Hi everyone,

As the owner of an ID.4, I’ve been watching the news closely for any information on whether or not Volkswagen will switch from CCS to NACS.

It seems improbable that they wouldn’t, especially since Electrify America is installing NACS on it’s chargers, but what do you think is likely to happen?

Thanks!

  • LordSutch75@alien.topB
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    10 months ago

    Yes, certainly once it’s standardized as SAE J3400. Maybe sooner, maybe not.

    At the moment it’s all vapor announcements; no car maker that has announced it’s switching to NACS has shown a car with a NACS connector on it, even a mock-up; no OEM has committed to anything beyond “2024” for when you’ll see an adapter; no non-Tesla has been demonstrated charging on a U.S. Supercharger without a Magic Dock. We’re even still waiting on a single NACS connector on anything that isn’t a Supercharger at a public charging site—and, no, the janky captive CHAdeMO to Tesla 50 kW adapters on some EVgo stations don’t count. Will that change? Probably. Until then there’s no hurry.

    Ideally the remaining OEMs waiting Tesla out will force their hand and make them do the sensible thing: retrofitting Magic Dock everywhere rather than making non-Tesla drivers live the dongle life for the next decade. Magic Dock gets rid of the safety and theft concerns associated with adapters without harming the charging experience for anyone using NACS natively.

    Or perhaps VW has something else up its sleeve; if they could get Tesla to take a stake in EA and use their V4 hardware (something admittedly I didn’t think was likely to happen, but now they’ve done deals in North America and Europe to share V4, perhaps it’s possible), they’d have a virtually insurmountable combined network against the upstart OEM alliance. That’d certainly be worth dragging out the negotiations to both sides.

    • Suitable_Switch5242@alien.topB
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      10 months ago

      It will take time, years, to update all existing US Superchargers with magic docks.

      That may yet be part of the plan, but vehicle adapters will let CCS vehicle drivers start using all of the existing V3 chargers in 2024 instead of waiting until 2026 or beyond.

      Ford has said their customers will be able to use 15,000 Superchargers (basically all the V3 chargers) starting in “early 2024”