According to Reuters, Kentucky now demands that electric vehicle charging businesses use Tesla’s charging connection in order to get federal funding from a state program to electrify highways.
As of Friday, Kentucky became the first state to formally require Tesla’s charging technology. The plan went into action. Texas and Washington have also disclosed plans that would require charging stations to support both the Combined Charging System (CCS) and Tesla’s “North American Charging Standard” (NACS) in order to be eligible for federal funding.
When Ford said in May that it will use Tesla charging technology to create future EVs, the swing toward Tesla charging plugs began. General Motors quickly followed, setting off a chain reaction. The NACS standard will now be adopted by a number of manufacturers, including Rivian and Volvo, as well as charging businesses, including FreeWire Technologies and Volkswagen’s Electrify America. The standards body SAE International has also stated that it hopes to have a NACS configuration that is industry standard in six months or less.
Some segments of the EV charging sector are making an effort to slow down the growing NACS momentum. Before enforcing a planned regulation, a coalition of EV charging businesses, including ChargePoint and ABB, as well as sustainable energy organizations and even the Texas DOT, wrote to the Texas Transportation Commission requesting extra time to re-engineer and test Tesla’s connectors. They claim that Texas’s plan is hasty and that more time is needed to adequately standardize, test, and certify the safety and compatibility of Tesla’s connectors. The letter was obtained by Reuters.
NACS is undoubtedly gaining ground, at least in the private sector, despite opposition. We can continue to anticipate states to follow in Kentucky’s footsteps if the trend of automakers and charging firms bending to the same rules is anything to go by.
The state that gave birth to Tesla, served as the company’s former headquarters and present “engineering HQ,” and currently ranks first in the country for both Tesla and EV sales, California may soon follow.
Each port must have a CCS connector and be able to connect to and charge vehicles with NACS-compliant ports, per Kentucky’s request for proposals for the state’s EV charging program.
To be eligible for federal money designated for the installation of 500,000 public EV chargers by 2030, charging businesses were required to have CCS connectors early this year. CCS plugs are thought to be an international charging standard. States can choose from a $5 billion grant from the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Program (NEVI).
