Tesla’s connector, now known as the North American Charging Standards (NACS), is truly living up to its name as the GM announcement gets the domino effect going with EV charging station companies now adopting the standard.
When GM CEO Mary Barra and Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced their cooperation for General Motors to integrate NACS as the connector in its future electric vehicles, they basically declared that the connector is now the new standard in North America.
They have a good argument for it considering it is already the most popular connector thanks to how big Tesla’s fleet is alone, and now with Ford and GM on board, it will be hard to stop.
We expect a domino effect to take place and all other automakers and charging station companies operating in North America to announce that they will adopt NACS.
It has already started with Flo, a Quebec-based EV charging station company with over 90,000 chargers, announcing it will offer NACS on its charging stations and “supports broader use” of the standard.
FLO chief product officer Nathan Yang commented on the announcement:
FLO welcomes initiatives to standardize charging hardware in North America because we believe it will help eliminate confusion for EV drivers. Ultimately, the increased adoption of the NACS standard relates both to its widespread use by EV drivers and the reliability of stations that currently offer NACS. FLO is an industry leader in reliability, offering a 98%+ uptime. With our objective of delivering the best EV charging experience for users, we are committed to supporting the technologies and standards our drivers want to use.
EVgo had announced that it will also add NACS connectors to its charging stations even before Tesla opened the standard.
Now we expect other charging station companies to make similar announcements as soon as today and more to come in the coming weeks.
The dominos are falling.