Tesla Is Offering Its Proprietary Charge Connector As A New North American Standard

When it comes to charging your electric vehicle in the US, Canada, and Mexico, only the two available connector types are incompatible. Tesla has a J1772 connector designed to protect the company when Tesla was the only EV kit in town. All others use the current North American standard, the Combined Charging System (CCS). Tesla appears to be looking to change that dynamic by announcing on Friday that it is "revealing its electric vehicle connector design to the world."

Tesla has released specifications and product designs for the J1772 connector, known as the North American Charging Standard (NACS), in hopes that charging networks like Electrify America and ChargePoint will integrate the company's equipment into their stations. Tesla says the NACS variant has no moving parts, is half the size, and is twice as powerful.

The company says these networks should adopt the technology because "NACS vehicles outnumber CCS by a factor of two, and the Tesla Supercharger network has 60 percent more NACS stations than all CCS-equipped networks combined." I mean, sure, but that's somewhat at odds with the fact that these numbers are a direct result of Tesla's years of competitive market value leadership, which is rapidly eroding the brand's edge in the marketplace. Like General Motors, Honda. More. And Audi is focusing on electrification, while Chinese manufacturers like BID are focusing on the EV space in Asia's biggest market.

Tesla said that "network operators plan to implement NACS on their chargers," without specifying which networks or at what level. The company "envisions designing and charging NACS for future electric vehicles integrated into the North American Tesla Supercharge and Destination Charge networks."

We can only speculate why Tesla is sinking faster than Elon Musk's Artax in the twilight of Twitter ownership, and why this is the best time to open up for the rest of the industry. Tesla, and now Twitter, don't hire a big PR team, so your guess is as good as any blue tick.

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