Volvo has joined the growing list of automakers that has shifted away from the Combined Charging System (CCS) to adopt Tesla’s North American Charging Standard (NACS) for their electric vehicles. Volvo also becomes the first European automaker to adopt NACS.
As part of Volvo’s goal to be a fully electric car maker by 2030, the automaker says they have signed an agreement with Tesla to allow their EV owners access to over 12,000 Superchargers across Canada and the United States. As with other deals with Ford, GM, and Rivian, Volvo will supply its existing EV owners with a CCS to NACS adapter in early 2024, before shifting their production lines to include the NACS charge port on their EVs, like the XC40 and C40 Recharge and the recently revealed EX30 and EX90, starting in 2025.
“As part of our journey to becoming fully electric by 2030, we want to make life with an electric car as easy as possible. One major inhibitor to more people making the shift to electric driving – a key step in making transportation more sustainable – is access to easy and convenient charging infrastructure. Today, with this agreement, we’re taking a major step to remove this threshold for Volvo drivers in the United States, Canada and Mexico,” said Jim Rowan, CEO at Volvo Cars.
Making it a seamless transition, Volvo EV owners will also be able to use the Volvo Cars mobile app to find Supercharging locations, as well as see real-time information on Supercharger availability and pay for their charging sessions through the use of Tesla’s APIs.
Volvo is the fourth global automaker to adopt NACS, all of which has happened within the last month. The first domino to fall was Ford, who made a surprise announcement last month that it was switching from CCS to NACS. That was followed shortly thereafter by General Motors, and most recently Rivian.
With four major EV automakers, and almost every EV charging company, adopting NACS, as well as Washington State and Texas mandating NACS at new charging in order to receive federal funding, it is only a matter of time before others jump on the bandwagon and do the same. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this major adoption of NACS is how quickly it has happened, ending the dominance of CCS in North America in a matter of weeks.
