Avcon is a company that manufactures charging interfaces for battery electric vehicles (EV). The lettering convention is Avcon for the company and AVCON (capitals) for the EV charging connector. History Avcon belonged to the Maréchal Electric group of companies, which has its primary corporate headquarters in France. Maréchal established the MELTRIC Corporation in 1981 to market products for North America; MELTRIC, in turn, registered the trademark for Avcon Corporation in 1995. The initial registered address for Avcon was in Cudahy, Wisconsin. AVCON coupler system The AVCON conductive interface was used by the Ford Ranger EV truck, Solectria, and the Honda EV Plus. The AVCON conductive EV charging coupler system consists of a rectangular charging connector (the male handle at the end of the electric vehicle supply equipment cable) which plugs into a vehicle inlet (the female receptacle) mounted on the vehicle. The SAE J1772 "SAE Electric Vehicle Conductive Charge Coupler" recommended practice for surface vehicles was first issued in 1996, with the AVCON connector described in an appendix. Maréchal designed the initial coupler with butt connectors, which included 11 contacts overall, two of which were DC contacts for Level 3 charging (as defined in article 625 of the 1999 version of the National Electric Code). The November 2001 version of SAE J1772 moved the AVCON connector into the main body, making it the default connector in North America; the revised version of the AVCON connector has six contacts, dropping support for Level 3 charging. The AVCON coupler was succeeded in the 2009 edition of SAE J1772 by a round keyed coupler designed by Yazaki. American and Japanese plug-in electric vehicles that came to market starting in 2011 such as the Chevrolet Volt and Nissan Leaf use the Yazaki coupler specified in the 2009 revision of SAE J1772 for level 2 charging. The J1772(2009) coupler is also listed as the Type 1 coupler in the IEC 62196-2 AC charging standard, and the AVCON coupler is now deprecated. Conductive and inductive charging systems The AVCON conductive interface was the primary competitor to the Magne Charge inductive charging paddle used by the General Motors EV1 and Chevy S10 EV, plus the 2002 Toyota RAV4 EV. Ford and Honda chose AVCON as a more cost effective EV charging solution to transfer the same 6KW AC power to the EV's on-board charging system (208 to 240 VAC, 40 amp circuit into the charging head). Many