⚡️🔋Current Events 6/9/23: GM joins the NACS Love Fest, Announces Tesla Collab
The chain reaction continues.
Hello everyone,
Happy Friday, and welcome back to Current Events, where we bring you news and lore from the world of electrification. Today brings essential new developments once again from the charging side of the industry. Let's jump in.
Rise, the North American Charging Standard
On the 29th of May, Ford announced they were adopting the North American Charging Standard (NACS) from Tesla, and I wrote for Current Events:
The benefits to Ford and greater EV adoption are immediately obvious; they've acquired access to the premier charging service for their current customers, that they can now use as a selling point to deliver more electric vehicles to new EV customers (a great set up for the coming Q4 holiday season). But what does Tesla get strategically out of this deal? Personally, I think the charging standard adoption was the real target and now I wonder which OEM will be next. Your guess is as good as mine.
Last night, the CEO of GM, Mary Barra, and Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, hosted a Twitter Spaces discussion and answered that question. They announced that by 2025, General Motors (GM) vehicles will have natively adopted Tesla's charging port in the USA and Canada, signifying the next enormous step towards total adoption of the unified NACS.
GM is the second legacy US car manufacturer to back Tesla's charging standard, Ford being the first. Startups like Aptera, who even petitioned Congress for NACS to be standardized and eagerly planned to use it for their first vehicles, deserve credit for thinking ahead.
With the announcement, GM drivers also got the news that they would have access to over 12,000 Tesla Superchargers in the USA and Canada starting early next Spring 2024. The integration process will initially involve an adapter available to existing customers before vehicles are built with the NACS chargeport natively later on.
GM's CEO, Mary Barra, highlighted this collaboration as an EV growth catalyst that will double GM customers' access to charging. From GM's point of view, a single charging standard in North America will accelerate mass adoption.
These developments were practically telegraphed by the industry leader, Tesla, last year. Back in November 2022, the firm disclosed the design of its proprietary Supercharger connector and urged auto manufacturers and charging network operators to adopt its system as the North American charging standard. In the past two months, this movement has gained tremendous momentum.
While it is true that the US government recently chose to require the use of the CCS fast-charging standard for access to its charging infrastructure funding, Tesla responded by committing to making at least 7,500 of its Superchargers and Destination Chargers accessible to any electric vehicle by the end of 2024 and has been equipping Superchargers in the US with CCS adapters since March.
GM is also looking to integrate the Supercharger network into its vehicle and mobile apps, enhancing the already existing access of over 134,000 charging stations (of any/all charging speeds) available to GM customers through the Ultium Charge 360 service.
This unified approach to charging is a monumental step in electrifying transportation throughout North America. I’m very excited to see how it all unfolds. I theorize that with all the cost advantages available through the wide adoption of the charging standard by OEMs, benefits may even flow to third-party providers.
Lower hardware costs mean charging providers will have a lot more budget to improve OS reliability, add solar energy generation and battery storage, reduce charger downtime by hiring more techs, or even invest in better customer experience through ancillary services at the charging locations. No matter what, at every level of this industry, this is huge news. Stay tuned for more later.
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With love and gratitude,
Renato
Renato A. Amboss is the author of Current Events, The All-Electric Newsletter. He is also the Founder and First Pilot of Ronin EV. The thoughts and opinions expressed here are his own. None of the views expressed are intended as investment advice of any kind and should not be taken as such. Have a lovely day!