAdeMo for dc charging. Similarly, with America they have the type 1 for ac charging but they’ve adopted the CCS 1 for the dc charging to make things a little bit more confusing. Tesla in America has also got their own proprietary plug for both ac and dc lastly we’ve got china who uses gbt for both ac and dc as well luckily for Australia.

 

CCS 2 will most likely become the charging standards for dc.

There are only four plug types that we need to know about and that’s type 1 and type 2 for ac charging, CHAdeMo and CCS2 for dc charging.

All cars in Australia are currently made of a combination of these four plugs that being said all new electric vehicles coming out of Australia today is equipped with a type 2 plug and what this will mean is CCS2 will most likely become the charging standards for dc.

As well and I’ll explain why in a second now, if we have a closer look at the ac plug types right here I’ve got a type 1 also known as a J1772 plug and then on this side I’ve got a type 2 also known as a Mennekes plug.

So as you can see here the type 1 has got a little button on top and what happens is when this is plugged into the card the little tab on top latches onto the socket to lock it in, and then here you can also see that the bottom bit is a lot more rounder compared to that of the type 2 which is the which has got a round bottom but a flattened out top and this is how you can tell between a type 1 and a type 2 plug.

 

What CCS stand for is combined charging system with a type 2 plug.

But more importantly, I wanted to have a closer look at the pin configuration as you can see the type 1 has got a five pin configuration where as the type 2 has got a seven pin configuration and so two of the smaller pins is what we refer to as control pilot and proximity pilot and this is what allows communications between the car and the charging stations to tell the charger.

When the car is full so it stops delivering power and then the three extra pin is for line neutral and earth. Similarly, with the type 2 you’ve actually got line 1, line 2, line 3 neutral and earth and so.

What that means is the type 2 plug can actually support 3 phase charging up to 22 kilowatt as opposed to the type 1 can only support up to single phase charging 7 kilowatts and this is part of the reason why the type 1 is getting phased out and a lot of car manufacturers are moving towards the type 2 because it’s able to support a faster charge. Another reason why the type 2 is becoming the charging standards moving forward is because of the dc charge port right here I’ve got a CCS2 charging socket and what CCS stand for is combined charging system with a type 2 plug, so as you can see on the top portion here you’ve got a type 2 plug.

 

What kind of socket should we choose?

So what that means is when you’re doing ac charging you can just plug the type 2 plug into the socket and then when you come to dc charging you’ve got the two additional pins down on the bottom which is your line and neutral pin, which is what does the dc charging.

So the idea is that in an electric vehicle you can have one socket like this which support both ac and dc charging as opposed to having two different sockets for ac and dc, most of the modern cars are using the type 2 and CCS2 as the charging socket, such as the Hyundai kona Tesla Model 3 and the MG ZS EV.

Some of the newer Japanese cars, such as the Nissan LEAF whilst they’ve adopted the type 2 as the ac charging standards they’ve still retained the CHAdeMo for the dc charging.