By Umar Shakir , a news writer fond of the electric vehicle lifestyle and things that plug in via USB-C. He spent over 15 years in IT support before joining The Verge.
The state of electric vehicle charging in North America is shaping up like the smartphone charging wars — but focused on much more expensive hardware. Right now, like USB-C and Android phones, the Combined Charging System (CCS, Type 1) plug is on a greater variety of cars. Meanwhile, Tesla’s plug was long compared to Apple and Lightning. invest in ev charging stations
But while Apple eventually adopted USB-C, Tesla is opening up its connector, renaming it the North American Charging Standard (NACS), and trying to shove CCS out of the way.
And it’s working: the new NACS port is being standardized by SAE International, and today, largely every automaker, including Ford, GM, Toyota, Rivian, Volvo, Polestar, Nissan, Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar Land Rover, Fisker, Hyundai, Stellantis, Volkswagen, and BMW, has signed on. New cars equipped with NACS are on the way but likely won’t start rolling out until 2026.
Meanwhile, Europe already dealt with its standards issue by settling on CCS2. For now, EV drivers in their Tesla Model Ys, Kia EV6s, and Nissan Leafs (with the ailing CHAdeMO connector) in the US are still stuck looking for the right station or adapter and hoping everything’s operational — but things should get easier soon.
To help solve these issues, the federal government has established a pool of $7.5 billion to fund charging network operators in building reliable EV infrastructure.
North America can become a great and convenient place to own an electric vehicle, but how long will that take? You can find out by reading all the news about electric vehicle charging right here, so come back and plug in often.
GM is partnering with ChargePoint to build out a new EV charging network under the GM Energy brand, the companies announced today.
GM plans to install up to 500 DC fast-charging ports at stations deployed in “strategic” places across the US, with some equipped with ChargePoint’s Express Plus platform that supports charge speeds up to 500kW. GM and Chargepoint plan to open the stations “rapidly, with the locations deployed by the end of 2025.”
The US Department of Energy announced a $1.25 billion loan to electric vehicle charging company EVgo as the Biden administration races to finalize its spending on EVs before Donald Trump takes office. The money will fund EVgo’s plans to install approximately 7,500 chargers at roughly 1,100 charging stations across the US over the next five years, with a particular focus on fast-charging 350kW stalls that can charge two vehicles simultaneously.
But more importantly, it shows how President Joe Biden is intent on doling out as much money for EV projects as he can before leaving office. Trump has promised to reverse or cancel much of the spending by Biden on EVs once he assumes office. He has said he will kill the $7,500 tax credit for new EV purchases and wipe out the rest of the spending from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) on EV charging infrastructure.
Rivian’s latest EV charging station is the first to be open to other companies’ vehicles.
The new station located in California’s Joshua Tree National Park will be the companies’ first that’s available to non-Rivian electric vehicles. The station features a new design, including larger displays with a tap-to-pay option, that can accommodate any car brands’ EVs.
Nissan put out a tutorial video for Ariya owners today that shows how to use a Tesla NACS adapter with the vehicle, and it includes a step completely out of left field: shove a small piece of plastic into your car’s CCS port before you connect the adapter.
The Ariya is Nissan’s first EV with a CCS port, and the automaker just activated the vehicle’s ability to connect to Tesla’s vast Supercharger network in October. Other manufacturers have also adopted Tesla’s NACS standard, with companies like Ford and Rivian already shipping adapters to current EV owners. But none of those EVs need you to take a confusing extra step to make the adapter work.
General Motors and EV charging company EVgo announced that they’ve installed their 2,000th public EV charging stall, in Murrieta, California. With that, GM has met a deadline it set in September to have the bulk of its planned 2,850 DC fast-charging stalls set up by the end of this year.
GM says the new station, which is near Interstate 215 in Riverside County, serves five 350kW fast chargers for as many as 10 EVs simultaneously. All of the new GM / EVgo stalls are populated with CCS chargers, EVgo communications director Katie Wallace told The Verge in an email. Wallace said the company is still testing Tesla’s NACS, which has emerged as the de facto standard over the last year and a half, before using it in charging stations:
The fragmented and frustrating nature of our current EV charging landscape has been widely — and correctly — cited as one of the most significant barriers to EV adoption. Why buy a plug-in car when every time you plug it in, you have to sign up for another EV charging app, fumble through your payment information, authorize the account, and pray it results in a successful charging experience?
