First came Ford. GM and Rivian followed. Now, Volvo is turning to Tesla’s North American Charging Standard.
Under an agreement announced Tuesday, Volvo EV owners will have access to about 12,000 of Tesla’s fast chargers, known as Superchargers, via an adapter starting in the first half of 2024. Today, Volvo produces and sells two battery electric vehicles, the XC40 and C40 Recharge. The company, which aims to only produce EVs by 2030, recently revealed the EX30 and EX90.
The bigger change occurs in 2025 when Volvo EVs sold in North America will be built with Tesla’s North American Charging Standard (NACS) charging port.
“As part of our journey to becoming fully electric by 2030, we want to make life with an electric car as easy as possible,” Volvo Cars CEO Jim Rowan said in a statement. “One major inhibitor to more people making the shift to electric driving — a key step in making transportation more sustainable — is access to easy and convenient charging infrastructure. Today, with this agreement, we’re taking a major step to remove this threshold for Volvo drivers in the United States, Canada and Mexico.”
Today, nearly all EVs sold in North America — with the exception of Tesla — are equipped with the Combined Charging System (CCS). Third-party charging networks like Electrify America, EVGo and ChargePoint are also on the CCS standard. Volvo said it will provide an adapter to future EV owners so they can still access public chargers equipped with CCS.
Last year, Tesla shared its EV charging connector design in an effort to encourage network operators and automakers to adopt the technology and help make it the new standard in North America. While there didn’t appear to be a lot of public interest, automakers began working with Tesla to adopt the system.
In the past month, Ford, GM, Rivian and more than a dozen EV charging companies have announced plans to adopt Tesla’s NACS. Stellantis and Hyundai have made public statements that they’re evaluating the Tesla standard.