GM follows Ford in adopting Tesla’s EV charging standard

General Motors CEO Mary Barra joined Tesla CEO Elon Musk in a Twitter Spaces conversation Thursday to announce the automaker is adopting Tesla’s electric vehicle charging standard, also known as the North American Charging Standard (NCAS). The deal will make available thousands of Tesla Superchargers to owners of GM electric vehicles.

“This is the most exciting time as we look at the transition to EVs,” Barra says on the call. Barra agrees with Musk that NACS is a better charger and should be the North American standard.

GM’s announcement and corresponding surprise Twitter call mirrors Ford CEO Jim Farley’s announcement last month that his company would adopt Tesla charging standard as well. Farley had joined Musk on a Twitter Space and expressed a real buddy-buddy persona with the rival CEO. Barra is similarly cozying up with Musk with the new announcement.

Tesla’s Supercharger network has been an exclusive benefit for Tesla owners for a long time, but the automaker had just begun opening some stations up for other EVs in both Europe and in the US. Tesla’s move to open chargers in the US using “Magic Dock” adapters allows the automaker to dip into the Biden administration’s pool of incentives out of a $7.5 billion plan to expand EVs and charging networks nationwide.

The sheer scale of Tesla’s Supercharger network eclipses other car manufacturers’ cobbled together agreements to provide their customers charging, including GM. Similar to Ford’s BlueOval (formally FordPass) network, GM has an “Ultium Charge 360” network consisting of Blink, Chargepoint, and others. Now GM will soon be able to use thousands of Superchargers.

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