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Until about a month ago, the electric vehicle charging landscape finally looked pretty stable. After many years of confusion for potential buyers, the CCS1 standard had just about achieved dominance as the de facto standard for all non-Tesla EVs. But Ford, and then General Motors, turned all that upside down, when both automakers signed deals to modify their EVs to use Tesla’s Supercharger experience. Now the charging industry is scrambling in the wake of those deals.
“From an industry perspective, this is the culmination of a lot of things that have happened,” said Arcady Sosinov, founder and CEO of charging company Freewire Technologies. “A combination of the legacy OEMs missing the boat in deploying charging infrastructure and their own network. The public charging networks have failed spectacularly in terms of reliability and ubiquity. The charging business model is now clearly a low-margin business.”
Sosinov sees unrest in the medium term when it comes to end users understanding fast charging. “There will be a standards war for a decade now, because you still have to have legacy vehicles,” Sosinov told Ars. “Clearly this means Ford and GM made a mistake four or five years ago when they said, ‘We’re not building out a charging network.'”
If you want federal charging money, you need both plugs
We will probably see many more dual-plug EV chargers in the coming years. GM and Ford’s deals to use what Tesla calls the North American Charging Standard mean that by volume, the vast majority of new EVs in the US will use that plug. But recently passed legislation to expand fast-charging infrastructure in the US means CCS cables aren’t going anywhere either.
Specifically, the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) standards say that “[t]his last rule sets a requirement that every DCFC port must have Combined Charging System (CCS) Type 1 connectors. This last rule also allows DCFC charging ports to have other non-proprietary connectors, as long as each DCFC charging port can charge a CCS-compliant vehicle.”
“With GM joining Ford in using NACS cables, this represents another domino in the lineup toward widespread adoption of NACS,” said Alex Urist, vice president of XCharge North America. “But it is also regressive from the initial NEVI policy direction. If everyone adopts NACS, the policy would have to be modified to include both NACS and CCS1. This would also lead to extensive retrofit costs for ChargePoint operations to support both standards, unless everyone drives around with adapters.”From our perspective, XCharge North America has always been committed to serving all types of vehicles. NACS plugs are currently available for all C6AM units, as are CCS1 cables.”
“Ultimately this leads to higher costs for the consumer. We have to implement both cables in both standards and test them with both types of vehicles, and that cost ultimately comes down to the consumer,” Sosinov said.
Some companies have already responded by adding a second set of charging cables to product lines. For example, charging company Blink has just announced that it will add NACS and CCS plugs to its latest 240 kW DC fast charger.
“Given the recent announcements from Tesla, GM and Ford, we are clearly witnessing the continued evolution of the EV charging industry as technology advances and industry stakeholders come together to evaluate best practices,” said Blink CEO Brendan Jones. “We welcome the growing interest in our industry and are ready to support all steps to increase adoption of electric vehicles.”
