Tesla Is The New Standard In EV Charging

Ford, General Motors, Rivian, Volvo, Polestar and likely Stellantis and Hyundai are set to support Tesla’s charging plug, also known as the North American Charging Standard, in the coming years. Public charging station operators have responded in kind, as everyone from ChargePoint to EVgo to Blink and now, today, Volkswagen’s Electrify America have all signed on to add NACS in addition to CCS, the current standard for non-Tesla vehicles. It’s arguable that in just a few short weeks, Tesla’s has already become the de facto U.S. standard.

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Electrify America confirmed the news today in a press release, quoted below:

Electrify America will continue to provide the Combined Charging System (CCS-1) connector throughout its network as it transitions to also support automakers adding NACS charging ports. The company will work to offer a NACS connector option at existing and future charging stations by 2025 to make charging as convenient as possible for EV owners.

“Since our founding, we have focused on building an inclusive and open hyper-fast charging network to facilitate the adoption of electric vehicles,” said Robert Barrosa, president and CEO of Electrify America. “We look forward to continuing to support industry-wide standards that increase vehicle interoperability and streamline public charging.”

This confirmation coincides with Reuters reporting that Volkswagen, the second-largest carmaker globally, is currently in talks with Tesla to implement NACS support in its cars. It’s unclear how Volkswagen’s changeover would go, but if it’s anything like its peers’, it’ll offer a CCS-to-NACS adapter in the near term ahead of a full switch to NACS built-in starting 2025.

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Complaints around the reliability and user experience of most public charging platforms, save Tesla’s, are not uncommon, and Electrify America’s hardware has been a notable offender. The company’s chargers ranked second-to-last ahead of only EVgo in terms of DC fast charging satisfaction in a 2022 J.D. Power survey, and contributors to this site have had their own difficulties with it in the past as well. A couple of the brand’s terminals even immobilized three EVs since the spring, including one Chevy Bolt which was left totaled as a result.

The switch to Tesla’s plug won’t solve those issues for Electrify America of course, but Volkswagen’s overall vote of confidence is the last sign anyone needed that NACS has definitively won out.