On Thursday, General Motors CEO Mary Barra said all future EVs will use Tesla’s electric vehicle charging standard. The rivals’ alliance comes less than two weeks after Ford’s, suggesting more automakers may follow.
As with Ford, GM EV customers will get access to over 12,000 Superchargers in the U.S. and Canada.
Barra stated, “I think we have a real opportunity here to drive this to be the unified standard for North America, enabling more mass adoption. Barra said its 2025 E.V.s will have Tesla’s NACS charge port.
Tesla vehicles have A.C. and 1 MW DC charging connectors. Tesla’s CCS connector is tiny, easy to use, and performs better than North American and European E.V.s’ CCS connectors. Tesla chargers were previously solely available to Tesla EVs, but the business is pushing NACS as the new standard in North America. Tesla revealed their E.V. charging connector design last year to encourage network operators and automakers to adopt it.
Barra promises adapters for G.M. vehicles with CCS charge connectors by early spring 2024. The executive added that G.M. EV owners could use CCS chargers with a different adapter after all E.V.s are NACS-compliant.
“This really will even the playing field,” Musk said during Thursday’s brief Twitter Spaces. We will support Tesla and G.M. equally. So advancing the electric vehicle revolution is most important.”
Ford and G.M. alliances may fragment the E.V. charging sector. Europe has prohibited NACS charges, and the U.S. has offered up to $7.5 billion to create public CCS chargers.
Carter Li, CEO of SWITCH Energy, an EV-charging solutions provider, says the Ford-Tesla alliance could change public funding for public charging infrastructure at the municipal, state, and federal levels. “The partnership will meet changing charging needs and build a more scalable and robust infrastructure.”
Some are pessimistic. This week, CharIN, a global CCS advocacy group, called the Tesla-Ford alliance a threat to the global E.V. business.
“CCS is the global standard and therefore focuses on international interoperability and, unlike NACS, is future-proofed to support many other use cases beyond public D.C. fast charging,” CharIN said.