SAE has followed through on its plan to finish its NACS certification by the end of the year, and the NACS standard is now ready to go. And the new standard promises to solve a lot of charging problems in one fell swoop.
Tesla released specifications of its charging connector in November 2022. It called it the “North American Charging Standard,” which was somewhat of an absurd name at the time, given that Tesla was the only company using it.
However, since Tesla is a majority of the US EV market, Tesla’s argument was that most of the cars and most of the DC charging stations in America already used Tesla’s connector, so it should be considered a de facto standard anyway.
This led SAE, the professional engineering organization which develops industry standards, to take up the flag of creating a real, independent standard that is no longer in the hands of Tesla. This is an important move because many governments and companies would understandably have an issue with a single company having control over a standard that, at this point, it seems like everyone is planning to use.
How NACS will solve several EV charging problems at once
We had another chat with Rodney McGee, Ph.D., of the University of Delaware, who chaired SAE’s NACS task force, and told us that the new standard will soon be announced by the White House. He was understandably excited about the standard getting finished so quickly, and told us how NACS is going to solve a lot of problems with EV charging all at the same time.
In particular, it should make charging installation cheaper for commercial entities, leading to cheaper and easier charging for businesses (including, potentially, for large apartment buildings); make charging more interoperable between commercial and personal vehicles; and unlock new possibilities for street charging for electric vehicles.
The main reason for this is the standard is preserving NACS’ support for 277 volts, as opposed to the 208-240 voltage of J1772. This simple change unlocks a cascade of benefits that should smooth out several charging problems.
Why does this matter? 277V is one phase of a three-phase 480V supply, which is the form that most commercial utility connections come in (particularly those that support DC chargers). Which means that secondary step-down transformers are no longer necessary for AC chargers, making EV charging installations cheaper and more efficient.
When you make EV charging installations cheaper and easier for businesses, this means more chargers at workplaces, giving people who can’t charge at home another option. It means more opportunity charging at any other place you might happen to park, and more opportunity charging means more EVs plugged in at any given time which means more battery capacity available on the grid in a potential V2G future.
Saving businesses money is all well and good, but the most important point here is that by making commercial installations cheaper, this means that mixed-use apartment buildings can more easily install banks of EV chargers, without needing big transformer rooms to further step down voltages. And that means that more people will be opened up to the convenience of having a charger at the place where their car spends the most time.
The news is even good for people who don’t have a parking spot – city-dwellers who use street parking. The NACS standard includes a provision that would enable the installation of chargers in lampposts, something that we’ve seen trials of in London. There have been similar efforts in the US, but those are subpar because the J1772 standard requires a permanently-attached cable, which means that streetside cables get dropped, broken, laid around, and otherwise abused.
The new NACS standard instead uses a standardized receptacle – which is in fact the same one used in the EU and China – which can be plugged into with a ~$100-200 carry-along cable that EV drivers can keep in their car (and the receptacle does have a locking mechanism). Making each driver responsible for their own cable makes maintenance easier in public spaces where otherwise, nobody’s really willing to take ownership of ensuring cables don’t get abused.
NACS also allows AC and DC through the same connector, unlike J1772. CCS is similar to the J1772 plug, but with an additional two pins on the bottom, so the connectors aren’t identical. With NACS, the connectors are identical for both types of charging.
Another potential upside here involves medium and heavy duty vehicles, which could charge at up to 52kW AC from the same receptacle as a light duty vehicle can charge at 20kW, by using 3 phases or 1 phase respectively. 20kW can be a bit on the low side for some larger vehicles – school buses and the like – so allowing those vehicles to charge at up to 52kW from the same place light duty can charge at 20kW would be a big boon as well.
And finally, all of these boons add together to a world where it’s easier to install and maintain chargers, and easier for everyone to be using those chargers wherever they’re parked, which means more cars plugged in at any given time. And if everyone is plugged in all the time, that means more capacity available for a potential vehicle-to-grid future. If V2G ever takes off, we will want to have as many cars plugged in as possible, because more cars plugged in means more capacity available for the grid. And that means making AC infrastructure cheap, which is what 277V support and carry-along cables enable.
