EV Charging Cable Cross-Reference: IEC 62893 vs EN 50620 and GB/T 33594

01Why an EV cable has two standards, not one

A charging cable must do two jobs that pull in opposite directions. It carries power — up to several hundred amps on a DC fast charger — and it also carries the signals that make charging safe: the control pilot, the proximity pilot, and often the data link to the vehicle. On top of that it is handled, coiled, dragged and bent every day of its life, outdoors, in the rain and in the cold. So a charging cable standard is written for a flexible cable under severe conditions, not for a fixed installation.

The second reason there are two standards is the charger itself. AC charging and DC charging are different electrical systems. AC charging at Type 2 passes the vehicle's own onboard charger, and the cable sees 230/400 V at up to 32 A per phase. DC fast charging bypasses the onboard charger and pushes hundreds of amps at up to 1000 V or 1500 V straight into the pack. The cable for one is not the cable for the other, and the standards split along that line.

02IEC 62893-1: the international general requirements

IEC 62893-1 is the general-requirements document for EV charging cables. Its scope sets the envelope for the whole family: cables with extruded insulation and sheath, rated up to and including 0.6/1 kV AC or 1500 V DC, for flexible applications under harsh conditions, supplying power between the charging station's supply point and the vehicle. The cable carries power and, where needed, communication, and is applicable to charging modes 1 to 4 of IEC 61851-1. The maximum conductor temperature is 90 °C.

Two details in that scope do a lot of work when you are reading a datasheet:

• 300/500 V ordinary-duty cable is only permitted for mode 1. The lower voltage class is not a free choice — it is tied to the mode.
• The particular types live in the sub-parts. IEC 62893-3 covers modes 1 to 3 (AC) and IEC 62893-4 covers mode 4 (DC). Part 1 alone does not define a product; it defines the rules the sub-parts build on.

On the DC side, the liquid-cooling distinction matters. IEC TS 62893-4-1:2020 is the DC charging application without a thermal management system; IEC TS 62893-4-2:2021 is the DC charging cable intended to be used with a thermal management system — that is, a liquid-cooled cable. A 600 A liquid-cooled cable and a 600 A air-cooled cable are not the same product even though both are “DC”, and the two sub-parts are how the standards separate them.

03EN 50620: the European AC charging standard

EN 50620 is the European standard that a CE-marked charging cable is normally tested against. Its scope is narrower on voltage and wider on application: it specifies design, dimensions and test requirements for halogen-free cables with extruded insulation and sheath, rated up to and including 450/750 V, for flexible applications under severe conditions, to supply power and communication to an electric vehicle. The cable may be an integral part of the vehicle, part of a detachable cable assembly with a vehicle connector, or permanently attached to a fixed charging point.

The published size range under EN 50620 shows the two voltage classes side by side:

04GB/T 33594: the Chinese charging cable standard

China's charging cable standard is GB/T 33594. The 2017 edition applies to charging cables for the conductive charging connection device of an electric vehicle, with rated voltage AC 450/750 V and below, and DC 1.0 kV and below, and may include signal or control cores. It specifies the use characteristics, designation method, technical requirements, marking, test methods, inspection rules, and packaging, transport and storage.

The construction requirements its scope and material grading set out:

• Conductor — Class 5 or Class 6 annealed copper (flexible classes), consistent with a cable that is handled every day.
• Conductor temperature — 90 °C or 125 °C, against the 90 °C of the IEC family.
• Material grading — S / S90-type TPE compounds at 70 °C and 90 °C working temperature; E / EY-type rubber compounds rated to 90 °C with low-temperature performance; and EY insulation with a YJ sheath as the halogen-free combination.
• Temperature range — down to −40 °C depending on material, a wider low-temperature envelope than the AC-only European class assumes.

05UL 62 and UL 2263: the North American type codes

North America does not use a European-style charging-cable standard. It uses UL 62 (Flexible Cords and Cables), whose scope was expanded in the 19th edition (2014) to incorporate electric vehicle cables, and UL 2263, which covers EV cables specifically. Between them they define a set of type codes that appear on the cable jacket:

• EVJE / EVJT — 300 V class, for lower-power and auxiliary EV supply connections.
• EVE / EVT — 600 V or 1000 V class, for higher-power charging and DC fast-charge connections.

UL 62's current scope states the ratings plainly: electric vehicle cables are rated to a maximum of 1000 V, with a temperature rating in the region of 60–105 °C dry / 60 °C wet, an oil-resistant and sunlight-resistant jacket, and suitability for wet locations. UL 2263 covers EV cables at 300 V, 600 V and 1000 V AC/DC with 60, 75, 90 or 105 °C ratings and the same type designations, and allows data, signal, communication or optical-fibre members inside the construction.

These cables are installed under the NEC, where EV charging is Article 625 and flexible cords and cables are Article 400. That is a separate layer again from the UL type code: the type code says what the cable is, the NEC article says how it is used.

06The cross-reference table

Laid side by side, the four systems look like this:

07The connector is a separate standard

The cable standard tells you what the cable is; the connector standard tells you what it plugs into. They are never the same document, and a datasheet that names only one of them is incomplete.

08What does not translate

Four points where the cross-reference is not a simple letter swap.

1. The AC and DC standards are not the same standard

A cable rated to EN 50620 for AC charging is not thereby a DC fast-charge cable. The DC side follows IEC 62893-1 with its 0.6/1 kV / 1500 V DC envelope and the -4 sub-parts. When a charger has both an AC and a DC cable, both standards are in play in the same installation.

2. Liquid-cooled DC is its own sub-part

A liquid-cooled DC cable follows IEC TS 62893-4-2, the thermal-management variant, not the ordinary DC part. The coolant circuit is a component of the delivered assembly, and the cooling fluid, flow rate and inlet temperature are properties of the charging system rather than fixed cable parameters.

3. The GB/T 33594 edition year is not interchangeable

GB/T 33594-2017 and GB/T 33594-2025 are different documents. Where a Chinese project names GB/T 33594, confirm the edition the certificate is against — quoting the superseded 2017 number as current is a common and avoidable error.

4. The cable rating is not the system voltage

An EVE 1000V marking is the cable's rating class; a DC charger's output may be 400 V, 800 V or higher within that class. Read the type code as a class, not as a measurement.

09What this page publishes, and what it will not

This page gives the standard relationships, the voltage and temperature envelopes, and the type-code logic. It does not decide whether a specific product complies with a specific project specification, and it does not state certification outcomes — those are confirmed against the certificate for the exact construction and by the receiving authority for your project. Where a figure is a published product parameter rather than a clause of a standard, it is presented as such; where a standard's table value is not in our library, the page points to the table and does not invent the number.

Reviewed by Luo Qiang — Senior Cable Application Engineer, Sorivo
15+ years in industrial and renewable energy cable specification. Experienced in cable specification aligned with IEC standards.

How this was written: every figure in this article is checked against the standard or datasheet listed in Sources before publication. Where a value is our own measurement, it is labelled as such.