NACS Poised to Become Standardized
What was known as the Tesla Connector, NACS stands for North American Charging Standard. Currently being standardized as SAE J3400, the NACS is a seven-pin connector that is smaller and lighter than the CCS connector, which is the other major charging standard in North America. Tesla points out that NACS “has no moving parts, is half the size, and twice as powerful as Combined Charging System (CCS) connectors.”
In November 2022, Tesla renamed its previously proprietary charging connector to NACS and opened the standard to make the specs available to other EV manufacturers. Tesla argued that NACS should become the connector of choice because it is more compact, Tesla vehicles outnumber CCS-equipped vehicles by a margin of two-to-one, and Tesla's Supercharging network has 60% more NACS posts than all the CCS-equipped networks combined.
As of August 2023, companies that have manufactured over 75% of the EVs on the road have committed to the NACS standard. These companies include Ford, General Motors, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan/Infiniti, Honda/Acura, Rivian, Polestar, and Volvo. Fisker will as well, adopting it in 2025. Some holdouts to the standard include the Volkswagen Group (Audi, Porsche, Bentley, Lamborghini, and VW), BMW/Mini, and Toyota/Lexus. Lucid acknowledged they will likely adopt, but not until it is standardized. The adoption of the NACS standard is seen as a major step forward in the development of a unified charging infrastructure for electric vehicles in North America. This will make it easier for EV drivers to find chargers and will help to accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles by reducing fragmentation of the charging infrastructure.
As for current models with CCS connectors, some Tesla Superchargers have had Tesla’s “Magic Dock” installed to allow those vehicles to charge seamlessly, to allow for better charging network availability and ease the likely transition from CCS to NACS. Some manufacturers like Ford have said they will provide NACS to CCS adapters for their models while the transition takes place.