Polestar announced on Thursday it is also adopting Tesla’s North American Charging Standard (NACS) for its future electric vehicles (EVs). The deal is not surprising as it comes a few days after parent company Volvo announced the same deal, bringing the total number of automakers that are adopting NACS to five.
As with the other deals, existing Polestar EV owners will be able to plug in and use over 12,000 Superchargers across Canada and the United States with an adapter starting in mid-2024. Then in 2025 Polestar will start integrating the NACS charging port directly into their EVs, eliminating the need for an adapter for future owners.
With Polestar now on board, Tesla has welcomed five global automakers into the NACS alliance, with the others being Ford, General Motors, Rivian, and Volvo.
“We salute the pioneering work Tesla has done to speed up the adoption and increase the popularity of electric vehicles, and it’s great to see the Supercharger network being made available in this way,” said CEO Thomas Ingenlath. “This move will greatly increase the rate of EV adoption in a key automotive region.”
Tesla’s charging technology has suddenly become the popular favourite, and for obvious reasons. Not only is the design smaller and more user friendly, it also allows for both AC and DC charging through the same connector. Then there is also the expansive and reliable Supercharger network, which Tesla says have a near perfect 99.95% uptime.
It took a while however for automakers to climb on board. Tesla opened up the NACS design last November, but it wasn’t until last month when Ford became the first automaker to agree to adopt the charging technology.
