Charging as a Tesla driver has always been pretty straightforward. You drive around until your battery is low, and then you either charge at home or follow the in car navigation to a nearby SuperCharger. You don’t mess with an app or credit card readers since the chargers know how to bill you once the car is plugged in. In fact, I’ve essentially stopped planning charging stops ahead of time on road trips now because it’s just so easy. But for non-Tesla EV drivers, it’s been a different story with confusing experiences and unreliable networks. Now though, basically everything may be changing over the next few years.

For all of the non-Tesla electric vehicles out there, Ford, GM, Hyundai, Kia, Genesis, Rivian, Lucid, Mercedes, BMW, and beyond, the charging experience has been sub-par compared to the Tesla network. Electrify America chargers are probably the most common across the country, at least on major travel routes, but they tend to be at locations in the back of dark parking lots with minimal amenities and often the chargers are de-rated with slower charging speeds and many are unavailable. EVGo is a bit better, but there are fewer locations, and the ones that are out there tend to have slower charging speeds and fewer chargers so waits can be significantly longer. Tesla has set a high standard for the largest network, an easy experience with plug and charge, and industry leading reliability. It’s therefore no surprise that most of the manufacturers are now announcing plans to change to the Tesla North American Charging Standard, or NACS from 2025 on.

Ford deserves much of the credit for starting this wave, initially announcing that they would switch to NACS starting with adapters for existing cars in 2024 and beginning to fit all cars with the NACS port from 2025. GM, Mercedes, Rivian, Polestar, and Volvo all soon followed, essentially determining that NACS would become the actual standard across the US with CCS most likely getting phased out similar to Chademo, an early EV charging standard that is only used by the Nissan Leaf now and still found at some charging stations. The charging infrastructure operators like ChargePoint, ABB, EVGo, BLink, and Flo also announced plans to provide their chargers with NACS equipment, so the buildout across the country going forward will likely be primarily NACS.

As a Rivian reservation holder, this news is great. It means that I will be able to take our Rivian R1S, once we eventually get it, across the country on Tesla’s much more reliable and available charging network, making trips essentially the same as traveling with our Tesla Model Y. I don’t see any concerns with finding chargers everywhere along routes, whether directly along major highways meaning negligible detours off of I95, or even in remote locations like on the way into Acadia National Park or near ski resorts in the north of Vermont. Where before I would be more likely to leave a CCS EV at home on an extended trip because of the extra time it would take to detour to CCS chargers and the inevitable hassle of dealing with broken, unavailable, and derated chargers, now I feel confident in traveling in an EV that can not only leverage those networks, but also the gold standard of the Tesla network.

As a Tesla owner, I’m a bit more conflicted. Opening up the stations to so many additional EVs means more EVs taking up charging spots and potentially leading to waits at the chargers. In the current form, these EVs are not designed to use the V2 or V3 Tesla chargers as they were built to specifically work for Tesla’s standardized charging port location on the driver’s side rear panel. When other EVs use these, they need to orient differently to line up their ports and can take up an additional spot, blocking out another charger. This will likely be addressed with longer cables that have been seen in the specs for the long rumored V4 chargers, but it will take time to resolve this on a larger scale. However, the additional funding going to Tesla from these manufacturers means they can afford to build out and scale up the network even more and likely get ahead and more importantly, stay ahead of the increased demand. Tesla has been expanding the network massively already with huge sites with 50+ chargers starting to go in and expanding many existing sites to deal with the additional demand. I’m optimistic that they’ll be able to continue to do so.

Despite Tesla building out their network, quite well they won’t be able to build out enough chargers for the entire country with how many EVs are expected to get added to the roads over the next several years. It’s projected that by 2030, there will be around 50 million EVs on the road and we’ll need 180,000 chargers. There are currently around 33,000 around which 2/3 are Tesla’s. In order to meet this huge demand and fill the gap, Seven manufacturers, BMW, Mercedes, GM, Stellantis, Kia, Hyundai, and Honda announced that they have formed a consortium to build out their own network. They’ve decided that they cannot rely on third party charging networks like EA and EVGo, so will take matters into their own hands. This follows Rivian who has been building out their still small, but needed Rivian Adventure Network across the country and aimed at spots that help support the adventure lifestyle in parks, forests, and campgrounds. There aren’t many details on this network yet, except that they noted they would utilize both the NACS and CCS ports to support backward and forward compatibility with their vehicles. They also aim to build 30,000 chargers in this network by 2030 and stated that they will focus on providing a better class of amenities around the chargers, improving on the dark Walmart parking lots so common for EA.

It’s unclear whether this initiative will take off and succeed. I don’t believe the seven competing manufacturers will see eye to eye often enough to make progress together and successfully take on Tesla, but having competition in the charging space is critical for the country and the more chargers we have, the better. If they can pull it off it will be a huge win for EV drivers and help grow the industry. These companies understand well that if they want drivers to buy their EVs, they need to offer a better charging experience than is out there now.

