In the brutal and sometimes complicated world of electric cars, charging is undoubtedly the most problematic element today. A few years ago, everyone did what they wanted, with different connectors, a lot of subscriptions and manufacturers, terminal suppliers and administration trying to agree as best they could.

In 2014 Europe has tried to harmonize all this a bit with the Combo CCS standard for charging, a “standard” connector that obliges terminal providers to equip their new infrastructure with the Combo CCS connector. Since then, almost all electric vehicles sold in Europe, if not all, are equipped with a plug compatible with the Combo CCS connector.

Ford and General Motors with Tesla

But in recent months, American manufacturers seem to be changing the cards. Ford has announced that it has decided to adopt the NACS (North American Charging Standard), a “Tesla standard” as you might call it, since the manufacturer has always used it in the US and Canada. Following Ford, General Motors is following suit.

Just a few months ago, the charging situation in North America was straightforward. On one side was Tesla with its NACS standard and its chargers, and everyone else with CCS connectors like in Europe. But Tesla has begun opening up Superchargers to other manufacturers, providing access to the densest and most reliable infrastructure on the market.

The promise of faster charging?

For this, Tesla also provided a special adapter to connect a car equipped with the CCS standard to the NACS outlet. This decision is interesting for many reasons for other manufacturers, because the NACS standard, according to certain laboratory tests, withstands a load of up to 900 kWwhile the CCS standard stopped at half that capacity.

In fact, opening Superchargers to everyone allowed other manufacturers to “discover” the reliability and density of this network. Brands are intent on guaranteeing their customers the smoothest possible charging experience, and with that in mind, Tesla’s network seems to be winning all the votes. Even Mercedes plans to adopt this standard in the United States soon.