The future of EV charging hinges on the Supercharger network department at Tesla. Unfortunately that entire department was fired in sweeping layoffs from company CEO Elon Musk last week. The world of electric vehicles was upended perhaps forever in 2023 when Musk’s coup to turn the once-proprietary Tesla charging plug into the soon-to-be-ubiquitous North American Charging Standard (NACS) plug, adopted by Ford, Rivian, Stellantis, General Motors, Volkswagen, Hyundai/Kia; basically everybody. None of those companies sell a car with a NACS plug yet, so in order to charge them on a Tesla Supercharger you need an adapter dongle. The Atlantic just published a deep dive into the mess that this whole situation has become, and you should definitely read it.
From The Atlantic:
Like anything with Tesla, however, it’s not nearly that simple. NACS adoption has gone from a success story for electric cars to a monkey wrench in the EV future. Last week, Musk laid off Tesla’s 500-person Supercharger team, a baffling, inexplicable move considering how central charging has become to the company. On his social platform, X, Musk posted that Tesla will grow the Supercharger network “at a slower pace.” Ford and Rivian reportedly are now in the dark, having lost their main contacts at the company.
I remember when Apple switched everything over to its proprietary Lightning charge port and removed the headphone 3.5mm jack from its phones. My car had an aux port, but not bluetooth, so I could no longer use my new phone to play music. I had to buy a handful of bullshit headphone dongles to convert the signal. It was extra expense, an extra thing I had to carry, and an extra level of annoyance. To me, that’s what the current state of EV charging is like. Somehow Tesla conned everyone into jumping away from a perfectly good solution to adopt its less-than-perfect NACS port, and now everyone who bought an EV with CCS is getting left behind, just like everyone who bought an EV with a CHAdeMO port five years ago. The whole thing just stinks.
I’ve driven across the country in electric vehicles a couple of times, and while it isn’t particularly difficult anymore, it’s still pretty annoying. The process takes half a dozen apps to search for, map out, pay for, and initiate charging sessions. This is where Tesla’s integration to the company’s own cars has made for a superior charging experience. Until recently Tesla’s chargers have only ever needed to communicate with Teslas, meaning it’s literally plug and play. You don’t have to swipe a card or deal with an app or re-start the session because the “handshake” didn’t have the right vibes or whatever.
More from The Atlantic:
The rollout of these adapters is poised to be an early test of how much Tesla is willing to continue to invest in charging at all. At worst, the layoffs suggest that now that Tesla has won the charging-plug wars, Musk is abandoning the mission as he seeks to pivot the company around AI. “Cutting all of the Supercharger staff means that Tesla won’t have anyone left to develop the software updates and ensure interoperability with non-Tesla vehicles,” Sam Abuelsamid, the principal e-mobility research analyst at Guidehouse Insights, told me. “Over time, it may lead to reduced reliability of the existing chargers and adapters.”
By all accounts this transition has become a lose-lose situation, and the next few years of NACS chargers being installed while manufacturers continue to churn out EVs with CCS charge ports will develop into a dongle nightmare. If you have to use an adapter, please refrain from the siren song of a cheap one from Alibaba or Temu or whatever, because you’re running a shitload of high voltage through something that probably wasn’t properly engineered to handle it. You don’t want to die or burn your car down because you cheaped out on an adapter.