This is big news, but there’s not much to add after reading the title. Tesla did two very important things early on. The first is that they developed a charging system where the design really makes sense for technical reasons. The second thing they did was to build thousands of Tesla “Super Chargers” just about everywhere.
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The Tesla NACS Supercharger Plug
In March of 2021, we wrote about the various proprietary charge plug designs (to see that article, click here)
The CCS “Combined Charging System” on the left, and the Tesla NACS “North American Charging Standard” plug on the right. Right now, NACS already outnumbers CCS charging stations two to one.
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Tesla’s Supercharger Network
Fortunately, Tesla’s charging standard works well, but even if it was only as adequate as the others, the main reason it’s rapidly becoming a standard is because their cross-country charging network already has over 45,000 locations (Click here)
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The Nissan Leaf
The biggest holdout on adopting the Tesla charger plugs is the Nissan. The Nissan Leaf has sold quite well, and that is partially because it has one of the most affordable prices for any EV. If you buy a Nissan, of course you can have a Nissan charger installed in your home’s garage, but there are not a huge number of public chargers available that provide a CHAdeMO or J1772 plug.
The two charge ports in the nose of the 2023 Nissan Leaf are the CHAdeMO (on the left) and the J1772 (on the right, which is half of a CCS socket). The CHAdeMO works fine, but appears to be a dying standard. Also, the 2024 model year is slated to be the last “Leaf” model from Nissan (2010-2024…RIP).
In 2020, Nissan began producing a the “Ariya” all-electric Sport Utility Crossover, however production has been spotty because of global supply chain issues due to the Covid crisis. It appears as though they intend for the Ariya to take the place of the Leaf. Like the Leaf, the Ariya uses two charge port options. The J1772 and the CCS (No CHAdeMO, or NACS).
The pic above is the 2023 Nissan Ariya. I am a fan of the Nissan Leaf battery modules (to see our article on them, click here), so…I hope they continue to use that style of cell because they are awesome as a home power back-up battery.
I applaud Nissan using two different sockets on their EV’s, and I hope they add the Tesla NACS port to future models, or add some type of adapter that allows Nissan owners to use the national Tesla charging network.
Personally, I am a big fan of hybrids, so…both sides can hate me (to see my article on hybrids, click here)
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EDIT: as of Oct 2023, TOYOTA has agreed to use the NACS interface as one of their charging options, which gives future Toyota EV owners access to the increasing number of Tesla charging stations. I am a fan of Toyota’s, and this is GREAT news!
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Written by Ron/spinningmagnets, July 2023
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