Remember when it was a novelty to see a Prius or a Tesla on the road? Living in California, almost every second car I see these days is electric. EVs will become even more commonplace as some states begin outlawing the sale of new gas-guzzling cars over the next decade and people become more climate conscious.
Sales of electric vehicles are expected to make up 60% of all vehicle sales in the US, China and Europe by 2030. That means we’ll need charging stations to be as common as gas stations.
Right now, one of the biggest concerns when you’re deciding whether to buy an electric car is how often you’ll have access to a charger when you need one. No one wants to get stuck in the middle of nowhere with a dead battery.
Not only do you have to charge up your car when you get home, but take a long enough trip and you’ll also be stuck trying to find a charger on the road. Hence the term range anxiety.
Read more: What If Your EV Could Power Your Home During a Blackout?
With Tesla quickly becoming the dominant force in charging infrastructure on the road, carmakers globally are reaching agreements with the American EV company to make their own cars compatible with the Tesla Superchargers that are already widely available.
“This is going to be huge for range anxiety,” said Amaiya Khardenavis, research analyst at Wood Mackenzie, adding that there are now 34,000 fast chargers in the US and 60% of them are Tesla owned. “You can imagine the kind of reach they’ll get by using the network.”
Below, I’ll explain when the switch will happen, whether you’ll be able to use Tesla chargers with your EV, whether you’ll need to buy an adapter or if that EV you’ve been eyeing to buy will soon come with a Tesla port.
Different EV chargers: CCS vs. NACS
Right now, there are two main ways electric cars are charged: the Combined Charging System and the North American Charging Standard. Tesla devised NACS back in 2012, and in 2022, it announced it would allow other cars to use it.
The main technical differences between CCS and NACS? Tesla’s NACS connector is smaller and the cable is more lightweight, meaning it’s easier to plug in and charge your car. CCS chargers pack 350kW of power, and Tesla Superchargers 250kW.
Most importantly, though, there are around 19,000 ports with NACS connectors in the US, while there are around 10,000 ports with CCS connectors.
“The ability to access the Tesla Supercharger network increases choice and availability for non-Tesla EV drivers,” said Loren McDonald, CEO of analysis and insights group EVAdoption. “Tesla Supercharger stations often will have 12, 20 or more chargers with likely all of them working. Whereas many of the charging stations offered by other charging networks may only have four to eight chargers.”
Add to the greater availability of Tesla chargers the fact that a recent study in the San Francisco Bay Area found that CCS chargers were only functioning 72% of the time. Whereas Tesla has 99% uptime on its chargers, making them far more reliable.
And as demands increase on not only the number of chargers but also their capacity and speed, we’re only going to need them more and more. Read on for when the switch to Tesla charging is happening for every carmaker.
