Glossary

What is Connector?

A connector is the physical plug interface on an EVSE, described by its standard, power, current type, voltage and live status.

Also known as: charging connector, plug, charging standard

A connector is the actual physical interface a driver plugs into. It is the most granular level of charging infrastructure data and the one that determines whether a given car can charge at a given point at all — a CCS2 car cannot use a CHAdeMO connector, regardless of how much power the site advertises.

Each connector has properties that matter for both routing and pricing: the standard (Type 2, CCS2/Combo, CHAdeMO), the current type (AC or DC), rated power in kW, voltage, amperage, and a live status such as AVAILABLE or CHARGING. A single EVSE frequently exposes several connectors of different standards and power levels.

Because a station’s headline "up to 240 kW" figure usually refers to its most capable connector, decisions like "can this driver fast-charge here right now?" can only be answered at the connector level — which is why connector-level data quality is disproportionately important.

In the Data for EV model

Data for EV models each connector with its standard, format, current type, power_kw, voltage, amperage and a live status, plus an attached tariff. Connector-level status feeds the live availability that products use to show whether a specific plug is free right now.

See Connector in real data

Data for EV normalizes this across 65 networks into one canonical, OCPI 2.3.0-compatible model.