Kia has already started testing a native North American Charging Standard (NACS) charge port, after a pair of camouflaged Kia electric vehicles (EVs) were spotted at a Supercharger without an adapter.
In October last year Kia announced it would be following the growing wave of automakers adopting Tesla’s NACS technology, a move that would allow them access to over 15,000 Superchargers in Canada and the United States.
As part of the shift, existing Kia EV owners would need a NACS adapter to be able to plug into Superchargers, as those EVs have been built with Combined Charging System (CCS) charge ports. However, Kia said it would start producing its EVs with NACS charge ports, now known as J3400 following SAE standardization, starting with the EV6 as soon as late 2024 for the US market and early 2025 for Canada.
While existing Kia EV owners are still waiting for their access to open up, Kia looks to be on schedule to begin production with native NACS charge ports later this year. This week a pair of camouflaged Kia EVs were spotted at a Supercharger in Michigan. Photos shared on LinkedIn by Sam Abuelsamid show a Kia EV6 backed up and plugged into the Supercharger without a NACS adapter, marking the first time we have seen a non-Tesla vehicle with a native NACS charge port.
Parked next to the EV6 is an IONIQ 5. However, the IONIQ 5 was not plugged in, but presumably also had a NACS charge port under the camouflage.
As you might have noticed from the photos, the NACS charge port is unfortunately located on the passenger side (right hand side), and not the driver’s side (left hand side) like Tesla vehicles.
Hopefully this means it was just a retrofit of an existing EV6, and when official production starts Kia will move the NACS charge port to the left side, so as to prevent Kia EVs from taking up more than one Supercharging spot when plugged in.
