The US Department of Transportation is set to announce the final requirements for electric vehicle (EV) charging stations to qualify for the US government’s $7.5 billion incentive program. One of the decisions, as reported by Reuters, is that the use of the CCS fast-charging standard will be made a condition. The CCS1 standard, used in North America, combines the Type 1 AC connection with two DC contacts.
This decision could put pressure on Tesla to make its Superchargers accessible to EVs of other brands in the US, as the charging infrastructure subsidy is a central aspect of President Biden’s plan to have battery-electric vehicles account for half of sales by 2030.
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Tesla’s own charging plug, the NCAS (North American Charging Standard), has caused a system duel with CCS. Tesla released the design of NCAS in November 2022, hoping to make it the charging standard in North America by encouraging other car manufacturers and charging network operators to install it.
However, if the Reuters information is correct, Tesla would be excluded from subsidies for charging infrastructure as CCS1 would be favored. Tesla has long announced the opening of its Supercharger network to EVs of other brands but has yet to do so in the US. In Europe, selected Tesla Superchargers are already accessible to third-party brands, and some Superchargers were recently added in Australia.
Tesla has been using the CCS2 standard in Europe since the debut of the Model 3, both in its vehicles and in the charging infrastructure. The older V2 Superchargers were retrofitted with a CCS cable, while the new V3 Superchargers are pure CCS charging stations.
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The opening for foreign brands in Europe was a simple software release that could reach a large audience. In the US, however, opening up NCAS charging stations would be more complicated. The eligibility of Superchargers for EVs of other brands with an adapter from NCAS to CCS1 is currently unknown.
