Washington State Joins Texas Mandating Tesla Charging Plug Adoption

Tesla, Inc. scored a major win on Friday as Washington State plans to require electric vehicle charging companies to include both Tesla’s standard, otherwise known as The North American Charging Standard (NACS) and the Combined Charging System (CCS) at charging stations if they want to join the state program to electrify highways using government dollars, according to Reuters. Washington is the second state this week, following Texas, to require charging stations to offer NACS.

“I’m actually really happy about NACS and how finally automakers are gearing towards one standard. We want to provide access to as many makes and models as possible.

“It hasn’t necessarily been tested and certified for other auto manufacturers, so we want to make sure it’s going to work but we are planning to require NACS at our state funded and federally funded sites in the future,” said Tonia Buell, alternative fuels program manager at Washington state’s Department of Transportation.

Buell said state officials are still determining “the right mix of NACS chargers based on current federal requirements.” Federal rules dictate EV charging stations that receive government money must include at least four CCS chargers. Buell said the state might require at least two chargers to work with NACS or all chargers.

On Tuesday, Texas was the first state to announce vehicle charging companies to include NACS if they want to tap government money for EV stations. Further cementing NACS as the possible charging standard for EVs are GM, Ford, and Rivan, who all announced they’re switching from CCS to NACS.

The decision by Washington State, Texas, GM, Ford, and Rivan to adopt NACS is a move that goes against the Biden administration’s efforts to make CCS the dominant charging standard nationwide.

EV blog InsideEVs expects “CCS1’s death is likely to be slow. After all, carmakers and charging companies spent over a decade establishing CCS1 networks across the US.”

Tesla has opened up its 2,000 Supercharger locations to other EV owners. This means more demand for NACS, which might create bottlenecks of longlines at chargers across the Supercharging network because of increased demand. Plus, if there’s more demand, this also indicates higher charging prices at Superchargers.

A quick search on Amazon yields numerous EV charging companies that make at-home 240V CCS chargers discounting their products.

We suspect more states will join Washington and Texas.