We now have two more domino clicks with the by now seemingly inevitable shift in North America to Tesla-style charging plugs. As difficult as one might find it to believe, there is a company in the US that operates more charging stations than Tesla (48,000 charging ports compared with a mere 27,000 or so charging ports from Tesla). And that company, which until now has used J-plugs for its charging stations, has just announced that it will migrate to Tesla-style plugs. That the first of today’s domino clicks.
And the Society of Automotive Engineers (“SAE”), the standards-setting body for automobiles in North America, has announced that it will commence a standards-setting process for Tesla-style charging plugs. That’s a second domino click.
Yes, there is a company in the US that operates more charging stations than Tesla. It is Chargepoint. The chief reason most people do not fully appreciate the vastness of Chargepoint’s charging network is that Chargepoint’s chargers are mostly mere “Level 2” chargers which means they charge only at rates of 11 kW or slower. And they use J-plugs. So although there are almost twice as many Chargepoint charging plugs compared with Tesla charging plugs, they do not attract as much attention because they are slower. But it is an enormous shift for this company to announce a shift from J-plugs to Tesla charging plugs.
These domino clicks follow earlier announcements by Volvo (blog article) and Ford and General Motors (blog article) and Rivian (blog article) that they will make their EVs so that they can plug in directly at Tesla supercharging stations. And these domino clicks follow announcements by the states of Texas and Washington (blog article) that they plan to link the use of Tesla-style charging plugs to state subsidies for installation of EV chargers.
(See Canonical list of domino clicks for adoption of Tesla charging plugs.)
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