On the morning of June 13th, it was reported that American electric vehicle charging companies are cautiously considering Tesla’s charging technology becoming the main standard in the United States. A few days ago, Ford and General Motors announced that they would adopt Tesla’s charging technology, but there are still doubts about how to achieve interoperability between charging standards.
Tesla, Ford, and General Motors together hold over 60% of the US electric vehicle market share. The agreement reached by these companies could make Tesla’s charging technology, namely the North American Charging Standard (NACS), the primary car charging standard in the US. On Monday, Tesla’s stock price rose by 2.2%.
This collaboration also means that companies such as ChargePoint, EVgo, and Blink Charging, which only provide CCS charging systems, face the risk of losing customers. CCS is the US government-supported charging standard, which competes with NACS.
The White House stated last Friday that electric vehicle charging stations that offer Tesla charging interfaces are eligible to share billions of dollars in federal subsidies if they also support CCS interfaces. The White House aims to promote the deployment of hundreds of thousands of charging stations and considers it an essential part of promoting the popularity of electric vehicles.
ABB E-mobility North America, a subsidiary of Swiss electrical giant ABB and a charging station manufacturer, will also offer the option of NACS charging interfaces, and the company is currently designing and testing related products.
Asaf Nagler, Vice President of External Affairs at the company, said, “We are seeing great interest in integrating NACS charging interfaces into our charging stations and equipment. Customers are asking, ‘When can we buy this product?’ But our least favorite thing is to rush to find an imperfect solution. We still cannot fully understand all the limitations of Tesla charging stations themselves.”
Schneider Electric USA also provides software and hardware for electric vehicle charging. Ashley Horvat, an executive at the company, said that since Ford and General Motors announced the decision, the market’s interest in integrating NACS charging interfaces has increased.
Blink Charging announced on Monday that it will launch a new fast charging device that uses the Tesla interface. ChargePoint and Tritium DCFC are also doing the same. EVgo said it will integrate the NACS standard into its fast charging network.
Affected by the announcement of the charging cooperation by the three major auto giants, the stock prices of several electric vehicle charging companies fell sharply on Friday. However, after announcing the integration of NACS, some companies recovered some lost ground on Monday.
Currently, the market is still concerned about how NACS and CCS standards will smoothly interoperate and whether promoting two charging standards simultaneously will increase costs for suppliers and users.
Major automakers and the US government have not explained how interoperability between the two standards will be achieved, nor have they explained the cost settlement method.
Aatish Patel, co-founder of XCharge North America, a charging station manufacturer and operator, said, “We are not yet sure what the future charging experience will be like.”
Charging station manufacturers and operators have noticed several concerns about interoperability: whether Tesla’s Supercharger stations can provide suitable fast charging for high-voltage vehicles and whether Tesla’s charging cable design is suitable for some car charging interfaces.
Tesla’s Supercharger stations are deeply integrated with Tesla vehicles, and the payment tool is also bundled with the user’s account. Users can seamlessly charge and pay through the Tesla app. Tesla also provides power adapters that can charge non-Tesla vehicles at non-Tesla charging stations.
“If you don’t have a Tesla, but want to use a Supercharger, the situation is not very clear. How much Tesla technology do Ford, General Motors, and other automakers want to introduce into their products to achieve seamless integration? Or will they adopt a less seamless approach to achieve compatibility with a larger charging network?” Patel said.
A former Tesla employee who works for a charging company developing CCS charging technology said that integrating the NACS charging standard would increase costs and complexity in the short term, but given that Tesla can bring more vehicles and a better user experience, the government needs to support this standard.
This former Tesla employee is currently working for a charging company that is developing CCS charging technology. Due to Tesla’s cooperation with General Motors, this company is re-evaluating its strategy.
Oleg Logvinov, President of CharIN North America, an industry organization promoting the CCS charging standard, said, “Tesla’s solution is not yet a standard. It still has a long way to go before becoming a standard.”
Logvinov is also the CEO of IoTecha, an electric vehicle charging component supplier. He said that the CCS standard is worth supporting because it has a history of more than a decade of cooperation with multiple suppliers.
