All the news about EV charging in the US

Volvo is the latest automaker, and the first one from Europe, to announce support for Tesla’s electric vehicle charging standard known as the “North American Charging Standard,” or NACS.

According to the announcement, this arrangement is similar to the ones Tesla recently reached with several other car manufacturers. Volvo owners will get access to 12,000 Tesla Supercharger stations, and Volvo EVs will be manufactured with a NACS port starting in 2025.

The standards organization known as SAE International is announcing support for Tesla’s EV “North American Charging Standard” or NACS port. SAE’s adoption will make it easier for electric vehicle charging station manufacturers and operators to implement the port while also making charging for EV owners more consistent and reliable. Tesla’s formerly proprietary charging port was opened up last year in a bid to become the de facto EV standard in the US.

The US Joint Office of Energy and Transportation has worked with Tesla and the SAE in an effort to expedite the Tesla plug as a standard to improve the country’s charging infrastructure.

Tesla has had a very good month, at least when it comes to its EV charging standard. Washington state wants to require electric car charging companies to use Tesla’s North American Charging Standard (NACS) in order to be part of the state’s program to support electric vehicles, according to Reuters. The state’s proposed mandate would put Tesla’s technology in state- and- federally-funded charging sites in the future, though Washington hasn’t decided quite how that will look.

At the moment, the federal government requires at least four Combined Charging System (CCS) chargers at taxpayer-funded charging sites, and Tonia Buell, the alternative fuels program manager at Washington state’s Department of Transportation (DOT), told Reuters the state may require that at least two, or maybe all four, of the chargers also support NACS. CCS is the standard currently preferred by the federal government for cross-platform use.

In the 2000s, there was a media format war between Sony’s Blu-ray and Toshiba’s HD DVD. Sony, which owns a production company, convinced Warner Bros. to drop the rival format. And then Paramount followed suit, putting the last two nails in HD DVD’s coffin.

Fast-forward to today’s electric vehicle charging standards war, and it feels like déjà vu. Last month, Ford announced it’s adopting Tesla’s previously proprietary North American Charging Standard (NACS) port for its future vehicles. And General Motors, the largest automaker in North America, just announced yesterday that it’s following suit. Together, Ford, Tesla, and GM represent nearly three-quarters of the EV market in the US — or 72 percent.

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

“In order to drive EV adoption, we need to have a robust charging infrastructure,” Barra said on the call. Barra also agreed with Musk that NACS is a better charger and should be the North American standard. After making the announcement, Barra cut the call short and didn’t stick around to answer questions from Twitter users.

Last year, Ford surprised F-150 Lightning truck owners with an accessory that can recharge stranded Teslas. Now, it looks like Tesla is the one lending a hand to Ford.

In a surprise Twitter Spaces meeting between Ford CEO Jim Farley and Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Thursday, Farley announced Ford is adopting Tesla’s “North American Charging Standard” (NACS), an open version of Tesla’s proprietary charging port. “We think this is a huge move for our industry and for all electric customers,” Farley said on the call.

Ford CEO Jim Farley and Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that in early 2024 more than 12,000 Tesla Superchargers will be operational with Ford vehicles. Farley also announced that next-generation Ford vehicles would come equipped with the North American Charging Standard (NACS) port, Tesla’s standardized version of its proprietary charging system.

“We don’t want Tesla superchargers to be a walled garden,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on the Twitter Space call. According to Musk, Tesla wants Ford and other automakers to be on an equal footing when it comes to access to dependable EV charging.

Walmart is planning to build out a nationwide electric vehicle charging network at thousands of its stores, including Sam’s Club locations. The company says it plans to have the network built by 2030 and will help make EV ownership “more accessible, reliable, convenient and affordable.”

“Currently, Walmart has nearly 1,300 third-party chargers across 280 stores in partnership with third-party suppliers,” Walmart’s director of global communications – sustainability, Aman Singh, writes in an email with The Verge. This newly announced expansion has the company building a nationwide EV fast charging network on its own instead.

Remember how rising gas prices weren’t a concern to electric car owners? Electrify America is giving users of its DC fast charging network a reminder about one of the biggest frustrations of owning internal combustion engine cars again — by increasing electricity rates at its stations (via Ars Technica).

Starting on March 6th, Electrify America will be charging US customers a standard rate of $0.48 per kilowatt hour. The company, a subsidiary of Volkswagen Auto Group, was charging $0.43 per kWh, but now, it is emailing customers to share the price increase details.

TravelCenters of America is working with Electrify America to get much-needed EV fast chargers installed at its rest stops across the US. The agreement has Electrify America deploying a sizable 1,000 charging stalls across 200 TravelCenters of America (TA), TA Express, and Petro shopping center locations nationwide.

