Tesla and Ford (and
others)
Par tner-up!
Ford
wants their EV customers
to be able to use Tesla's Supercharging network
First, some background.
Tesla was first-to-market with 100% EV manufacturing, and they envisioned eventually selling millions of EVs, so they reasoned that there would need to be a public charging infrastructure so that people could take long trips with their EV cars as they do now with their fossil fueled cars. And they figured that they would have to build this public charging network. So they did. But what kind of connector would be used on their cars and their chargers (public and home)?
In Europe, the CCS charging standard was created, but it was huge and clunky and not very well designed. And the CCS public chargers had screens and keypads and credit card readers and didn't work very well. So Tesla decided that for the North American market, they would design their own connector and charger that would be better than CCS. And the CEO of Tesla, along with his engineers – the best and the brightest – designed a very elegant, easy to use, and functional charger and connector (no screens, no buttons, no moving parts, and the biggie: no need to swipe a credit card).
Tesla suggested to all the car makers who were going to make EVs that they adopt the Tesla design, and that Tesla would make the license available to them at no charge. No takers! American automakers chose to adopt the European CCS standard, because that's what third party public charging companies were going to be using.
Fast forward a bunch of years where Tesla's public charging infrastructure is now the biggest and best in the world. The most charging stations, the fastest charging speeds, the easiest to use, and with the highest "up-time", and some get their electricty from the sun! And only Tesla vehicles could use it (because the other car makers chose the CCS standard). And the third party public chargers turned out to be horrible. They didn't work half the time and the companies weren't installing more than a few "pumps" at each location. That's what you get when you have a profits-before-people business model.
Well eventually one of the the biggest automakers in the world – Ford – saw the handwriting on the wall and asked Tesla if they could use their Superchargers, and Ford would even drop the CCS connector and change over to the Tesla connector, which Tesla had since named NACS (North American Charging Standard). [And at the time, the auto industry pundits all said that this was ballsy of Tesla to do this, and no one would adopt it.]
The CCS charging
standard
The NACS (Tesla)
charging standard.
 |
Which charging standard would you rather use?
On
the left is Ford's electric pickup truck with the CCS connector.
On the right will be how Ford will make their EVs in the future, using
the Tesla connector.
So now Ford EVs will have access to the Tesla charging network, which is a huge plus for Ford. But Tesla gets something out of the deal too: They will make a small percentage of the electricity sales when the Ford EVs charge (which Tesla will put towards making more Supercharger stations), and this move by Ford will put pressure on all the other EV makers who will be selling EVs in North America to adopt Tesla's connector. All this benefits the public. And Tesla's CEO Elon Musk knew this from the very beginning. That's why it's good if the CEO of the company that makes your EV is a visionary, and truly cares about the customer experience.
UPDATE: Seems that the pressure worked. Hot on the heels of the above Ford announcement, GM just announced it too will be adopting Tesla's NACS charging standard! CEO Mary Barra confirmed that General Motors will also adopt NACS with the help of Tesla in their future electric vehicles. This is likely the next step in a domino effect that should solidify Tesla's NACS as the new charging standard for electric cars in North America. (And now CNBC has to admit that Tesla is the EV leader.) Tesla CEO Elon Musk said it would be "ideal" for Tesla chargers to only need CCS adapters to meet federal charging standards. Meaning that cars that currently have CCS ports can use an adapter to charge at Tesla chargers. Win-win-win. And now Volvo has signed on too.
UPDATE: And now third-party charging companies in North America are announcing that they too will have the NACS connector on their public chargers! EVgo, FLO, ChargePoint, ABB E-mobility, Blink, and EverCharge have jumped on board, which means that any charging company that doesn't conform will sail into oblivion. Just look at what happened to the stocks of some of those charging companies when GM made their announcement...
And some will provide both connectors so that people don't have to use adapters.
If
you want to see an up-to-date list of who has
signed onto Tesla's charging standard, click here.
As of December 2023,
basically, all of them!
And they'd be crazy not to now that Tesla's charging connector is the
new industry standard (J3400).
UPDATE: And now even some states are mandating that any EV charging company in their state must have the Tesla charging connector. Texas and Washington State are the first two.
And these are the reasons Ford and GM want their EVs to use Tesla's charging network...
The average number of stalls for the other EV charging company's stations
is four.
Ever increasing installations
of Tesla charging stations plus expansion of existing stations
And now gas station
companies want Tesla chargers because of the inevitable
decrease in gasoline sales, and because they know that Tesla chargers
are the best,
and because all the other EV makers will have access to Tesla's chargers.
Who will be next after BP?
But there still must be something negative said about Tesla
CNBC reported on Ford and GM adopting Tesla's charging standard, but since the media must bash Tesla at every opportunity (because of influence from Big Oil and others), how can they do that in this case? Simple. Bring on Gordon "The Clown" Johnson for commentary. Johnson has the reputation of lying about Tesla 95% of the time. Huge, bald-faced lies that are easy to debunk. Why he does this is unknown, but he can't possibly believe the things he says. So he's saying them at the behest of some powerful entity, or he himself is a short-seller of Tesla stock and his financial position is improved the worse Tesla does. But the media knows this about Johnson, so when they bring him on as a commentator, what does this say about the media. They obviously don't care about truthfully informing the public. BTW, Johnson rates 751 out of 762 stock analysts. See if you can pick him out below.
