Stellantis switches to NACS in North America
The case of Stellantis is different to the approach of the other car manufacturers. The company says that Stellantis-branded BEVs will use the SAE J3400 standard “starting with select models in 2025,” which corresponds to Tesla’s system. Car manufacturers such as GM and Ford had already announced last year that all their electric models offered in North America would be equipped with the Tesla charging port from 2025. Stellantis does not specify which model series fall under the “select models” – nor does it mention specific brands. It is possible that the Group will initially only switch to the NACS for new models from Jeep, Chrysler, Dodge or Ram, but will continue to install the CCS1 in existing model series. It is not clear whether the new Jeep Wagoneer S will already use the new charging standard whenlaunched on the US market this autumn.
And: Stellantis has actually only announced that some models will be offered with the SAE standard J3400 from 2025. The company has not announced the usual deal that Stellantis customers will also have access to Tesla’s Superchargers – whether natively with a NACS port or via an adapter for the CCS models. It remains to be seen whether this will follow in a separate announcement or whether Stellantis will manage without the Superchargers.
After more and more car manufacturers announced the switch to NACS last year to gain access to the 12,000 Supercharger charging points in North America – numerous hardware providers and charging point operators followed suit, adding NACS cables to existing and new charging points in many places, which means that the system will quickly become widespread outside of Tesla charging station network in North America.
Stellantis simply writes: “During the transition period, Stellantis will also make adapters available for vehicles fitted with the Combined Charging System (CCS) port, enabling drivers to access a growing private and public J3400 infrastructure to meet J3400/1 requirements still being developed this year.” There is no mention of Tesla and the NACS in the entire press release. At this point, however, it should also be mentioned that Tesla itself has removed the disclosed documents on NACS from its website – and instead simply refers to the documents on SAE J3400.
But the Stellantis announcement is also interesting against another background: the car manufacturer is also one of the seven companies behind Ionna, a charging infrastructure joint venture launched by Stellantis together with BMW, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Kia and Mercedes-Benz. Ionna’s fast-charging hubs will support both CCS1 and SAE J3400.
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