General Motors is partnering with electric vehicle-making rival, Tesla, to integrate the North American Charging Standard (NACS) connector design into its EVs beginning in 2025.
CEO Mary Barra made the announcement about 4:30 p.m. Thursday during a Twitter Spaces talk she hosted with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who also owns Twitter.
“You have our full support and we’re incredibly excited to partner with you on this and make it an incredible charging experience whether someone is driving a car from GM or from Tesla,” Musk told Barra. “This will be really great for consumers. We’re honored to have you join us.”
“I appreciate the full support,” Barra said. “This almost doubles access to charges that GM has already made available. This is a great day for GM.”
Access to 12,000 Tesla chargers in North America
The Tesla Supercharger Network, which is what it calls its fast chargers, will be open to GM EV drivers starting in 2024. It will initially require the use of an adapter. Barra said GM will have the adapters available for its EV owners by next spring.
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The collaboration will expand access to charging for GM’s EV drivers at 12,000 Tesla Superchargers – and growing, throughout North America. Barra said the agreement complements GM’s ongoing investments in charging, reinforcing GM’s focus on expanding charging access across home, workplace, and public spaces and builds on the more than 134,000 chargers available to GM EV drivers today through the company’s Ultium Charge 360 initiative and mobile apps.
“One of the biggest issues customers are telling us is … ‘if it’s going to be our only vehicle, we have to have access to a more robust charging infrastructure,’ ” Barra said.
To get to the target of all-EVs by 2035, having price points and a vast charging network is needed to support mass adoption, Barra said.
“This collaboration is a key part of our strategy and an important next step in quickly expanding access to fast chargers for our customers,” Barra said in a statement GM put out after the Twitter announcement. “Not only will it help make the transition to electric vehicles more seamless for our customers, but it could help move the industry toward a single North American charging standard.”
Advancing the electric vehicle revolution
Last month, Ford CEO Jim Farley and Musk went on Twitter Spaces to announce that beginning next year, Ford EV owners in the United States can use Ford’s mobile app to use Tesla’s 12,000 Supercharger stations. Barra said with both Detroit automakers onboard, “people who are skeptical of adopting an EV, it just got a little better.”
Musk agreed saying the collaboration is “going to be a fundamentally a great thing for the advancement of electric vehicles in North America. The most important thing is that we advance the electric vehicle revolution.”
Beginning in 2025, the first GM EVs will be built with a NACS inlet for direct access to Tesla Superchargers without an adapter. In the future, GM will make adapters available for drivers of NACS-enabled vehicles to allow charging on CCS-capable fast charge stations.
GM will also integrate the Tesla Supercharger Network into its vehicle and mobile apps, helping drivers locate, pay for and initiate charging at available Tesla Superchargers. This will complement the charging experience at the growing Ultium Charge 360 Network of charging stations, as well as additional charging stations GM makes available through existing integrations with other charging networks.
GM continues to work with others in the industry to accelerate the installation of various charging networks including its collaborations with Pilot Company and EVgo that will add more than 5,000 DC fast chargers to the nearly 13,000 existing DC fast chargers in North America. GM will put community chargers throughout the U.S. and Canada.
GM said these initiatives, combined with this new collaboration with Tesla, will offer GM customers access to one of the largest integrated networks of high-power charging stations in North America.
Contact Jamie L. LaReau: jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. Read more on General Motors and sign up for the Free Press autos newsletter.
