It's underappreciated how impactful it will be that Tesla's North American Charging Standard (NACS) has been adopted this year by most EV brands selling in the North American market. It means that basically all BEVs going forward will share a common charging plug and charging stations will be accessible to all (new) BEVs.
From a user experience perspective, NACS is generally considered superior to the Combo Charge Standard (CCS) standard that was previously preferred by the legacy automakers. CCS combines the SAE J1772 connector preferred by the North American and Japanese automakers and the IEC 62196 Type 2 (CHAdeMO) connector that is the EU's preferred standard. So to accommodate two different standards in a single physical connector, the CCS charger plug is bulky, the cable is heavy, and the charging station unit is larger and more expensive than its NACS equivalent. By comparison, the NACS cable is significantly more slim in profile, lighter, and more flexible, and the plug is much smaller, allowing the aperture on the car to be more easily incorporated into its design.
Source
The majority of the 50,000+ Tesla Superchargers around the world use the 'v3' charging unit that offers 250 kW max charging rate. The 'v4' charging unit is the new standard for Superchargers and supports 350 kW charging. This permits even faster charging and matches the 350 kW max charging rate of the CCS charging standard.
To expedite deployment of Superchargers, Tesla has developed a modular pre-fabricated unit of four chargers and the central transformer that can be trucked out and installed as a single piece. The Buffalo Tesla factory basically just makes Supercharger units and this modular unit is now being manufactured there. The v4 Supercharger and new Megacharger for long-distance trucking will also be deployed as modular units.
Source
Anyway, the mass conversion this year to NACS has included Ford, GM, Honda, Volvo, Polestar, Rivian, and Nissan. Mercedes already adopted NACS and VW is known to be in negotiations to adopt the standard, too. Electrify America, which is the largest non-Tesla charging network in the US (and was started by VW as part of the settlement for its 'Dieselgate' fraud program), has announced that it is going to convert over to NACS for future charging stations and will steadily retrofit its existing CCS infrastructure to add NACS hardware.
Prev
Linear Mode
