Tesla has ramped up NACS adapter production to 8,000 units per week as the opening of the Supercharger network to other automakers has greatly slowed down.
In a surprising but welcomed series of events over the last two years, Tesla opened its charge connector and managed to convince the auto industry to make it the standard EV connector in North America.
This is going to simplify significantly the EV charging experience and enable non-Tesla EVs to use the Supercharger network.
Tesla said that it would gradually onboard automakers one by one on the network, which started with Rivian and Ford back in March.
However, nothing has happened in the last 6 months since.
More automakers were expected to be onboarded on the Supercharger network over the last few months, but Elon Musk’s kneejerk firing of Tesla’s entire charging team is believed to have slowed down the project.
Sources familiar with the matter told Electrek that automakers weren’t able to reach anyone at Tesla for weeks after the layoffs, while Ford and Rivian had much lower availability of the NACS adapter that it was providing to its EV owners for them to use the Supercharger network.
Top comment by Mike Gordon
A recent Out Of Spec Reviews video on YouTube discussed the problem of crowded charger hardware in California due to incentivizing many people to purchase EVs who must use public chargers because they lack workplace or home charging. As a result, these people are charging to 100% which really slows down the charging and they are tying up expensive hardware longer than needed.
A solution is to limit DC fast chargers to 80%, and to include separate L2 chargers at the same location for people to move their vehicle to a slow charger if they want that last 20%. That plus a little education that they are rapidly degrading their batteries when they charge to 100%.
But now Tesla has announced that it is has managed to ramp up production of its NACS adapter to 8,000 units per week at Gigafactory New York:
On its website, Tesla still says that the plan is to open the network “throughout 2024”, but it now also says that it will continue through 2025.
The automaker specifically mentions 5 brands as “coming soon” in terms of onboarding their EVs to the Supercharger network:
- Nissan
- General Motors
- Volvo
- Polestar
- Mercedes-Benz
But some of them have been “coming soon” for months. Maybe that will change now that Tesla has ramped up adapter production? What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Comments