All of this news means that Tesla drivers can also benefit though, even right now. As great as the Tesla network is, it’s not everywhere, and many locations are often busy or offer slower charging speeds due to the older infrastructure or load sharing between cars when busy. While certainly smaller and often less reliable networks, the CCS ones can fill in gaps and offer a beneficial backup and supplement to the Tesla network. There are many spots where Tesla doesn’t have SuperChargers available, so having the option to charge quickly on CCS can help save a trip or make it more convenient. For example, our week at the Jersey Shore this year saw us staying in Stone Harbor where the closest SuperChargers were a 30 minute drive in the wrong direction and were the slower V2s in a small and usually busy location with no shade where we saw some of the worst charging speeds we’ve ever had on the Tesla network last year. Instead, if we had been able to charge on CCS, we could have filled the battery at an EVGo station in the middle of town while shopping or eating and made it back home without adding any time or miles to our trip at all.

All of this is why I was incredibly excited to check out the CCS to Tesla adapter from Lectron. Lectron is a well known and respected brand in the electric charging space to me, making some of the top rated home chargers and mobile chargers for EVs out there. Their CCS adapter is no different, made of premium materials and built well, encouraging me over cheap knock offs, especially with the high current that passes through these to the car. I didn’t want to mess with a subpar product I couldn’t test that might melt, damage my car, or be a safety risk to me and my family. Lectron’s version feels just like the Tesla one and in my testing so far, works perfectly.

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I’ve already tested it out on both Electrify America and EVGo chargers. Unfortunately I couldn’t see if I could get a faster charging rate than the 254 KW record I saw in my Model Y at a V3 SuperCharger in Rhode Island, which might be beatable on a charger with the proper voltage and amps, since the ones around me in Northern NJ max out at 150 or 210 KW at peak. But theoretically, using the CCS adapter on the right charger could actually mean faster changing than on Tesla’s network. Instead, what I found is that the main benefit of the adapter is having the flexibility and adaptability to use more than just Tesla’s network. The SuperCharger network in the Northeast is mostly built up around the highways. There are some stations closer to residential areas and local roads, but I live in the middle of a gap of them, so none are really a viable option to fast charge near my home. However, EVGo has several stations near me, ranging from 50 KW at the mall down the street where I can park and take the bus to commute, or 150 KW in locations near places I shop, making these perfect options to charge up while getting something done. This will also help a ton on trips, giving us the option to charge in additional places and while we’re otherwise occupied with exploring places or partaking in activities as a family.

There are definitely downsides with these networks as well though. The charging experience is nowhere near as fast or convenient as the Supercharging network, at least to start charging. These networks allow the use of payment through app, but since it was my first time on both, I used a credit card instead and found the readers to be slow and unreliable. It took multiple times to get payment working, and then even after it did, it took what felt like forever to actually start the charge. Tesla V3 chargers take 5-10 seconds normally to go from plug in to charging since there is no need to swipe a credit card or mess with an app. It took closer to five minutes on both the EA and EVGo chargers to get going thanks to failures and slow systems.

I do like the information shown on the screens at EA and EVGo, including the charge rate in KW plus voltage and amps, and the cost, none of which you get with Tesla because the charger has no screen. You get charge speed in KW and miles / hour, but that’s it. I appreciate having all of the details on the screen and being able to see it when not in the car so that you can easily check it when walking back from a store nearby for example. I found both apps to be a bit confusing to figure out how to pay and start charging, so I didn’t use these much and instead went straight to credit card payment as I imagine most drivers are most likely to do. I also have conflicted feelings about the membership plans these networks have to take the charging price down. Without memberships, EA is pricey, slightly above most Tesla chargers, and EVGo is way more expensive. I understand there needs to be a way to make money off of the charging and would rather it cost more to encourage people to charge at home or on public L2 chargers when possible, but the sticker shock was high on EVGo in particular. It shouldn’t require a monthly subscription to get reasonable charging costs.

All of that said, having the CCS adapter now in my Tesla feels like such a cheat code. It brings the best of both worlds of the current electric vehicle charging networks, allowing drivers to optimize between Tesla and CCS on trips for time, cost, and convenience. It feels like having this removes any compromise in driving an EV on a roadtrip. Even better, with the way the industry is changing and evolving, having access to both networks may grant a huge advantage over other EVs, and the option to swap between then and use the best option at any point in time will be a huge benefit. It’s unclear if this adapter will work on other brands like Rivian once they move to NACS, but even just for Tesla vehicles, this adapter is a great option to make travel easier.

The entire world of EV charging is about to get upended over the next few years. With NACS becoming the de-facto charging standard in the US, CCS will definitely decline in importance, but it’s not likely to disappear over night. Even if the new charging network proposed by these seven manufacturers succeeds, there will still be CCS stations across the country and they may actually be a good option to avoid crowds and waits and potentially save money. In the meantime, being able to utilize both worlds is fantastic and I can’t wait to get out there and explore more of the country via these charging networks.