Volvo Cars has joined what appears to be a landslide movement to adopt the Tesla charging standard across North America.
In recent weeks, Ford, General Motors, and Rivian have all agreed to adopt Tesla’s North American Charging Standard (NACS) plug and charging format. Volvo is now the first European car maker to sign an agreement with Tesla, giving existing and future electric Volvo car drivers access to Tesla’s vast Supercharger network across the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
Under the agreement, Volvo EVs from model year 2025 sold in North America will be equipped with the NACS charging port. The arrangement gives fully electric Volvo drivers access to 12,000 new fast-charge points, a figure that is expected to grow as Tesla continues to expand its Supercharger network in the region. These new charging points come in addition to Volvo drivers’ existing access to tens of thousands of legacy CCS format fast-charge points.
Volvo EV owners will be able to locate tens of thousands of public charging stations, get real-time information on availability of chargers, and pay for their charging session through one single interface, making charging a Volvo car easy. Volvo owners are expected to be able to use the Supercharger network with an adapter from the first half of 2024.
Drivers of future Volvo cars equipped with the NACS charge port who wish to continue charging with Combined Charging System (CCS) chargers will be able to do so with an adapter provided by Volvo Cars.
“As part of our journey to becoming fully electric by 2030, we want to make life with an electric car as easy as possible,” said Jim Rowan, CEO at Volvo Cars. “One major inhibitor to more people making the shift to electric driving — a key step in making transportation more sustainable — is access to easy and convenient charging infrastructure. Today, with this agreement, we’re taking a major step to remove this threshold for Volvo drivers in the United States, Canada and Mexico.”
Charging infrastructure wins
The growing number of adherents to the Tesla standard makes sense. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, Tesla’s Superchargers make up around 60% of all fast chargers in the country.
Santa Ana, California-based EV Charging Systems Manufacturer BTC Power also said on Tuesday that it would add Tesla’s NACS charger to its starting next year. Privately held BTC supplies chargers to Amazon, Electrify America, Ford, 7-Eleven and many fleet operators.
“As one of the first and oldest charger manufacturers in the US, it has been critical to lead market innovations,” said Frank Meza, CEO of BTC Power, which was founded in 1999. “By including the NACS connector to our chargers we can eliminate the need for unreliable and unpredictable adaptors that are being utilized by drivers using our equipment.”
The move follows similar recent actions by Zurich, Switzerland-based ABB E-mobility; Murarrie, Australia-based Tritium Charging; Seoul, South Korea-based SK Signet; and Oakland, California-based FreeWire.
The state of Texas also said on Tuesday that in order to participate in a state program to electrify roadways using federal funds, EV charging companies would have to supply both Tesla’s NACS standard as well as the CCS standard.
All of this follows Tesla’s promise in February to open up at least 7,500 of its Superchargers to non-Tesla battery-electric vehicles as part of a deal with the Biden administration. All EV drivers will be able to access these stations using the Tesla app or website.