Tesla has confirmed the first two automakers to adopt their electric vehicle (EV) charging technology, Ford and General Motors, will gain access to the Supercharger network in February. Tesla had previously committed to opening up the Supercharger network in 2024, but the exact timeline was unknown.
In November 2022 Tesla opened up the design of their charge port to anyone who wanted to use it, in the hopes that it would become the new standard in North America, appropriately calling it the “North American Charging Standard,” or NACS for short. Part of the reason Tesla believed NACS could live up to its name was thanks to the elegant design of the plug compared to the bulky Combined Charging System (CCS), and its incredible reliability as demonstrated through the near perfect uptime of the Supercharger network.
Despite all of these benefits, no one took Tesla up on their offer until May 2023 when Ford stepped up to the plate and signed on to adopt NACS, and gain access to the expansive Supercharger network in Canada and the US. Not long after GM followed Ford’s lead, with that deal starting the stampede of automakers signing on to do the same. As part of the deals the automakers agreed to adopt the NACS charge port directly into their EVs starting in 2025, but before that their existing EV owners with CCS charge ports would be provided an adapter that would allow them to plug in to the Supercharger network in 2024.
None of the announcements included a specific date for when Tesla would open up their Supercharger network, but we now know it will begin early in the new year. The timeline was revealed by Jenny Pretare, Tesla’s Design Manager of Charging Infrastructure, while speaking to the Farr West City Planning Commission last week about a planned Supercharger. According to Pretare, both Ford and GM will gain access to the Supercharger network in February. No other dates were provided, with Farr only saying the other automakers would be added in stages so as to not overwhelm the Supercharger network.
“You may have heard the news the last year so, most of the other manufacturers have agreed to adopt Tesla‘s charge port. Our first car company Ford and then GM are starting in February of 2024…we’re opening up to most of the other car manufactures in stages just to make sure you don’t get swamped all at once,” Pretare said.
According to the initial announcements by Ford and GM, their EV owners will be able to plug in to more than 12,000 Superchargers across Canada and the US. However in some of the more recent deals, that number has now increased to more than 15,000.
You can watch Pretare’s comments in the video below. (h/t: @Corbin630)
