Dive Brief:
- Volvo Cars will adopt Tesla’s North American Charging Standard for its electric vehicles in North America beginning in 2025, according to a company press release Tuesday.
- The automaker will provide customers with a charging adapter in the first half of 2024 to access 12,000 additional charging points in Tesla’s Supercharger network.
- Volvo joins automakers General Motors, Ford and Rivian in switching to Tesla’s EV plug.
Dive Insight:
As more automakers adopt Tesla’s NACS EV charging plug, the future of the Combined Charging System plug is becoming more uncertain now that SAE International announced it would standardize the NACS plug for EVs.
“Standardizing the NACS connector will provide certainty, expanded choice, reliability and convenience to manufacturers and suppliers and, most of all, increase access to charging for consumers,” said Frank Menchaca, president of Sustainable Mobility Solutions, a unit of SAE parent company Fullsight, in a statement.
Drivers of future Volvo EVs equipped with the NACS port can still use the CCS plug at chargers using an adapter that Volvo will provide.
“As part of our journey to becoming fully electric by 2030, we want to make life with an electric car as easy as possible,” Volvo Cars CEO Jim Rowan said in a press release.
Customers in the U.S. and Canada will also be able to find public charging stations, get real-time information on charger availability and pay for their charging session using the Volvo Cars app.
Volvo’s current EV lineup includes the XC40 and C40 Recharge models, the EX90 full-size SUV and the new compact EX30, revealed on June 7.
Volvo is the first European automaker to announce it will adopt the NACS charging port.
