NACS Takes Texas
Tesla’s North American Charging Standard has passed a major hurdle in Texas - as more and more companies in the EV industry rush to adopt the charging device.
In a vote on August 16th, Texas regulatory officials said that enough large companies had opted in to using Tesla’s charging tech that NACS compliant connectors would be required in order to qualify for any federal funding.
This vote had originally been deferred from July 11th, as the original Texas mandate on NACS inclusion for chargers to receive government funding had been opposed by a group of EV and charging companies who said that they were worried that NACS adoption was happening too quickly.
It's pretty clear that the NACS is more efficient than the current standard - the CCS charger - however for a government to accept a new standard these days, there has to be a lot of bureaucratic hoops to jump through.
But, while the Texas government did take over a month to discuss the merits of pushing ahead with adoption of the NACS - when the time to vote came around again, it was pretty clear what had to be done, and Director Gonzalez of Texas’ Department of Transportation explained why, saying:
“The two-connector approach being proposed will help assure coverage of a minimum of 97% of the current, over 168,000 electric vehicles with fast charge ports in the state,”
News of the Texas government finally allowing this process to continue comes just days after announcements by both Honda and Acura that they were preparing to adopt the NACS along with companies like Ford and GM.
And just two weeks ago, Volex - a major UK-based connector manufacturing company - held a press conference announcing that they had been contracted by Tesla to begin producing their charger hardware.
Because given that so many companies have jumped onto the NACS bandwagon lately, there's just no way Tesla could support the manufacturing needed to equip everyone.
Texas is a huge deal. One of the largest, most wealthy states in the union agreeing to start the standardisation process for the NACS is bound to get other states to follow suit - just like when Ford's adoption of the charger led to other automakers and charging companies to do the same.
This part of the process might take longer, but it’s a small price to pay for finally beating the CCS.