Tesla removed all the patents in the lobby of its Palo Alto headquarters prompting Elon Musk to explain in a blog, "They have been removed, in the spirit of the open source movement, for the advancement of electric vehicle technology." The post is from 2014; he continued, "Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport." That policy has been held, but some designs have not been for public consumption, including its industry-leading charging connector – until now.
A new post on the Tesla website reiterates Musk's words from eight years ago. "In pursuit of our mission to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy, today we are opening our EV connector design to the world," states the company. "We invite charging network operators and vehicle manufacturers to put the Tesla charging connector and charge port, now called the North American Charging Standard (NACS), on their equipment and vehicles."
Strategic Play
It is a generous move but also a clever, strategic play. There is no doubt that electric vehicles are here to stay. The question is, what will the nozzle be on the gas pump of the future? With more private companies getting into the EV charging game, this move makes it easy for them to add the Tesla connector to their equipment. Tesla has already been in discussions with some of those companies. The post states, "network operators already have plans in motion to incorporate NACS at their chargers, so Tesla owners can look forward to charging at other networks without adapters.
The company says that its connector, the NACS, is North America's most common charging standard. Tesla states, "NACS vehicles outnumber CCS two-to-one, and Tesla's Supercharging network has 60% more NACS posts than all the CCS-equipped networks combined." EV owners who don't have NACS will have fewer options to charge up. Car manufacturers are already racing to get into the EV game and don't also need to try to play catch up to Tesla's already well-established charging network. Tesla states, "we look forward to future electric vehicles incorporating the NACS design and charging at Tesla's North American Supercharging and Destination Charging networks."
It's ingenious to drop the Tesla brand off and name it the North American Charging Standard. It will make it much easier for competing brands to swallow their pride and use superior technology. The system is the most tested EV charger in the world, and the company reports it has "20 billion EV charging miles to its name." It is also far better than the Combined Charging System (CCS 1), offering twice the power in half the size.
A petition to the U.S House of Representatives was started in July 2022, asking for the Tesla connector to be the charging standard for the U.S. A solar-powered car company named Aptera is behind the Change.org petition that has more than 40,000 signatures. It links to reports showing the Tesla connector wins in every category tested.
While CCS 2 has become the charging standard in Europe, the market is wide-open in North America where the CCS 1 connector has not yet taken off.
There is a comment on the Change.org website worth noting. Eric Stewart posted, "The Tesla connector is what engineers would choose if politics didn't make these things about ego." Now, if NACS is not the standard, it will be crystal clear that Stewart is right.