There is one potential problem on the horizon, though: California and the US federal government (through NEVI) have both put a lot of money into charging station deployment, and the original intent of that money was to install roadside DC chargers that are as compatible as possible. So now, will those rules fully embrace NACS and allow the money to be used to install the new standard, or will they require CCS-compatible deployments so as not to leave an installed base of vehicles behind, even though CCS is now, effectively, a dead standard? (one compromise option being discussed is to require CCS for DC chargers, but throw full weight behind NACS for AC chargers)
This decision point is also a little ironic, since NACS’ existence seems to have been spurred on by NEVI in the first place. When the government offered billions of dollars to companies that install chargers with the restriction that those chargers be useable with multiple vehicles, that’s what got Tesla to finally offer a “standard.” At the time, it wasn’t really a standard because only Tesla was using it, and it was somewhat of a last-ditch effort to save the Tesla connector. Then, when Ford decided to use NACS, that’s what started all the others dominos falling. Now, NACS is dominant, but it only happened because of NEVI in the first place – and NEVI now has the difficult decision over whether to embrace the (positive) situation it caused, even if it will give some of the installed base an effective “use-by” date as a shift to NACS will inevitably mean fewer CCS/J1772 chargers over time.
Electrek’s Take
We’re actually pretty amazed that this standardization process finished already. SAE intended to finish by the end of the year, but standards can take a long time and require a lot of cooperation from organizations with differing motivations.
Part of why this process could be finished so quickly is because we’re now further into the world’s electrification journey, and auto manufacturers, many of whom now have departments getting into the charging business, can see the benefit of making charger installations cheaper.
And while we may have been a little hyperbolic in the title, this really does fix one of the few real problems with electric cars right now. There are a lot of perceived problems with EVs which rely on misconceptions, but one that isn’t a misconception is that there are bigger hurdles to owning an EV for people who don’t have a garage.
With cheaper AC charger installation benefits allowing better charging options for workplace, garage and street parking, this all adds up to a win for environmental justice. It makes EV charging easier for renters, or for people who otherwise do not have access to their own garage/off-street parking where they can install a charger. And that means more EVs in lower-income communities, and cleaner air too.
This has been a problem for a long time, and some piecemeal solutions have been proposed and are in the works, but this standard should help make that problem more solvable.
Ironically, the one thing the standard doesn’t solve is the problem we pointed out in the headline of our previous article on this – Plug & Charge. That article laid out how authentication issues are holding Plug & Charge back from being as good as it could be in the US, and unfortunately the SAE NACS standard (which it calls J3400) won’t solve that. However, work is ongoing on a solution for that problem, in a separate proceeding, and it seems like the NACS changeover may be the impetus needed to get it solved once and for all.
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It was worrying a month away from the start of the service and in comparison to Waymo, which tested its system with safety driver for 6 months and without safety drivers for another 6 months before launching in Austin earlier this year.
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Now, CEO Elon Musk has confirmed that the previous report was true as he announced that Tesla has been testing the service with “no one in driver’s seat” only for the “past several days”:
For the past several days, Tesla has been testing self-driving Model Y cars (no one in driver’s seat) on Austin public streets with no incidents. A month ahead of schedule.
He claimed that it is “a month ahead of schedule”, but he has also said that Tesla would launch the service to paid customers in June.
If true, it would imply that Tesla didn’t plan to test the service without a safety driver in the vehicle.
The CEO then added that Tesla will deliver a car to a customer from the factory using self-driving next month:
Next month, first self-delivery from factory to customer.
Tesla is planning to launch a small fleet of 10 to 20 Model Y vehicles for its robotaxi service in Austin next month.
Bloomberg recently reported that Tesla is aiming for June 12, but the date could change.
The service is expected to be using “heavy teleoperation.” Musk nor Tesla confirmed the level of teleoperation, but it could be significant as one teleoperator per car.
Over the last few days, several reports came out pointing to Tesla not having communicated important part of the planned rollout of the service to local authorities.
Electrek’s Take
At this point, I think this is either going to be fake, meaning an extremely high level of teleoperation, or a complete shit show, or both.
Musk claims to be “a month ahead of schedule” even though Tesla started testing its service without safety driver about 2 weeks before the planned start of the service. That’s ridiculous.
It’s not victory to have “no incidents” after a few days of testing. You need to have no incidents over months of testing and hundreds of thousands of miles before launching.
At this point, I’m praying that Tesla is launching this in a small geo-fenced area without highways or any high speed driving to limit potential dangers and to ensure teleoperators can increase safety. But even then, I fear there will be avoidable crashes.
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Tesla’s sales have fallen 87% in Quebec in the first quarter 2025 compared to the same period last year.
The critical Canadian market has been wiped out, and Tesla is no longer importing new vehicles.
Quebec is the leading EV market in Canada, with the highest adoption rate of new electric vehicles.
That’s due to incentives, cheap hydro electricity, and a strong base of EV enthusiasts.
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As the EV leader in North America, Quebec became an important market for Tesla.
However, Tesla’s market in Quebec is now gone.
We don’t have all Canadian data for vehicle registrations in the first quarter; however, Le Devoir managed to obtain data for Quebec from the Société d’assurance automobile du Québec (SAAQ), which revealed that Tesla delivered only 524 vehicles in Quebec during Q1 2025.