What if you could instead plug in and everything just worked automatically? That’s the goal of a partnership between nonprofit SAE’s Industries Technology Consortia and a consortium of automakers and EV charging operators, along with the Biden administration’s Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, which just announced a new security framework for “universal Plug and Charge” that will be officially rolled out early next year.
You’d think Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and its wide-reaching Supercharger network, would already know about the workings of the federal National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program that has dedicated $7.5 billion to building a national charging network. However, he needed Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg to chime in on X yesterday to stop some Republican leaders from spreading misinformation about the program.
“Please post the rebuttal,” Musk asked Buttigieg under a Donald Trump Jr. post quoting Ohio congressperson Michael Rulli, who accuses Buttigieg of “squandering billions” to build “8 EV charging stations.” Buttigieg tells Trump the post is “false.”
Tesla will launch fully realized V4 Supercharger stations that support up to 500kW charging for EVs and 1.2MW for Tesla’s commercial Semi trucks next year. Sites with new V4 cabinets are going into permitting now. When they open next year, they’ll connect the charging stalls EVs plug into with upgraded electronics that support faster charging on Cybertruck and other manufacturers’ EVs.
Tesla started rolling out the V4 stalls in Europe and limited places in the US last year. However, their power cabinets are limited to the capabilities of V3 Supercharger stations that support 250kW max charging. The updated V4 stalls include new physical payment terminals, longer cords that can reach the charge ports of other manufacturers’ EVs without causing the vehicles to block additional spots, and CCS connectors (so you don’t have to bring your own adapter.)
General Motors is teaming up with Reliant Energy to offer free nighttime charging to some Chevy electric vehicle owners in Texas.
Chevy owners who enroll in Reliant’s EV charging plan will receive free nighttime charging through monthly bill credits that offset charges incurred between 11PM. and 6AM, the companies said. Customers must also designate an EV to receive the charging credit through GM Energy’s Smart Charging Portal. (GM Energy is the automaker’s home energy subsidiary, and Reliant is a subsidiary of NRG Energy.)
AT&T and curbside EV charging startup Voltpost announced a partnership to convert street lights “across Michigan and the Metro-Detroit area” into internet-connected EV charging posts. That connectivity means it’s easier to monitor and fix malfunctioning posts, as InsideEVs writes.
Curbside charging is very rare in the US. Voltpoint’s plans also include charging posts in New York City and Chicago, though, and Massachusetts has been testing utility pole-mounted ones since 2022.
Volvo and Polestar — two Swedish car brands owned by China’s Geely — are now offering their electric vehicle customers access to Tesla’s Supercharger network. The companies are taking orders for adapters that will allow its EV customers to charge at over 17,800 Supercharger stalls across the country.
Tesla’s superior charging experience and the ubiquity of its Superchargers has spurred the entire auto industry to announce support for the company’s North American Charging Standard (NACS). All non-Tesla EVs will require adapters at first, but automakers have said they intend to start producing vehicles with native NACS ports installed at the factory starting as soon as 2025.
Scout’s Terra and Traveler EVs will come with the Tesla charging port, also known as NACS, right out of the factory. Unlike other EV makers, the company won’t have to bumble through an CCS-to-NACS adapter phase with customers. Both Scout EVs will come with an 800-volt architecture, so charging should be very fast. And as you can see, it will have plenty of 120-volt plugs too!
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has long promised off-the-grid Superchargers powered by the sun. Now, the company has broken ground on “Oasis,” a new, 168-stall Supercharger station in Lost Hills, California, says Tesla’s North American director of charging, Max de Zegher:
Only 1.5 MW grid service, ahead of a future expansion
11 MW of ground mount solar & canopies, on 30 acres of land
10 @Tesla_Megapack with 39 MWh of storage
The site, he says, will open “by mid-2025.”
Ford started offering free adapters for Tesla’s Supercharger network to owners of its EVs in February, and now it’s telling some of its customers to stop using them, reports InsideEVs. The company found a “potential issue” that could cause “reduced charging speeds over time” or even damage to the charge port itself, according to a service bulletin it’s sending to those affected.
Ford EV owners should follow the link on Ford’s notice to make sure it has the right address on file. If it is, they won’t need to do anything else to get their replacement, but if not, the company says customers need to update their address by October 24th.
Nissan is starting up an electric vehicle charging network that lets Ariya SUV owners connect and pay at participating third-party charging stations using the MyNissan app. The new “Nissan Energy Charge Network” consists of “90,000 fast chargers” in the US from partner companies Electrify America, Shell Recharge, ChargePoint, and EVgo. Starting in November, Ariya owners can use a stored payment method in their MyNissan app to start and pay for a charging session with one tap at a station.
