Tesla Model S owners have long been tantalized by the $1000 CHAdeMO adapter that would give them access to the network of Fast DC chargers that are built for cars like the Nissan Leaf. Alas, it has been in the “coming soon” phase of market testing since the original Model S launched over a year ago and Tesla hasn’t been able to say when and if they are actually coming. It would make a lot of sense for Tesla to launch these for the Japanese market which is saturated with these DC fast chargers. Some quick facts about CHAdeMO:

CHAdeMO is the trade name of a quick charging method for battery electric vehicles delivering up to 62.5 kW of high-voltage direct current via a special electrical connector. It is proposed as a global industry standard by an association of the same name.

CHAdeMO is an abbreviation of “CHArge de MOve”, equivalent to “charge for moving”. The name is a pun for O cha demo ikaga desuka in Japanese, translating to English as “How about some tea?”, referring to the time it would take to charge a car.[2] CHAdeMO can charge low-range electric cars in less than half an hour.

The number of CHAdeMO DC Quick chargers installed up to today is 3643. — (Japan 1,967, Europe 1072, USA 592, Others 12)

So it was surprising to see that the Plugshare folks who are sponsoring the big #EpicEVTrip have been using the CHAdeMO Tesla Adapter in the image above. In a brief Twitter conversation (below), they told me that the adapter was in Beta but it would charge the Tesla as fast as a Supercharger (note since this writing, the image of the CHAdeMO Tesla Adapter has been removed). I’d note that the speed of the charging is probably not quite Supercharger level since it is 62.5kW vs. the 120-135kW that a Tesla Supercharger puts out.

Update: Plugshare updates their Supercharger comparison:

[tweet https://twitter.com/plugshare/status/454341602866368512]

Note the current rollout of Chademo adapters is much more spread out than the Tesla Superchargers in the map below:

US Chademo adapters

40.714513 -74.005122

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