That’s down 87% compared to Q1 2024.
The pause in the Quebec and federal EV incentive programs contributed to the sharp decline, but the pause also happened in the quarter, which helped sales by creating urgency to buy and take delivery.
However, it also created an awkward situation for Tesla in which it was accused of filing thousands of questionable requests for incentives worth $42 million CAD, which it later claimed was a backlog of deliveries that it hadn’t filed yet.
This controversy added to growing brand damage for Tesla in Quebec and the broader Canada due to its CEO Elon Musk’s backing of Donald Trump, who is openly calling for the US to annex Canada.
Tesla’s Canadian Troubles are not over
While Q1 2025 was bad, Q2 could prove even worse. Tesla had to increase prices in Canada in April due to the Canadian government slapping 25% tariffs on its vehicles in response to Trump’s trade war.
The combination of the end of some incentive programs, the higher prices, and the degrading sentiment for Tesla in Canada and Quebec is leading to very few sales in the market.
A source familiar with the matter said that Tesla doesn’t plan to import more vehicles in the country this quarter due to low demand.
The broader EV market in Canada declined 45% in Q1 due to the pause in the incentive program, but Tesla’s decline was much sharper, indicating larger issues than just the lack of incentives.
Electrek’s Take
The situation for Tesla in Canada is even worse than in Europe right now. It’s not the largest market in terms of size, but it has a significantly higher EV adoption rate than the US and has helped Tesla in North America.
As long as the tariffs are in place, there’s little hope for Tesla in Canada.
Even if they are removed, which I hope happens soon, as it would mean a de-escalation of Trump’s dumb and illegal trade war, Tesla is still going to have major brand issues due to Musk’s backing of Trump and him saying some foolish things like “Canada is not a real country.”
All of those factors add to Tesla’s aging and limited lineup, which too heavily relies on Model Y, which had a refresh that wasn’t significant enough to revitalize sales.
It’s really hard to be optimistic about Tesla right now.
In Canada, Tesla currently has some inventory of the new Model Y, which it managed to secure before the tariffs. If you’re interested in a Cybertruck, there are plenty available. Although, I have a feeling that you are better off waiting a bit as I assume prices will come down.
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Kia’s smallest and most affordable EV is already creating quite the buzz. The EV2 will sit below the EV3 in Kia’s expanding EV lineup. With its official launch approaching, the Kia EV2 was spotted on public roads, giving us a closer look at the upcoming electric SUV.
Take a closer look at the Kia EV2 caught on public roads
Although the EV2 will likely only be around 4,000 mm (157″) long, Kia promises it won’t feel so small when you’re actually in it.
Last month, we got a sneak peek of the interior at Milan Design Week. During an exclusive event, Kia showcased the EV2 concept and revealed a few new details we can expect to see.
Kia designed the EV2’s interior to be a relaxing retreat from the city’s hustle and bustle, sort of like a porch or balcony. Thanks to its flat floor layout, the SUV offers flexible seating. By folding the second-row seats and pushing the front seats forward, the EV2 offers an open space to stretch out or “enjoy a meal,” according to Kia.
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Although no other details were offered, like Kia’s newer EVs, you can expect to see its new ccNC panoramic infotainment system with dual 12.3″ driver and navigation screens.
After the EV2 was spotted driving on public roads, we are getting a better look at Kia’s upcoming electric SUV. The video from ShortsCar reveals a front-end design similar to that of the EV3, EV5, and EV9, featuring its signature vertical daytime running lights (DRLs) and Star Map lightning.
Kia EV2 driving on public roads (Source: ShortsCar)
Despite its small size, the EV2 has a surprisingly large presence on the road, thanks to its upright stance and broad wheel arches, reminiscent of the larger EV9.
A production version of the EV2 was also spotted in Germany this week, with its European debut just around the corner. The images by SH Proshots (via TheKoreanCarBlog) show a similar design to the model caught driving in Korea.
Kia will launch the EV2 in Europe and other regions in early 2026. Prices and final specs will be revealed closer to then, but the EV2 is expected to arrive with a WLTP range of around 300 miles (483 km). Smaller battery options could offer less range at a lower price.
Since it’s slated to sit below the EV3, which is 4,300 mm (169″) long, the EV2 is expected to be closer to 4,000 mm (157″) in length.
Like Kia’s other electric vehicles, it will be based on Hyundai’s E-GMP platform, which also underpins its IONIQ series.
Kia’s CEO, Ho-Sung Song, told Autocarthat the company plans to launch the EV2 in the UK with prices starting at about £25,000 ($32,000). Since that was a few years ago, plans could have changed. We will learn more soon. Check back for the latest.
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