Almost every electric car sold in Bulgaria, Romania and Greece today uses the same two plugs: Type 2 for slow charging and CCS2 for fast charging. A few older cars use CHAdeMO. If you know which ones your car takes, you can read any charger at a glance.

The three plugs

Plug Current Typical power Which cars
Type 2 AC 7–22 kW Every European electric car and plug-in hybrid
CCS2 DC 50–400 kW Almost every electric car sold since about 2018
CHAdeMO DC up to 50 kW Nissan Leaf, older Mitsubishi and a few other early models

Type 2 is the round seven-pin socket on your car. It's what you use at home, at a hotel or at a supermarket car park. Many public Type 2 posts have no cable of their own, so keep your own Type 2 cable in the boot.

CCS2 (Combined Charging System) is Type 2 with two thick DC pins added underneath. The cable is always attached to the charger. This is the plug of motorway charging.

CHAdeMO is the Japanese DC standard. New cars no longer use it in Europe, and newer chargers increasingly leave it out. If you drive a Nissan Leaf, check that a fast charger still has a CHAdeMO cable before you count on it.

Tesla's Superchargers in Europe use CCS2 too. Many of them are open to other cars through the Tesla app; the app shows which.

AC or DC: who does the converting

The battery stores DC. On AC charging the car converts the power itself, with a small onboard charger, and that charger sets your speed. A post may say 22 kW, but most cars accept 11 kW on AC, and some only 7.4 kW. A full charge on AC takes hours: fine overnight or at work, not on a trip.

On DC charging the charger does the converting and feeds the battery directly. That's why it's so much faster: a stop from 10% to 80% takes between 20 minutes and an hour, depending on the charger and the car.

What the kW number on a charger means

A charger's kW rating is the most it can give, not what you will get. Three things decide your actual speed:

  1. Your car's maximum. A car that accepts 100 kW gets 100 kW at most, even from a 300 kW charger.
  2. The charging curve. Speed is highest when the battery is fairly empty and falls as it fills. Above about 80% most cars slow right down, which is why trips are planned in 10–80% stops rather than to 100%.
  3. The battery's temperature. A cold battery charges much slower. In winter, see how to keep your range in the cold.

Some sites also share power between two cables: if another car is charging next to you, you each get part of it.

As a rule of thumb, with a typical 60 kWh car:

  • 50 kW charger: 50 minutes to an hour from 10% to 80%.
  • 150 kW charger: about 25–30 minutes, if your car can take it.
  • 22 kW AC post: 4–6 hours for the same charge, depending on your onboard charger.

How PlugNest uses this

Every station in PlugNest shows its connectors and their power, and the pin on the map shows the fastest one in kW. When you plan a route, the planner only picks stops whose plug fits your car — CCS2, or CHAdeMO if your car uses it — and works out each stop's time from your car's own charging curve.