⚡ NACS on the rise 🌅

Happy Monday. This is Electric Avenue, your backstage pass to the e-mobility circus. Sit down, enjoy the show, and don’t forget to grab some popcorn 🍿🎪.

Here’s what we have for you today:

• NACS on the rise 🌅

• 3 Links 🔗

• Memes of the week 🤡

Let's get into it!

NACS on the rise 🌅

The drama around the competing fast charging connectors CCS and Tesla’s NACS has dominated the North American EV news cycle. What happened since the breaking news we reported on in⚡ Connector Drama: Why Ford got caught in flagrante with Tesla 🤯 ?

Join us for the next episode of Connector Wars. Here’s the recap:

• The dominoes keep falling: With General Motors (Link) and Rivian (Link), two additional automakers have committed to adopting the NACS connector. The terms of their agreements with Tesla mirror the Ford announcement: Current vehicles will gain access to 12,000+ Superchargers from early 2024 via adapters, and Next-generation vehicles will natively feature NACS chargeports.

• Cars lead, chargers follow: Since the General Motors announcement the floodgates have opened and numerous charging networks and charger manufacturers have announced that they will add NACS cables as an option to their offerings. Our friends at EVStation.com launched a handy NACS adoption tracker which counts a total of 3 charging networks and 17 charger manufacturers as of June 24th.

• Funding confusion: The adoption of NACS complicates recent U.S. policy. The U.S. National EV Infrastructure (NEVI) program mandates that every federally-supported fast charger includes a CCS plug, or otherwise be accessible to CCS EVs. With Texas (Link) and Washington (Link), the first two U.S. states have declared that they will require both CCS and NACS connectors on NEVI chargers.

What does it mean?

• EV buyer holdout: Ford, Rivian, and GM announced the native adoption of NACS with their vehicles launching in 2025. Until then, existing CCS-equipped cars can use the Supercharger network with an upcoming adapter. EV buyers might perceive this as a temporary solution with downsides (e.g. inconvenient charge port location, adapter as a safety risk). Will the Osborne effect cause problems for these companies in the near term?

• Form Factor is irrelevant - Communication is key: While the industry is having heated debates about the form factor of the charging connector, an important fact is often overlooked: Behind the scenes NACS & CCS communication protocols are identical. Tesla made sure that the messaging protocol between vehicles and chargers is implemented based on ISO 15118 and DIN 70121 specifications (see NACS specifications & CharIn press release). Therefore, we can expect Tesla and other OEMs to support additional use cases with NACS including:

  • Plug and Charge (PnC) via ISO15118 + secure and encrypted TLS communication and not based on the less secure ‘Autocharge’ method. Ford is already supporting PnC and NEVI funding requires it.

  • Bi-directional power transfer, enabling use cases such as V2H and V2G.

  • and maybe even Wireless charging (more in our 3 links below)?

What’s next for NACS? What‘s nacst? 🤪

• Supercharger spin-off? 💵: IONITY is a well-known and established fast-charging network in Europe. Initially founded by BMW, Ford, VW (w. Audi & Porsche), and Mercedes-Benz in 2017. Since then, Hyundai/KIA and BlackRock joined as additional investors. Will we see Ford, GM, or other institutional investors join the Supercharging Network as shareholders? Or could we even see Tesla spin-off the Supercharging Network as an independent company with an IPO on the stock market? Analysts are already predicting that a stand-alone Supercharger network could be worth up to $100B.

• From “NAC standard” to Standard: 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇲🇽: Ford and GM helped NACS to break through and the domino effect is too large to ignore for CharIN. Therefore, the industry association launched a task force to support NACS as a form factor to go through the standardization process in a relevant standardization body (e.g., ISO, IEC, IEEE, SAE, ANSI). Making the connector a REAL Capital-S Standard is important to ensure that Tesla will not be able to make anti-competitive changes or collect unreasonable licensing fees in the future. This would be a way for Tesla to discriminate against those that didn’t make bilateral deals with the company (compare to the Made-for-iPhone program by Apple).

• Driver Confusion and Connector Jungle: Sadly, North American EV drivers will face years of complexity and confusion when trying to figure out if they are able to charge their car at network A,B, or C. Just as the industry was getting ready to phase out ChaDeMo connectors in North America, NACS’s adoption momentum is re-igniting a connector war on the continent. Just take a look at the graphic below to get an idea:

3 Links 🔗

• Wireless charging for Tesla? 📡: Acquisition rumors are circulating, the target: Wiferion - a German wireless charging startup. This is the third hint we’ve gotten about Tesla’s plans for wireless charging. #1 was the Wireless Charging Pad spotted on the Tesla investor day slides. #2 is the fact that Rebecca Tenucci (Sr. Director of Charging) spent 9 years as the Founder & CEO of a wireless charging startup before joining Tesla.

• Rivian x ABRP 🤝: When we covered Google’s advances in e-routing we pointed out that this could threaten startups like A Better Route Planner (ABRP). Now the company chose to vertically integrate with a large customer - Rivian. The acquisition was announced this week and the first trip planner improvements based on ABRP are already live in Rivian’s app and infotainment system.

• IONITY has eyes for someone else 👀: The largest Pan-European charging network, IONITY, has historically used chargers by manufacturers ABB and Tritium. Now the company announced that Alpitronic chargers will be added to the network as soon as this year. The post mentions one charger model by name - the HYC400 which is Alpitronic’s newest model.

Memes of the Week 🤡

That's a wrap for this week! Let us know how you feel:

Reader Review of the Week

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