TA’s goal is to install the chargers over the next five years, with the first ones showing up in 2023. The first installations are slated for locations in Texas and Ohio, according to TA’s senior director of communications, Tina Arundel.

When electric vehicle owners take longer trips, they often rely on nationwide fast charging providers like EVgo, Electrify America, and ChargePoint to reach their destinations. So it can be more than a minor inconvenience for EV drivers if they arrive at a station with problems like damaged cables, disconnected modems, or annoying error codes.

This year, EVgo is looking to leave behind broken and unreliable EV chargers with its ReNew program that bolsters site maintenance efforts across its more than 850 fast charging stations with 1,700 or so charging stalls. It’ll also upgrade older stations with new hardware that enables up to 350kW charging for capable vehicles like the GMC Hummer EV.

Mercedes-Benz, MN8, and ChargePoint are joining forces to install 400 fast electric vehicle charging hubs across the US in a major bid to boost EV sales and improve the nation’s struggling EV charging infrastructure. The project will cost approximately €1 billion ($1 billion), which will be split 50-50 between Mercedes and MN8.

Starting this year, the companies will begin the work to construct hundreds of new hubs, which will include more than 2,500 DC fast charging plugs. MN8 Energy, an offshoot of Goldman Sachs Asset Management focused on solar power and energy storage, will help finance the project using ChargePoint’s EV charging hardware and software, the companies said.

Tesla is opening up its charging system, but not in the way that helps people who own electric vehicles that aren’t Teslas.

The automaker is renaming its Tesla connector the “North American Charging Standard” (NACS) and is pitting it against the current CCS combo charging standard. CCS is the agreed-upon standard that every manufacturer selling in North America has adopted for DC fast charging.

Tritium and DC-America are partnering to build a nationwide EV fast charging network and have qualified for federal funding to make it happen (via Electrek).

The two companies are linking their tech to build easily deployable charging solutions, where Tritium provides the chargers and DC-America provides the station infrastructure.

A common complaint you hear from electric vehicle owners is about the sorry state of public EV charging: broken chargers, janky software, busted screens. But a lot of this is anecdotal, and it can be hard to find any rigorous studies that capture the current state of EV charging in the US.

JD Power surveyed 11,554 electric vehicle and plug-in hybrid vehicle owners from January through June 2022 for its second annual Electric Vehicle Experience Public Charging Study. Despite big growth in the number of public EV chargers in the US, EV owners say the overall experience still sucks.

Get ready for your shortest walk-through of an Ikea store yet because Electrify America is bringing its fast charging EV network to more than 25 Ikea locations in the US (via Electrek).

The plan includes installing more than 220 individual fast chargers capable of charging up to 350kW speeds at Ikea stores in 18 different states. The first public chargers will make an appearance by the end of the year and the rest by the end of 2023.

Tesla is expanding its open Supercharger pilot program in Europe that lets owners of non-Tesla EVs take advantage of the company’s extensive charging network. Previously, the pilot consisted of select stations in the Netherlands, Norway, and France, but now it’s also available in the UK, Spain, Sweden, Belgium, and Austria.

Non-Tesla owners in both Belgium and Germany originally could only take advantage of Tesla’s network if traveling to a country that has the open Superchargers. With Belgium now added to the program, German residents remain the only oddity that can use them outside of its borders but not domestically.

Google announced today a new feature for electric vehicle owners that uses artificial intelligence to sort through thousands of public charging stations while finding the best route. The level of technology needed to make this type of route planning functional is a pretty clear indication of what an unholy mess EV charging in America is today.

In a blog post published Wednesday, Google acknowledges that route planning in an EV can be like “solving a puzzle” (which is an overly polite way of saying it), with EV owners needing to find the right charging station within range that also has the specific type of plug their car needs.

Tesla owners will soon be able to charge their vehicles at EVgo charging stations. The EV charging company said it will partner with Elon Musk’s company to install Tesla’s proprietary connector at some of its 750 public charging stations nationwide.

The first connectors will be distributed at EVgo’s charging stations in San Francisco, with more to follow in 2020. EVgo says its new Tesla-supported chargers can provide up to 90 miles of charge in about 30 minutes “at one flat per minute rate, with no additional fees.” The DC fast charger network typically charges its users on two tiers: Pay-as-you-go and Membership.

Google Maps has added a new feature that lets you search for electric car charging stations according to which plug types they work with. Now, when you search for a place to charge your car, you’ll see an option to specify the exact plugs you’re looking for in the filter bar directly below the search box. These include CHAdeMO, CCS, Type 2, or Tesla’s proprietary plug type. The new feature was first reported by Android Police.

The functionality should make it much easier to find a charging station that supports your car’s specific standard, of which there are a few competing options. Nissan and Mitsubishi use CHAdeMO, while the likes of Jaguar and BMW use CCS, for example.