Rivian announced they will adopt the Tesla NACS charging connector. If you’ve been following this news topic, at the end of May, Ford made headlines by announcing their partnership with Tesla to switch to Tesla’s NACS connectors on future EV models. Then very shortly after in the beginning of June, GM followed suit. Now this week – Rivian is joining the chat. It’s also been rumored that Stellantis is considering the switch to NACS, and that Elon Musk is buttering-up Toyota for their incoming EV models as well.
It looks like we can go ahead & call the game at this point…
With the standardization to Tesla NACS connectors, it gives all these different makes & models of electric vehicles access to the Tesla’s superior charging network. And opening up Tesla chargers to other makes & models also opened up Tesla to a buttload of government funding (7.5 billion from the Biden administration to build-out EV infrastructure). That gives Tesla the momentum to absolutely go full steam ahead & build-out America’s charging network.
Is it concerning that we’re giving one very rich man a monopoly & all the leverage? It seems like it could certainly be dangerous in the wrong hands. But the time to really ask those questions would have been when politicians started forcing, & legislating the automotive industry to go full-scale EV within very aggressive timeframes. At this point however, standardization is something that the EV industry needs – for better or worse.
CCS-to-NACS adapters will come out for already-existing Rivians within a year. At which point, all new Rivians will come standard with the NACS connector. That’s about the same timeline for Ford & GM EVs as well.
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