Tesla opens up its EV charger as a new standard for North America

Tesla’s charging connector has always been better than other EVs, which have run on the Combined Charging System (CCS). Now, the company wants everyone to use its design.

In a press release, the company announced that it is opening up its charging connector as a potential new standard for North America. The company argues that, compared to Combined Charging System (CCS) connectors, its charger “has no moving parts, is half the size, and twice as powerful.”

The company says that it has rebranded its charging connector to the North American Charging Standard (NACS) and argues the standard is better than CCS due to its superior technology and coverage.

In pursuit of our mission to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy, today we are opening our EV connector design to the world. We invite charging network operators and vehicle manufacturers to put the Tesla charging connector and charge port, now called the North American Charging Standard (NACS), on their equipment and vehicles. NACS is the most common charging standard in North America: NACS vehicles outnumber CCS two-to-one, and Tesla’s Supercharging network has 60% more NACS posts than all the CCS-equipped networks combined.

The company says that some EV charging operators “already have plans in motion to incorporate NACS at their chargers, so Tesla owners can look forward to charging at other networks without adapters.” It is also now offering the design and specification files to download:

As a purely electrical and mechanical interface agnostic to use case and communication protocol, NACS is straightforward to adopt. The design and specification files are available for download, and we are actively working with relevant standards bodies to codify Tesla’s charging connector as a public standard.

Tesla certainly has the most attractive charging network in North America so far. It’ll be interesting to see if the company gets a lot of adoption across other EV charging stations.