Another Win For Tesla: SAE Announces It Is Setting NACS Standards

In another win for Tesla, SAE International (formerly the Society of Automotive Engineers) has announced that it will set performance standards for using Tesla’s electric vehicle charging cords so that other EVs may use its propriety charger network.

Until recently, Tesla had fit its vehicles with a proprietary charging adaptor called NACS, which was engineered for its global Supercharger network (as of earlier this year, Tesla had 17,800 Superchargers in its US network). All other automakers adopted a different charging adaptor, known as CCS, for their EVs. Tesla’s automobiles could use an adapter to allow a NACS plug to use a CCS, but the reverse was impossible.

Tesla’s electric vehicles have proven very popular with consumers — to the point that NACS-equipped vehicles outnumber CCS-equipped vehicles nearly two-to-one on today’s roads. With companies such as Electrify America, ChargePoint, and EVgo struggling with infrastructure and technical challenges, it’s unsurprising that most consumers favor Tesla’s Supercharging network over their CCS systems.

Bowing to demand, Ford, GM, and Rivian have already announced that they will begin building EVs with the NACS charging plug. On Tuesday of this week, Volvo said it had also signed an agreement to join Tesla’s Supercharger network starting in 2025. The automakers won’t have to pay Tesla a licensing fee for adopting NACS, but EV owners will be charged when they use one of Tesla’s charging stations.

The standards SAE will set with the NACS will govern how the plugs connect with charging stations, standardize charging speeds, reliability requirements, and cybersecurity measures. While the move likely signals the end of new CCS charger plugs, there are still thousands of EVs using the design that will be on the road for at least the next decade so that CCS won’t be extinct anytime soon, say experts.

A spokesperson for SAE pointed out that the organization is not choosing which connector will be standardized for the consumer market. Instead, SAE is setting standards as a response to four significant automakers adopting Tesla’s plug — the organization simply wants to ensure that they are poised with standards for the most popular charging system.

Consumers favor Tesla’s NACS-based Supercharging network because the company has more DC fast chargers deployed, is ideally situated on popular driving routes, and the NACS plug is more straightforward for consumers to use. With four major automakers already committed to switching from CCS to NACS and SAE now working on standards, the pressure is on for other automakers to switch to Tesla’s connector and network.