CharIN Acknowledges the Obvious: NACS is Popular
By Edward A. Sanchez — June 12, 2023
CharIN, the international EV charging consortium that has collaboratively created, and is the guardian of, the Combined Charging Standard (CCS), has finally acknowledged what has become clear over the last few weeks: Tesla’s North American Charging Standard (NACS) is popular, and getting more popular every day.
The organization’s initial response was rather defensive and boilerplate, doubling down on its insistence that everyone fall in line with the established CCS1 standard and form factor in North America. Well, with General Motors following Ford in its announcement that it would start to adopt NACS beginning with 2025 models, the momentum suddenly and quickly turned in NACS’ favor, and CharIN’s tune has changed a little.
To CharIN’s credit, this is a smart, pragmatic move that acknowledges the NACS protocol’s (don’t call it a “standard”) popularity, and is attempting to make lemonade out of seeming lemons. CharIN has invited interested members to sign up to be part of a newly formed NACS Task Force, which, according to the organization, “…will work to convene an open task force to align requirements with the goal of submitting NACS to the standardization process. An open standardization process ensures proper peer review of the technology and the ability of all interested parties to contribute to the development of this standard.”
With Tesla’s extensive (and robust) Supercharger network, it’s impossible for auto manufacturers to ignore NACS as a powerhouse. And in fact, they aren’t, with both Ford and GM committing to NACS on their own EVs beginning in 2025.
As I’ve noted in previous posts and podcasts, Tesla is itself a member of CharIN. Although somewhat of an apples-and-oranges analogy, this parallels somewhat with Apple being part of the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), despite going its own way for many years with the Lightning charging protocol while the rest of the industry was collectively adopting USB-C. By most indications (and where this analogy falls apart somewhat), it appears that Lightning will probably fade away in the coming years in favor of USB-C.
In this case, assuming NACS becomes truly “open” and is accepted and validated by CharIN and other recognized standards organizations (ISO, IEC, IEEE, SAE and ANSI, as listed in the CharIN release), it may ultimately live up to its eponymous billing and become the favored “standard” in North America.
Although NACS is already somewhat ahead of the game in that it already uses the established DIN 70121 and ISO 15118 protocols based on power line communication (PLC), an unresolved issue is the matter of two-way power transmission, something we’re already seeing in the Hyundai Group’s E-GMP cars, and a feature that Ford has made a big deal about in the F-150 Lightning.
Considering Ford was the first major OEM to publicly support NACS, this seeming shortcoming was not enough of a factor to keep the company from backing NACS. From a hardware standpoint, NACS is capable of two-way power, however, the current firmware implemented in Tesla models does not allow it. This is an issue the committee CharIN is convening on NACS will likely look into and make recommendations on.
Although its initial response was seen as somewhat tone-deaf by many in the automotive industry, CharIN shows that it is above all pragmatic and realistic, and realizes the popularity and the advantages of NACS over the established CCS1 standard, and is taking measures to recognize and integrate NACS into the overall charging ecosystem and community.
Conversely, I hope Tesla, being a CharIN member, likewise puts up a good faith effort to support the harmonization and standardization efforts.
(Image courtesy Tesla)
