The Volkswagen Group also opens up to Tesla’s fast charging system in North America. VW’s charging infrastructure subsidiary Electrify America announces that it will integrate the NACS connection into its fast charging stations in the USA and Canada. While Volkswagen is still weighing its options to avoid losing US customers, Polestar confirmed the move entirely.

NACS connectors (North American Charging Standard, developed by Tesla) will be available at all new and existing stations from 2025 – alongside CCS connectors. The VW company will do so to “also support automakers adding NACS charging ports,” as several carmakers announced in recent weeks that they would offer their EVs with the Tesla charging technology in the future.

Interoperability

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

Parent company VW is allegedly also talking to Tesla and could offer its electric cars with Tesla’s charging design in the United States. “Volkswagen Group and its brands are currently evaluating the implementation of the Tesla North American Charging Standard (NACS) for its North American customers,” Volkswagen told the news agency Reuters.

Also Polestar

Geely’s daughter Polestar is already convinced. It will equip all new vehicles “with the NACS charging port by default.” Moreover, the carmaker will issue NACS adapters in mid-2024 to allow its drivers access to Tesla’s Supercharger network.

“Future NACS-equipped Polestar vehicles will come with a CCS adapter,” the carmaker says, to “maintain compatibility with existing CCS public fast charging infrastructure in North America.”

The move is not surprising, as parent company Volvo announced that it would also offer its cars with NACS plugs from 2025. Carmakers Ford, General Motors, and Rivian have recently struck similar deals.

“We salute the pioneering work Tesla has done to speed up the adoption and increase the popularity of electric vehicles, and it’s great to see the Supercharger network being made available in this way,” says Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath.

One or two standards in the US?

ADS-TEC Energy, a German supplier of storage-based ultra-fast charging systems, says that “it is open to supporting all options for charging system standards” and wonders “whether NACS will displace the Combined Charging System Combo 1 (CCS1) standard in North America” now that the above-mentioned carmakers will use the inlet in the future, “or whether they can exist in parallel in the long term.”

ADS TEC also has questions on whether adopting NACS is a good idea. “Even though Tesla has the largest installed base of fast chargers, they have been designed for 400 volts, to date, and more and more 800-volt vehicles are coming to the market”, the company states.

So for the standard to support fast charging for future EVs, technical updates will have to be made. “So why not just switch to CCS1?”

Not a standard yet

Even though Tesla calls the NACS a ‘standard’, it is not one yet. Tesla developed it in-house and has yet to go through the usual certification procedures. The CCS organization CharIN recently announced its intention to initiate such a procedure with a working group of 51 companies.

From its side, the standardization organization SAE International also says it will standardize Tesla’s NACS connection to ensure that “every manufacturer and supplier can use, make or deploy the NACS connector in electric cars and at charging stations across North America”.

The SAE also announced an “accelerated timeframe” for the development – but this timeframe is not described in more detail.

With its large fast-charging network, Tesla has arguments to pull other manufacturers over the line for its new NACS standard, but there is, of course, the rest of the world, and especially Europe and China for now, to consider.

Tesla has taken the flight ahead and tries to convince as many competitors as possible. Right now, getting access to the biggest fast-charging network, the Superchargers from Tesla, is attractive to competitors. If it stays like that in a fast-changing world is a question still to be answered.