Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche, and Scout Motors announced today the planned implementation of the North American Charging Standard (NACS) for future vehicles in North America, starting in 2025.
The announcement shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone following the industry, because nearly every other major automaker (Stellantis is now the only holdout) has already committed to using the connector that Tesla developed and uses on all of its cars since 2012. The Volkswagen Group really had no choice but to make the switch, or it would have been at an enormous competitive disadvantage.
The interesting thing is that the press release states that "Volkswagen, Porsche, and Audi are exploring adapter solutions for existing vehicles to access the Tesla Supercharger network, starting in 2025". That means, unlike most other companies that have already committed to NACS, existing Volkswagen Group vehicles won't have Supercharger access in 2024 with an adapter.
Rebecca Tinucci, Senior Director of Charging at Tesla said: “Earlier this year, the North American Charging standard was just an idea. Today, with the VW Group’s commitment, almost every major automotive manufacturer is onboard, rallying behind a shared vision of improving charging experiences for all EV drivers. This is only the beginning of our industry-wide efforts to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.”
The transition from CCS1 to NACS will happen gradually. Not all Volkswagen Group vehicles will come with NACS ports starting in 2025, only the all-new models will. Existing models will continue to use CCS1 until they are updated. InsideEVs was able to confirm the 2025 ID.7 will launch with a CCS1 port, and we can only assume that is because the final production engineering for that new model has already been locked in.
Electric vehicles from Ford and General Motors are rumored to have access to those sought-after Supercharger stalls as early as two months from now in February of 2024.
We don't have any further information, but the press release stated that details of the planned integration of NACS into specific models will follow as the launch date of 2025 nears.
