“It creates confusion,” said Oleg Logvinov, North America president of the Charging Interface Initiative. The organization is a forum for manufacturers, equipment suppliers and charging companies using the main competitor to Tesla’s standard, known as the Combined Charging System.
Buyers will probably wait until you find out who wins, Mr. Logvinov said.
Most manufacturers apart from Ford, GM and Tesla are making cars with CCS plugs, which are standard in Europe. Charging networks operated by companies such as Electrify America and eVigo primarily offer CCS plugs.
Tesla’s plug is lighter and easier to handle but only fits the company’s cars. Under agreements with Ford and GM, Tesla will introduce an adapter early next year that will enable those manufacturers’ cars to connect to its roughly 12,000 fast chargers in the United States. In 2025, Ford and GM plan to make models designed to take Tesla plugs without an adapter.
The combined influence of Tesla, GM and Ford effectively forces operators of charging networks to install Tesla plugs and could make the CCS plug obsolete in the coming years, at least in North America. Rivian, a smaller electric vehicle company, said last week that it too would switch to the Tesla plug and that other manufacturers are considering doing the same.
,It’s important to us to make sure that charging is truly accessible and easy for customers,” Rivian chief executive RJ Scaringe said in an interview.
As the Tesla plug becomes dominant, people with cars designed to use the CCS plug will become increasingly dependent on adapters, which for safety are limited by how much voltage they can handle and more slowly. Will charge
Tesla’s system is known for being easy-to-use and reliable, while CCS chargers can be finicky. Frustration with existing charging networks is apparently one of the reasons Ford and GM decided to partner with Tesla.