Nissan also says it “will make available” Tesla Supercharger-compatible NACS adapters for Ariya owners later this year. Some companies like Kia, Ford, and Rivian will or have been providing the adapter for free, while others like GM will sell one for a price. Nissan did not immediately respond to our email asking whether the adapter would be free. In 2025, Nissan plans to launch EVs with native NACS ports in the US and Canada.
With Enel X Way USA shutting down, Juicebox owners were expecting to lose their connectivity features. But now the company says its working with a financial services company to auction off its software management assets, and customers will be transferred to the winner. In other words, the Juicebox app may live on.
Nissan is coming aboard vehicle-to-grid (V2G) EV integration company ChargeScape as an equal investor, alongside founding automakers BMW, Ford, and Honda.
Once the investment transaction is complete, Nissan said it plans to roll out ChargeScape’s services to its electric vehicle customers in the US and Canada.
The company is rolling out a new $0.49 “access fee” starting with select stations and adding more over time. The fee will apply to each charging session. Host-owned chargers can add an additional fee on top, if desired. Blink says it will continue to offer its membership with no monthly subscription fees.
The Durham, NC-based EV charging company backed by eight automakers, including BMW, Honda, General Motors, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis, and most recently Toyota, is building its first “Rechargery” location in Apex, North Carolina. The location will offer 10 bays with CCS and NACS ports supporting 400kW charging. Apex is outside the Hurricane Helene disaster zone, where residents have reported using their EVs to power their homes during blackouts.
Edmunds’ Jonathan Eifalan tested charging a Rivian R1T at a Tesla Supercharger using the sparsely available NACS adapter and noted that not every V3 Supercharger is showing up on the Rivian charging station map yet.
Tesla first enabled Supercharger access for Ford before adding it for Rivian, and most recently added GM to the list — with Kia scheduled for next year.
Kia is setting January 15th as the date its electric vehicles will get access to “more than 16,500” Tesla Superchargers. Kia will provide free NACS adapters to people who got their EV9 or EV6 after September 4th, 2024, but all existing owners will have to pay an as-yet-unspecified amount.
The free adapters will start shipping to customers in early 2025, while current owners can purchase the adapter at an authorized Kia dealer “at a later date.” GM similarly announced last week that its EV customers would have to pay $225 for the NACS adapter to add Tesla Supercharger access.
Public EV charging often involves juggling a variety of apps, each with its own bespoke sign-up process, and attempting (and often failing) to tap or swipe a credit card to pay for the charge. Occasionally, there’s a QR code involved. Overall, it’s a pain in the ass — and an obstacle to widespread EV adoption.
Now, one EV charging operator is betting that computer vision can help take the stress out of it. Revel, the shared moped-turned-ridehail service, is partnering with a startup called Juice to install smart cameras at its EV charging sites in New York City that are mostly utilized by rideshare drivers. By using computer vision, Juice can identify the model and license plate of the vehicle in need of charging and, then after an initial sign-up, will initiate the charge without any additional work by the driver. No apps to download, no juggling various credit cards. Just flowing electrons.
General Motors says it has updated the software in its electric vehicles so its customers can finally use Tesla’s Supercharging network.
To gain immediate access, owners of electric Chevy, Cadillac, and GMC vehicles will need to purchase “GM approved” Tesla adapters through each brand’s smartphone app for $225. Future GM vehicles will come with Tesla’s charging port natively installed.
Lucid revealed new information about the EV charge port of its upcoming Gravity SUV and teased an all-new, more affordable vehicle at Tuesday’s Technology and Manufacturing Day event.
The Lucid Gravity, slated for its first deliveries later this year, will come equipped with a native Tesla-compatible port “in 2025.” The Tesla connector, now known as the North American Charging Standard, or NACS, is being adopted by largely every auto manufacturer for their future EVs.
The 2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 refresh revealed today looks like it will be one of the first non-Tesla vehicles to get a native Tesla-based charging port, now known as the North American Charging Standard, or NACS, built in from the factory. Last year, largely every automaker selling electric cars in the US announced it was adopting the connector, but most haven’t added the port on their new cars yet, forcing customers to rely on CCS-to-NACS adapters that Tesla is taking a while to distribute.
We’ve seen prototypes of the new Rivian R2 with NACS, but that vehicle is not slated for release until 2026. While Ioniq 5 buyers won’t need an adapter at Tesla stations, the company will give owners a dongle that goes the other way in case they need to charge somewhere that only has Combined Charging System (CCS) plugs available.
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