Texas to require Tesla’s NACS connector on charging stations in the state

Texas announced that it is going to require Tesla’s NACS connector on charging stations in the state – giving the connector another boost in becoming the standard for charging in North America.

The Texas Department of Transportation confirmed the news today. The state government agency said that it would require both NACS and CCS connectors at charging stations in the state (via Reuters):

“The decision by Ford, GM, and now Rivian to adopt NACS changed requirements for Phase 1” of the rollout, the Texas Department of Transportation said in an email to Reuters on Tuesday, adding that it would require direct current fast chargers to have one CCS and one North American Charging Standard (NACS) connector.

This is a win for NACS, but it is also keeping CCS alive by also requiring the connector at the stations. Tesla has instead proposed offering adapters from NACS to CCS during the transition to the new standard.

Nonetheless, it is interesting that Texas is becoming the first state to mandate the installation of EV charging stations with the NACS connector.

In a way, it shouldn’t be too surprising as it is now Tesla’s home state, but it is also a reversal from a previous move to cut out Tesla’s Supercharger network from state incentives.

Last year, we reported on the Texas Volkswagen Environmental Mitigation Program (TxVEMP), which is a program that uses the settlement from the Dieselgate scandal to fund projects to help the air quality in Texas, including funding electric vehicle charging stations.

When distributing the fund, the program decided not to subsidize the projects submitted by Tesla despite the automaker showing a massive cost advantage in its proposals for charging stations.

A year later, the state is now telling all those other charging station operators approved for funding that they will need to deploy those stations with a NACS connector designed by Tesla.

Electrek’s Take

This could result in other states following with similar mandates soon, but I don’t think it should be a major difference maker considering all charging station manufacturers and operators have announced the adoption of NACS.

They are going to want to deploy a few connectors per station at least to take advantage of the huge NACS EV market, which only consists of Tesla vehicles right now, but that’s already a huge market.

For full adoption of the standard, the real wins are automakers adopting NACS in their EVs. That would truly result in a unified North American standard.

We hope that Rivian kept the momentum going with its announcement yesterday and that more will follow soon.