TESLA logo on a charging station at on May 26, 2023 in Merklingen, Germany.
Harry Langer/ | Defodi Images | Getty Images
In a matter of weeks, Ford Motor, General Motors and Tesla appear to have shifted the tide on the electrical vehicle-charging infrastructure in North America.
Tesla owners have long enjoyed reliable charging away from home at the corporate’s Supercharging stations, the biggest charging network in North America by far. However the charging industry at large has been fragmented, and non-Tesla owners have not had it as easy.
All of that can soon change.
Last month, Ford announced it had made a cope with Tesla that can allow Ford EVs to make use of Tesla’s charging stations with an adapter — and that starting in 2025, it can make Tesla’s charging tech standard by itself EVs. It was a surprising partnership between rivals, and on Thursday, General Motors said it struck a virtually similar cope with Tesla.
So why would Ford and GM join forces with Tesla, an organization long seen by investors as a threat to the established automakers?
And what does it mean for EVs?
Unified charging
Tesla’s Superchargers use a proprietary plug design, called the North American Charging Standard, or NACS, that does not work with non-Tesla EVs. Most other EVs and charging stations within the U.S. use the general public domain Combined Charging System (CCS) plug standard.
Currently, Tesla EVs can use CCS chargers with an adapter, but only Teslas can use NACS chargers.
Which means while Tesla owners have access to the corporate’s plentiful and reliable fast-charging stations, drivers of non-Tesla EVs that use CCS have faced a mishmash of networks and often-unreliable equipment.
The shortcomings of CCS have been a growing concern for Detroit automakers as they ramp up EV production in hopes of selling their electrified models to the masses.
In a study last 12 months, researchers on the University of California at Berkeley checked 675 CCS fast chargers within the San Francisco Bay Area and located that just about 1 / 4 of them weren’t functional. An August 2022 study by JD Power found similar results for CCS chargers in other parts of the country. Notably, it also found Tesla’s charging network to be rather more reliable.
Tesla originally built the Supercharger network to beat potential buyers’ concerns about charging on road trips. The extent and reliability of its fast-charging network was a key component of its early sales pitch to customers nervous about going electric — and it has been a key component of the corporate’s success within the U.S. since.
In contrast, the spottiness and less-than-stellar reliability of the CCS network has been a challenge for Ford and GM (and other automakers) as they aim to ramp up sales of their very own EVs.
Potential buyers of a Ford or GM EV might like what they experience on a test drive, but with out a reliable charging network, each have been at an obstacle to Tesla. These recent deals should go a great distance toward leveling the charging playing field.
One more reason to favor Tesla’s NACS standard over CCS: Tesla’s plugs are considerably smaller and lighter than the CCS fast-charging plugs, which will be cumbersome for older or disabled drivers to make use of.
With each Ford and GM wanting to win customers who’re recent to EVs, improving accessibility is a high priority.
Shortcut savings
For automakers like Ford and GM which are betting billions on a giant shift to EVs, reliability issues with CCS chargers have been seen as a possible barrier to wider adoption. GM said in 2021 that it planned to spend $750 million to enhance EV-charging infrastructure within the U.S. and Canada.
But then Tesla opened up the NACS standard last November, publishing the technical specifications and welcoming charging network operators and other automakers to make use of its plug design.
For each Ford and GM, that change offered a shortcut — and the potential for large savings.
“We expect we will save as much as $400 million in the unique three-quarters of a billion dollars that we allocated to this, because we have been in a position to do it faster and more effectively,” Barra said in a Thursday interview with CNBC’s “Fast Money” after announcing the Tesla deal.
For Ford CEO Jim Farley, these deals also signal what he sees as a recent era of collaboration between automakers that goes beyond individual components.
“We [worked with other automakers] on transmissions and engines without anyone noticing within the ICE world,” Farley said at a Bernstein conference on May 31. “Now, it will be more on the technology side. I believe that is one of the interesting recent dynamics.”
What about Tesla?
So what does Tesla get out of the deal to let its competitors use its superior charging network?
The EV leader will definitely benefit from the added revenue it receives from Ford and GM EV owners every time they charge at a Supercharger station.
It’ll also benefit from the implicit endorsement of its technology by long-established rivals, and it will likely seek a share of the public EV-charging subsidies made available under last 12 months’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
However the agreements don’t mean Tesla will win a monopoly on public charging within the U.S., even when all automakers eventually adopt the NACS standard.
The EV giant’s decision to make the NACS standard public signifies that rival charging network operators are also free so as to add chargers with NACS plugs — they usually almost definitely will.
The truth is, key players are already responding within the wake of the Ford and GM deals. Swiss electrical-equipment giant ABB, a number one maker of economic EV chargers, said on Friday that it can soon offer NACS plugs as an option on its products. FreeWire Technologies, a California-based startup constructing fast chargers, announced similar plans after Ford’s cope with Tesla last month.
Tesla’s primary motivation — at the very least in public – could also be even simpler.
“Our mission is to speed up the world’s transition to sustainable energy,” said Rebecca Tinucci, Tesla’s senior director of charging infrastructure, in a press release announcing the GM deal on Thursday. “Giving every EV owner access to ubiquitous and reliable charging is a cornerstone of that mission.”
