EV Charger Types and Plugs in Australia: Type 2, CCS2 and CHAdeMO Explained

Australia runs on two EV plugs. Type 2 handles AC charging, from a wall box at home to the slower public posts at shopping centres. CCS2 handles DC fast charging, and it is simply a Type 2 plug with two thick DC pins added underneath, so one port on the car does both jobs. The odd one out is CHAdeMO, a separate DC plug used by the Nissan Leaf, the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV and a handful of other Japanese models, and networks are starting to remove it from busy sites.

Which plug does your car use?

Pick your car and this line switches to it.

Your car’s DC fast-charging plug: CCS2 .

If you skipped the picker, the odds are heavily on CCS2. Of the 34 current models in our database, from the Tesla Model 3 and BYD Atto 3 to the Kia EV9 and Zeekr 7X, every one uses CCS2 except the 40 kWh Nissan Leaf. For AC charging they all use Type 2.

The four plugs you might meet

Type 2 is the European AC standard (also called Mennekes or IEC 62196). It carries up to 22 kW on three-phase power, though your car only takes what its onboard charger allows. We cover the plug, the cable types and the BYO-cable question in our Type 2 charging guide, so we won’t repeat it here.

CCS2 (Combined Charging System, Combo 2) is what you’ll plug into at almost every fast charger. The top half is the same Type 2 shape; the two big pins below carry DC straight to the battery, bypassing the car’s onboard charger. That’s why a CCS2 car has one port with a removable flap over the lower half. Fast-charger cables are always attached to the unit, so you never carry one.

Type 1 (J1772) is a five-pin, single-phase AC plug from the US and Japan. RACV’s plug guide lists early Nissan Leafs, the BMW i3 and i8 and the Holden Volt among the cars still circulating with it. A Type 1 to Type 2 cable solves AC charging; owners just lose three-phase speeds, which Type 1 can’t do anyway.

What about Tesla?

Current Teslas use the same plugs as everyone else: Type 2 for AC and CCS2 for DC, which RACV’s guide confirms for the Model 3 and Model Y. The confusing bit is older cars. Some Model S and Model X sold between 2015 and 2020 were fitted with a modified Type 2 port for Supercharging, and RACV notes these may need an adaptor at non-Tesla CCS2 chargers. If you are buying a used S or X, check which port it has.

Tesla Superchargers themselves are CCS2 only for non-Tesla cars, with no CHAdeMO at all. Our Supercharger guide covers access, and how other brands use them.

CHAdeMO: which cars need it, and is it disappearing?

CHAdeMO is the Japanese DC standard from 2010. According to the NRMA, in the new-car market it is now mainly found on the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV, the Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross PHEV and the Lexus UX 300e, with older Nissan Leafs and Mitsubishi i-MiEVs on the used market. Earlier-generation Leafs sold here all used it. Nissan’s next-generation Leaf drops CHAdeMO for CCS2 in several markets, so if you’re looking at a Leaf built from 2026 on, check the port rather than assuming.

Is it being phased out? Yes, gradually, and the NRMA said so plainly in May 2026. It is removing CHAdeMO plugs at selected sites, “starting with those under the greatest demand that have the least CHAdeMO usage”. The reasons are practical. On many older dual-plug units, a car on the CHAdeMO lead blocks the CCS2 lead on the same unit, so one Leaf can take a whole charger out of use on a busy long weekend. Converting those units to two CCS2 cables lets two cars charge at once. The NRMA also noted that government-funded sites used to be required to carry both plugs, and that requirement has shifted.

Other networks haven’t announced anything similar that we could find. Evie still lists CHAdeMO and CCS2 as its two connector types, and Chargefox says many of its sites feature CHAdeMO. Our own network pages list it at many bp pulse sites, on JOLT’s original 25 kW kerbside units and at selected Ampol sites too. On our own charger map, about 630 of the roughly 1,120 sites with a DC plug list at least one CHAdeMO lead, based on listings as of 1 September 2026. Treat that as an upper bound: the underlying listings come from Open Charge Map and OpenStreetMap, which are slow to record a plug being removed.

What that means if you drive a Leaf or an Outlander PHEV:

1. Check the plug in the app before you commit to a site, especially on NRMA sites in NSW and the ACT, where the network says it will flag changes in its app.
2. Keep a backup site in mind on longer trips. A single CHAdeMO lead is a single point of failure.
3. Adaptors exist but aren’t a sure thing. The NRMA notes some CCS2-to-CHAdeMO adaptors can work, but compatibility varies by car, charger and adaptor, so check with all three before relying on one.

If your plug does let you down on the road, our guide to what happens when an EV runs out of charge covers the options.

What do Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3 mean here?

These are American labels, and you’ll mostly see them in installer ads and imported product listings. Australian networks talk in kilowatts and in AC versus DC instead. RACV’s guide, citing the Electric Vehicle Council, maps them like this:

So a “Level 2 charger” is just a home wall box or a Type 2 public post. If you’re shopping for one, our home charger comparison is the place to start, and our public charging guide explains how the fast networks work.

Does Australia use GB/T or NACS?

No to both. GB/T is China’s national standard, and BYD, MG, GWM, Zeekr and Geely all build Australian-market cars with Type 2 and CCS2 instead; every Chinese-brand car in our database is CCS2. None of the roughly 2,000 sites on our map lists a GB/T plug. NACS, Tesla’s slim North American connector, is a US and Canadian standard. Australian Teslas don’t use it.