Most people in the auto business were surprised Thursday night when Ford made an unexpected announcement: owners of its electric cars will be able to use more than 12,000 Tesla Supercharger stations. Tesla is known for going its way, and its CEO’s unpredictable and more political behavior has no doubt made news. Putting all that aside, the CEOs of the two companies said that new Ford EVs will use the Tesla connector starting in 2025 and that Ford EV owners will be able to use Superchargers beginning in the spring of 2024 via a CCS-to-Tesla connection. Even though Tesla didn’t follow the usual steps for making a technical standard, it calls its plug and socket design the North American Charging Standard, or NACS. Ford made an excellent choice. Ford did the right thing by agreeing to the agreement for several reasons: It will give Ford a significant marketing edge over every other electric vehicle maker except Tesla. It makes it much more critical for fast-charging networks like EVgo, Electrify America, and others to be reliable. It needs to be clarified whether Ford will completely replace the current CCS/J-1722 connection in future EVs or just put the Tesla connector next. In return, Tesla will make a significant amount of money from the transaction, which has the potential to compensate the company for the enormous sums of money it has spent on the project over the past 11 years but has never recorded on its financial statements. By December 2024, the company wants more Superchargers and slower Destination Chargers in its network. It can also say that the fact that Ford is involved shows that their connection should be considered a “standard.” Ford has known for a long time that public fast charging is a problem. The Connect and Charge protocol, which lets a user join and have all validation and billing done on the back end, will be built into the first Mustang Mach-E made by the company in late 2020. In October 2021, it put together a group of “Charge Angels” who drove Ford EVs to public charging points to see if they could charge. Most of the time, they couldn’t, which was done to show how important it was. Ford has also taken a strong stance against charging networks, threatening to remove spots or whole networks from its BlueOval Charge Network if problems aren’t fixed quickly. Because of this one step, Ford EV drivers can access twice as many fast-charging sites and North America’s most reliable EV fast-charging network. The Good Things About Marketing Suppose you’ve never operated an electric vehicle (EV). In that case, it’s possible that you don’t ultimately realize how crucial it is for public fast charging to be accessible in a wide variety of locations and to be of a trustworthy quality. Tesla did, and because its Model S was the only electric car with a range of more than 200 miles in 2012, the company knew it needed a stable network and built one by carefully integrating charging navigation and payment. It’s like Apple in that it has power over the whole ecosystem. With Ford, Tesla will no longer be the only car company to tell customers, “You can charge your EV at any charging station in the United States.” Owners of current Ford EVs will get an adapter made by Tesla. The two companies have decided to make enough of these adaptors. Ford plans to sell electric cars in the future and will have a Tesla port built-in so owners can pull up to a Supercharger and plug-in. This is a vast improvement over Tesla’s current setup, which only lets a few Supercharger cords automatically connect to CCS-equipped cars through the Magic Dock. When a CCS driver who doesn’t own a Tesla uses the Tesla app to reserve a pedestal with a Magic Dock at one of the few Supercharger stations that have one, that connector is immediately turned on. The effort to make America more electric is now the most important thing. People have written a lot about how unpredictable public charging outlets that aren’t made by Tesla are. It may seem like a little to ask for the same level of comfort and reliability as a gas station, but it isn’t there. The dissatisfaction among automakers is “off the charts,” according to a source who, along with the other five people contacted for this story, requested anonymity to safeguard confidential business information. He says that the partnership between Ford and Tesla is “a major shot across the bow” for Electrify America and the other networks. There is no fast-charging network that makes money right now. They are currently in a “land-grab” phase, trying to get good spots by putting as many stations on the ground as possible. Electrify America is also doing this to meet a 10-year deal with the EPA made after the Dieselgate scandal because VW Group was involved. So, it only matters a little if a customer spends money to drive an EV to a charger only to find out it was broken. There are a few reasons for stations to stay open. Ford’s partnership with Tesla immediately increased the burden on public charging infrastructure providers like Electrify America, EVgo, and ChargePoint. Ford could say, “If your network doesn’t meet Tesla’s standards, we can always send our customers to Tesla, which we know works well.” And you know it very well, fitting? Will Ford quit using CCS? Ford CEO Jim Farley called the deal a “breakthrough agreement” that would be “great for customers,” but the official press statement said that customers would have “access” to Tesla charging. It didn’t say that Ford would stop making cars with the current CCS port in the future. A Twitter chat between the CEOs of the two companies didn’t say it either. When asked about it, several Ford employees said, “We’ll have more information soon, so stay tuned.” Why Ford got rid of the J1772 and CCS connectors needs to be clarified. Since the Tesla adapter is small, adding it will take up less space than adding the reverse. Some European and Asian cars now have rectangular gas filler doors, so diesel models sold outside North America with a second filler for Diesel Emission Fluid can use the same body stampings. Adding a Tesla adapter next to the CCS port may be easy if the two are the same size and shape. If J-1722, the Level 2 charge connector used by every EV sold in the US except Tesla (which even gives its customers a J-1722 converter), stopped being used, future Ford EV buyers would have to use an adaptor for each of the public Level 2 charging cables that are already in use. That could be more helpful to customers. If the CCS connector is taken out, you will need a separate, much bigger adapter to charge at any of the tens of thousands of stations that support it. As part of the National Electric Vehicle Initiative, the federal government is giving all fifty states $5 billion, which is used to pay for a percentage of these charging stations. The states are providing this funding to implement the National Electric Vehicle Initiative. Would Ford eliminate all the new fast-charging stations that require people to plug in straight instead of using a bulky adapter? Ford was surprised by how interested people were in the idea that, with a few exceptions, an F-150 Lightning could power a house for up to three days. This is called V2H, which stands for “vehicle-to-home.” Two-way charging is the last step before vehicle-to-grid or V2G. It lets the car help keep the electric grid stable. The Tesla connection is unidirectional, so you can’t use one to generate power for your home’s backup generator. Not strictly the most customer-friendly business. Ford’s next electric car crop will have the Tesla connector and the CCS/J-1772. So, they might market, “Not only can you charge your EV at any charging station in the United States, but you can do it without carrying a single adapter.” No one, not even Tesla, can make that claim. Ford may decide not to put two separate DC fast-charging ports in their next EVs for several reasons, but sources and my research show that this is precisely what will happen. Who will be able to charge EVs in 2030? Even though modern EVs have been on the market for 12 years, we are still trying to figure out how to put enough DC fast-charging stations in the huge and spread-out United States to handle the shift to EVs that will happen over the next 30 years. But early fuel users also worried about running out of gas. It must be clarified if our current networks will still be around in 2030. The larger networks will eventually incorporate the smaller ones into their operations. Still, other parties, like electric utilities (which buy or provide power anyway), convenience store owners, fossil fuel companies, and maybe even automakers, are just as likely to offer EV charging in the long run. But Ford’s decision made it clear to all the existing charging networks that what they had to give needed to be revised. It talks about every part of charging. Most importantly, it will make long-distance EV commutes less stressful, except if it’s a Ford or Lincoln electric car. In the future, Tesla may do more deals like this. But Ford was the first to market, and in the long run, all EV drivers will gain.
