FLO, a Quebec-based charging equipment manufacturer, announced earlier this month that it will offer Tesla's North American Charging Standard (NACS) charging connector as an option.
The company was one of the first to announce the move earlier this month, seeing that more and more electric vehicle manufacturers are willing to switch from the Combined Charging System (CCS1) to the NACS. Currently, there are confirmed several companies - Ford, General Motors, Rivian and Aptera that decided to use NACS plugs in their products in the future.
FLO Chief Product Officer Nathan Yang said:
"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."
Interestingly, FLO revealed that its new FLO Ultra DC fast charging station was "already designed to support NACS cables if requested by customers or site hosts."
We assume that the general layout was envisioned to use various connectors or specifically two different plugs on one unit - CCS1 and NACS side-by-side. There could also be some other developments related to NACS hardware and software, but we don't know this. We don't know when exactly we will see NACS-compatible units.
The FLO Ultra charger, presented at the recent 36th Electric Vehicle Symposium and Exposition (EVS36) in California is a 320-kilowatt (kW) dual-port unit. It can simultaneously charge two vehicles (at up to 160 kW each) or one at up to 320 kW, and supports battery voltage levels of 150-1,000 V.
Actually, the power output might be higher (up to 500 kW) if there are multiple FLO Ultra connected together to share power within one station. Two units have a total combined power of 640 kW and only the charging standard (plug and cable), as well as the electric vehicle's battery, will be the limit then.
What we like about the FLO Ultra is that it really nicely fits the pull-through parking configuration, which is used at fuel stations. Unfortunately, not too often do we see such a setup at EV fast charging stations, but it will change because larger EVs (or EVs with trailers) must be considered when building a new station.
According to Drive Tesla Canada, in Quebec also the Circuit Electrique charging network "has begun discussion on adding NACS to their charging stations." This indicates that a broader move might soon start in Canada as well.
