Earlier this month, General Motors announced that beginning in 2025, it will adopt Tesla’s charging connector for all its electric vehicles.
With the announcement, GM joins Ford in partnering with Tesla to integrate Tesla charging connectors into the companies’ electric vehicles beginning in 2025, vastly expanding charging access for Ford and GM EV owners.
Tesla opened its charging technology, which it calls the North American Charging Standard, in late 2022.
“We invite charging network operators and vehicle manufacturers to put the Tesla charging connector and charge port, now called the North American Charging Standard (NACS), on their equipment and vehicles,” Tesla said in a press release.
The announcements from Ford and GM are a major shift toward adopting the North American Charging Standard as the industry’s standard EV charging system. Both automakers’ electric vehicles use the Combined Charging System (CCS), which has been a standard in North America. To make Tesla Superchargers available to Ford and GM owners with CCS-compatible vehicles, the companies will provide adapters to hook into the Tesla stations. The NACS charging system will be available on all Ford and GM electric vehicles beginning with the 2025 model year. Tesla dominates the U.S. electric vehicle market
As demand for electric cars and trucks has increased, automakers have moved quickly to debut vehicles that rely only on battery power, as opposed to hybrid or internal combustion engines. Twenty-four brands offered pure electric vehicles in the U.S. in 2022. As of 2022, EVs represent 8% of the overall market, up from just over 5% in 2021, according to the International Energy Agency.
Despite a rush to meet demand across the rest of the industry, Tesla maintains dominance over the EV sector. Of all EVs sold in the U.S. in 2022, Tesla vehicles made up 64.5% of the market. Ford held the second-largest market share behind Tesla, selling 7.5% of all EVs. Tesla tops EV sales in 2022
Part of what makes Tesla so dominant is the diversity and familiarity of its electric vehicle lineup. Tesla offered four EVs in 2022, more than any other company, and they aren’t brand-new releases.
The Model S was first released in 2012, while Tesla’s most recent new release, the Model Y, first hit the market in 2020. For comparison, Ford’s first EV, the Mustang Mach-E, first went on sale in December 2022. Tesla still controls the electric vehicle market
Since Tesla electric vehicles greatly outnumber EVs from other brands, the NACS system is already the most common EV charger in North America, according to Tesla. Tesla maintains nearly 7,000 charging stations in the U.S., giving drivers access to more than 33,000 NACS ports, according to the Department of Energy. To date, just over 12,000 CCS chargers are available across the U.S. Where EV chargers are located
I feel like maybe I’m taking crazy pills, but this isn’t dominance.
Tesla opened up all of its patents years ago. Kudos to Ford and GM for successfully avoiding not-invented-here syndrome.
Personally I’m very excited for GM, Ford, and Rivian to adopt the NACS charging standard. Tesla’s charging adapter is miles ahead of J1772/CCS, from both and engineering and end-user standpoint. It also requires less materials and redundant pins in the connector, which simplifies the design and makes it more efficient materials-wise.
As much as I dislike musk and Tesla, they do have an easier and faster charging standard than pretty much everything else, and switching over all chargers to the Tesla charging standard will make the adoption of EVs a lot more attractive and convenient for a lot of people.
