With news of the North American Charging Standard (NACS) agreements between Tesla, Ford, and General Motors this month, the EV industry is abuzz with conversations on standardization. Ford and GM took the first step with this announcement to solidify the direction of an industry that has, thus far, been splintered by brand. In a nascent industry, these decisions have a profound impact on the direction of future technologies. Standardizing the elements of EV technology strongly supports widespread adoption and is a promising sign of a market heading toward maturity.
The NACS plug was proprietary to Tesla until 2022, when the company opened the charging standard to other companies. Ford was the first vehicle OEM to adopt the standard for their electric vehicles in June 2023, quickly followed by General Motors. Many in the automotive industry now suspect that, like it’s name purports, the NACS will become standard across the North American continent.
The J1772 plug is deployed at Level 1 and Level 2 chargers throughout North America, using a 5 pronged plug that delivers only AC power.
The CCS plug (short for Combined Charging System) uses the J1772 plug model as its core, but enables DC Fast Charging with the addition of 2 prongs dedicated to DC power delivery, allowing for both AC and DC charging.
AmpUp was founded with the goal of making EV charging accessible, simple, and deployable. At AmpUp, we are supportive of the North American Charging Standard (NACS) since we believe a consistent charging experience is core to customer satisfaction and wide scale EV adoption. AmpUp has been and will continue to be hardware agnostic in order to serve the needs of customers, partners, and government. We are eager to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles with charging stations in our network that use NACS, J1772, CCS, and future standards.
Since announcing our support for NACS, many automotive and charge station OEMs have followed suit including ABB, ChargePoint, Tritium, Blink, Flo, and Wallbox.
You can find the full list of supporting companies at the ‘NACS Charger Adoption Tracker’ website organized by EVAdoption.
Sources:
https://www.power-sonic.com/blog/ev-charging-connector-types/
https://www.tesla.com/blog/opening-north-american-charging-standard