Sometime in 2024Perhaps as early as February, six electric vehicle charging companies will face a reckoning.
For years, they had little competition other than each other, which is to say, not much. However, they will soon have to contend with the much-acclaimed Tesla Supercharger network.
The world of electric vehicles, from a charging perspective, was previously divided into two parts. There was Tesla and then there was everyone else. Tesla owners enjoy widespread, fast, and reliable charging. They all managed to pull together accounts from a number of different companies, none of which can boast reliability ratings close to those of Tesla.
Then, in May, the wall came down. Ford has signed an agreement with Tesla to give its electric vehicles access to 12,000 superchargers, a subset of the grid. Starting in 2024, existing owners will be able to charge at those kiosks using an adapter, and in 2025, Ford said its future EVs will replace the Common Charging System (CCS) plug with a Tesla plug, also known as the North American charging standard. (Nax).
Other automakers quickly followed suit. General Motors was next, then Rivian, Volvo, and Mercedes. AprilAnd almost everyone. Volkswagen was one of the last companies to adopt the plug, which is not surprising given its majority ownership of Electrify America, which was supposed to be the CCS equivalent of the Supercharger network.
EV owners like me had, and still have, high hopes for Electrify America. Born out of Volkswagen’s diesel settlement, the company was the first non-Tesla network to prioritize nationwide DC fast charging at speeds that can support modern electric vehicles. When Electrify America’s best chargers work, they’re really fast, even faster than the majority of Tesla’s superchargers.