EV fast-charging networks face challenges in 2024

sometime in 2024Perhaps as early as February, half a dozen electric vehicle charging companies will face punishment.

For years, they had little competition except each other, which is to say, not very much. However, soon, they will have to compete with Tesla’s much-vaunted Supercharger network.

From the charging point of view, the EV world was earlier divided into two parts. There was Tesla and then there was everyone else. Tesla owners enjoyed widespread, quick and reliable charging. Everyone else worked by piecing together accounts from several different companies, none of which could claim a reliability rating anywhere near Tesla’s.

Then the wall collapsed in May. Ford signed a deal with Tesla to give its EVs access to a subset of the network’s 12,000 superchargers. Starting in 2024, existing owners will be able to charge at those stalls using an adapter, and in 2025, Ford said its future EVs will swap Combined Charging System (CCS) plugs for Tesla’s plug, which will be used in North American charging. Also called standard. (NACS).

Other automakers soon followed suit. GM was next, followed by Rivian, Volvo, Mercedes, Nissan and just about everyone else. One of the last to adopt the plug was Volkswagen, which is no surprise given its majority ownership of Electrify America, which was considered the CCS equivalent of the Supercharger network.

EV owners like me had and still have high expectations for Electrify America. The company was founded out of the Volkswagen Diesel agreement, and was the first non-Tesla network to prioritize nationwide DC fast charging at speeds that support modern EVs. When Electrify America’s best chargers work, they’re really fast, even faster than most of Tesla’s Superchargers.