In the US, Canada, and Mexico, there are only two types of connectors available that are not compatible when it comes to charging EV.
Everybody else uses the current North American standard, the Combined Charging System (CCS). Tesla apparently hopes to upend that dynamic, announcing Friday that it is “opening our EV connector design to the world.”
Tesla has its J1772 connector, which in the company’s defense was developed when Tesla was still the only EV game in town.
Tesla is releasing its specs and production designs for the J1772 connector, which it is rebranding as the North American Charging Standard (NACS), in hopes that charging networks like Electrify America and Chargepoint will incorporate the company’s hardware in their stations.
Tesla claims that the NACS contains “no moving parts, is half the size, and twice as powerful”.
“NACS vehicles outnumber CCS two-to-one, and Tesla’s Supercharging network has 60 percent more NACS posts than all the CCS-equipped networks combined” so the company presses that these networks should adopt its technology
Tesla “looks forward to future electric vehicles incorporating the NACS design and charging at Tesla’s North American Supercharging and Destination Charging networks.”
It claims also that “network operators already have plans in motion to incorporate NACS at their chargers,” without specifying which networks are doing so and at what scale.
