Tesla EV superchargers on track to become industry standard despite naysayers

Mercedes-Benz has become the latest to announce its electric vehicle drivers will be able to use Tesla superchargers starting next year and that it will fully adopt the company’s charging standard in 2025.The German luxury automaker will fully integrate what Tesla calls the North American Charging Standard (NACS) in its EV line-up, it said last week.When Tesla introduced its battery-powered Model S sedan in 2012, it included a proprietary plug for recharging used by no other automaker.In November, Tesla CEO Elon Musk invited other EV makers to build vehicles that could use Tesla charging connectors "with more than a decade of use and 20bn EV charging miles to its name.”This spring, Ford Motor and General Motors announced that their future EVs would use Tesla’s charging gear. Rivian, Volvo and Mercedes-Benz quickly followed.Rivals are looking to access to Tesla’s US network of roughly 20,000 superchargers, which represent 62% of all high-speed chargers installed along American roads. These chargers can add up to 200 miles of range to a drained EV battery in 15 minutes.Broken public chargers have long been a frustration of EV drivers, and Ford and GM don’t want that problem to slow sales of their new electric cars. Drivers surveyed by JD Power consistently give Tesla higher marks than other charging networks.In addition, Musk tweeted in June that he was open to licensing other Tesla technologies to automakers, including its self-driving system. Opening up the superchargers, in other words, could lead to more deals.There are two widely used plugs for fast charging in the US: Tesla’s NACS and a technology called Combined Charging Standard (CCS). Europe uses a version of CCS, while China has its own plug known as GB/T. Japanese automakers jointly developed a connector called CHAdeMO (pronounced CHAD-mo), but their US competitors didn’t adopt it.Until now, CCS was the plug of choice for American EVs not built by Tesla, but with the recent announcements, that’s rapidly changing.EV advocates have always wished there were only one industry-standard plug, because it would remove complexity from public charging. But research firm BloombergNEF points out that there are still automakers bringing new EVs to market that haven’t signed on to Tesla’s plug standard. And plenty of EVs already on the road need CCS plugs.As the Tesla example shows, market share is a big factor in which technology gets adopted most broadly: Tesla accounted for 60% of North American EV sales last year, according to BNEF, compared with 7% for GM.There are naysayers, for sure.Among them are Peter Rawlinson, the chief executive officer of Lucid Group. As former chief engineer of Tesla’s Model S, he was personally involved in the design of NACS.Rawlinson doubts whether NACS truly is open. One reason this matters: Access to consumer data, from credit card information to how often vehicles’ batteries are charged and driving cycle details.Rawlinson also believes government funding for charging infrastructure ought to be directed to slower charging overnight for "power stations running more evenly on a 24-hour cycle.”Also, a group of EV charger makers and operators is pushing back against Texas’ plan to mandate the inclusion of Tesla technology in charging stations, saying it is "premature,” according to a Reuters report.Tesla’s superchargers account for about 60% of the total number of fast chargers in the US, according to the US Department of Energy.But concerns remain about how smoothly the two charging standards – NACS and CCS - would talk to each other and whether having both standards in the market would raise costs for vendors and customers.