Robotic Automations

The Volkswagen Group is the latest automaker to announce it will adopt Tesla’s so-called North American Charging Standard (NACS), marking one of the last major automakers to embrace what is now the de facto EV plug in the United States. 

The German giant said Tuesday that future vehicles in its portfolio of brands — including Audi, Porsche and the group’s upstart EV play Scout Motors — will get the NACS charge port built-in starting in 2025. 

While Volkswagen Group was one of the last holdouts, its own charging network Electrify America recently announced plans to adopt the NACS standard, a strong signal that the automaker was not far behind.

The announcement comes at the tail end of a procession of other automakers jumping on the charging standard, following Tesla’s announcement last year that it was opening up access.

Ford started the trend in May 2023 when it announced its EV owners would soon have access to about 12,000 Tesla chargers initially via an adapter. Ford added that its next generation of EVs would be integrated with Tesla’s charge port called the North American Charging Standard (NACS) starting in 2025. Since then, major automakers such as GM, Rivian, Honda, Mercedes, Hyundai, Kia, Toyota and most recently Subaru followed with their own announcements to leverage Tesla’s charging standard. Lucid, a smaller luxury EV company, announced in November it would adopt the NACs standard.

Stellantis, the parent company behind a slew of brands such as Jeep, Ram, Chrysler and Peugeot, has not joined the NACs standard. The company has previously told TechCrunch it is evaluating the charging standard.