Both the R1T all-electric pickup and the R1S SUV will be fitted with the North American Charging Standard (NACS) connector starting in 2025, eliminating the need for an adaptor.
In my opinion, Tesla should have properly opened up their connector years ago. It’s a miracle that now that they have, other manufacturers are migrating. I suppose Tesla’s supercharger network was just too tantalizing.
Yeah, I really think the network is the reason. In the USA, I hope we can incentivize buildout of infrastructure with some legislative changes, because it’s taking forever. There should be way more L2 than there currently is; it’s so easy to install (I can’t speak to elsewhere in the world). The NACS standard shouldn’t affect this much. I could change my home cable easily enough if my next car was NACS for L2.
For L3, having NACS as a “standard” with a large baseline of chargers already is going to be a huge help. Hopefully companies get envious of Tesla and start actually competing. One can dream…
As for the connector, I do think it’s a little nicer to hold and line up, though frankly the J1772 form factor is… fine. I never cared much either way; I just wanted a standard thing.
There wasn’t a “standard” because even though there was a standard (J1772), Tesla had to go and have a Not Invented Here, and mess us up.
I suppose the only upside is that, eventually, we’ll have a slightly better connector than J1772, but only at the cost of putting standardization behind by 10 years.
Oh, don’t get me wrong – I’m still salty that Tesla refused to use the standard that literally everyone else agreed on. It’s maddening, and wasted a lot of time. That doesn’t detract from me being glad that they’re finally opening up their network (probably to get in on federal money, but… perhaps that’s federal money doing what it was supposed to do?). I really, sincerely hope it’ll motivate some others join in on making actual infrastructure to compete, but I won’t hold my breath.
So yeah, here we are, and … well, at this point, I just want some #@$(*&S#@ing infrastructure built.
