Stellantis Is Thinking About Joining The Tesla Charging Bandwagon | The Morning Shift

Image: Stellantis

Days after both Ford and General Motors spurned the CCS charging standard preferred by everyone except Tesla in favor of Tesla’s own, Stellantis is now threatening to join its crosstown rivals. It hasn’t confirmed it necessarily will yet, but it’s thinking about it long and hard.

Via Reuters:

“At this time, we continue to evaluate the NACS standard and look forward to discussing more in the future,” Stellantis said in a statement to Reuters, referring to Tesla’s charging design, the North American Charging Standard (NACS).

“Our focus is to provide the customer the best charging experience possible. Our Free2Move Charge brand will offer seamless, simple solutions whether at home or on-the-go through partnerships with charging providers,” it said.

The benefit to any automaker who hops onto the North American Charging Standard (NACS) bandwagon is, of course, instant access to the most plentiful and least-headache-inducing EV charging network in the United States, which is Tesla’s. Otherwise, an adapter would be required. Elsewhere in the world, Tesla’s cars as well as all others use the CCS2 port.

It seems like a foregone conclusion that the last of the Big Three will fall in favor of NACS. There’s something a little sad about it, that these institutions of the global auto industry with their limitless resources can’t just make their required infrastructure better. In a way, this also throws a wrench into the Biden administration’s efforts to expand the charging footprint, as it still recognizes CCS, not NACS, as “the national charging standard connection” and won’t send any federal dollars to companies that don’t outfit their terminals with CCS.

But, it also makes sense. Tesla has that “it just works” reputation among EV makers that Apple made famous under Steve Jobs, and those are absolutely the last words anyone would use to describe public charging in this country. For Ford, GM, and possibly Stellantis, this is the easiest path.