This means pretty much every new EV sold in the U.S. starting next year will have a Tesla plug.
Multinational automaker Stellantis has confirmed it will switch to Tesla‘s NACS charging plug for EVs. It rounds off a near-total commitment to conversion made by car companies present in the United States, cementing NACS as the country’s new standard.
The conglomerate stated Monday that “select models” of Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram, and other brands present in the U.S. will make the switch in calendar year 2025 for the 2026 model year. Stellantis will offer charging adapters for EVs using the previous CCS standard, variants of which remain the standard across many countries outside the States. (Even Tesla uses CCS in much of the world.) Both connectors will be supported by Ionna, a charging network funded by several automakers including Stellantis, which will install the first of its 30,000 planned U.S. charging points this year.
Ram Promaster EV. Ram
Stellantis’ shift means that all of Detroit’s Big Three—also including Ford and General Motors—have committed to adopting Tesla’s standard. In fact, it’s seemingly the last major participant in the U.S. market to confirm the transition. Previous commitments include Korea’s Hyundai-Kia, all three major Japanese marques (Honda, Nissan, and Toyota), and the largest three German companies; BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and the VW Group. Even Chinese-owned Volvo will adapt the standard for U.S.-market vehicles.
They’re all changing to take advantage of Tesla’s Supercharger network, which with almost 22,000 stalls as of October 2023 according to The Motley Fool exceeds the size of independent networks like Electrify America. While Tesla’s chargers haven’t widely achieved the same 350-kilowatt fast-charging speeds that some Electrify America stations offer, their accessibility makes up for their slower speeds more often than not.
Like Electrify America, the rivaling Ionna will take time to build out, and then must maintain its chargers better than some indie networks. It’ll be a while before any charging network can challenge the scale of Tesla’s, no matter how many companies are behind it.
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