A Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Kia EV6 have been spotted at a supercharger, but not charging with an adapter – this time they were using a native NACS port, suggesting native NACS support could be coming soon.
The sighting occurred yesterday at a Magic Dock equipped Supercharger, and was spotted by Sam Abuelsamid, an independent automotive journalist. Abuelsamid lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan, where a Magic Dock charger exists, so we suspect that charger is the one.
Abuelsamid posted about it on Threads. Head on over to see his post (Threads is not embeddable, it seems).
In the post, the Hyundai and Kia vehicles are both clearly visible, though camouflaged with cladding on the front and rear.
But rather than using the Magic Dock as Abuelsamid was using in his Mach-E, the Hyundai is plugged directly into the regular Supercharger plug.
This is particularly interesting, because it may be the first non-Tesla car we’ve seen charging in public with a native NACS port, not via an adapter.
We’ve spotted other cars charging through adapters, including Hyundais and Kias. We’ve also heard reports (but not seen photos) of GM testing its adapter, which was supposed to come out in Q2 of this year, but has been pushed back likely due to the Supercharger chaos that Tesla CEO Elon Musk created when he unceremoniously fired the whole Supercharger team.
As of now, Tesla’s NACS website says two makes are “supported” for Supercharging via adapters, Ford and Rivian. It says support is “coming soon” for GM, Volvo, Polestar, and Mercedes.
Hyundai and Kia are not listed on Tesla’s website, and no adapter is yet available, nor have we heard of one coming soon. The two brands have been doing very well in EV sales, but were somewhat late to join the NACS announcement train.
Now, having spotted them charging with a native NACS port, this catapults Hyundai and Kia potentially to the front of the line in terms of how rapidly their NACS rollout is developing.
Most automakers have promised that they will give out adapters first, and adopt a native port later. But Hyundai/Kia’s announcement stated that native ports will roll out first, at the end of 2024, with adapters being shipped to existing users in Q1 2025.
Top comment by howdee77
wouldn't surprise me one bit if hyundai was first to the party with native NACS support. they are HUNGRY for market share and i wish them nothing but success
But timelines for many manufacturers have been pushed back due to Tesla’s Supercharger chaos, so we weren’t sure if that timeline would be held. However, seeing Hyundai and Kia testing a native NACS port already suggests that they may still be on the same timeline.
We also know that Hyundai has a refresh of the Ioniq 5 on the way, which it just reiterated is coming soon to the US. A refresh would certainly be an appropriate time to switch over the ports.
Update: We reached out to Hyundai and Kia to ask if they were still on track for 2024 release of native NACS cars. We didn’t hear back from Kia yet, but Hyundai confirmed “we are still on track to deliver NACS cars in 2024.”
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