Ford has officially become the first automaker to announce it will adopt Tesla’s formerly proprietary charge port, now known as the North American Charging Standard (NACS), a move which will allow its electric vehicles (EVs) to gain access to more than 12,000 Superchargers in Canada and the US.
Ford CEO Jim Farley made the announcement on a Twitter Spaces event with Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Thursday afternoon.
According to Farley, in early 2024 Ford will start providing Tesla adapters to existing and new Mustang Mach-E, F-150 Lightning, and E-Transit owners. The adapter will be developed by Tesla themselves, but no information was provided on how much it will cost or if it will be provided for free.
Then in early 2025 Ford will start building their second generation EVs with the NACS port, moving away from the CCS ports that are currently included with their EVs and given owners direct access to the Supercharger network without the need for an adapter.
“This is great news for our customers who will have unprecedented access to the largest network of fast-chargers in the U.S. and Canada with 12,000+ Tesla Superchargers plus 10,000+ fast-chargers already in the BlueOval Charge Network,” said Jim Farley, Ford president and CEO. “Widespread access to fast-charging is absolutely vital to our growth as an EV brand, and this breakthrough agreement comes as we are ramping up production of our popular Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning, and preparing to launch a series of next-generation EVs starting in 2025.”
According to Musk, Tesla will do whatever it takes to increase EV adoption, and will even provide Ford with API access so that they can integrate acres directly in their mobile app and take advantage of other aspects of Tesla’s software advantaged like their routing information.
This is the first time an automaker has agreed to adopt the NACS, after Tesla open sourced their charge port design late last year. Tesla is seen as the industry leader when it comes to EV charging networks, mostly due to the sheer number and convenient locations of their charging stations, but also their reliability compared to some others. According to recent data shared by Tesla, their Superchargers have a near perfect uptime rate of 99.95%.
