On June 20, 2023, Rivian announced (blog article) that Real Soon Now the owners of Rivian EVs would be able to charge at Tesla supercharging stations. Now, after a passage of more than eight months, there is progress.
Which vehicles does this apply to? The Rivian vehicles to which this applies to are the R1T pickup and R1S all-electric SUV. Each of these vehicles has a CCS1 charging port at the left front of the vehicle, behind the left front wheel. Each of these vehicles needs an adapter to be able to charge at a Tesla supercharging station. The adapter permits a Rivian EV with a CCS1 charging port to charge using a Tesla supercharger NACS (J3400) charging plug.
Avoiding incompatible Tesla superchargers. It turns out that only some Tesla superchargers can be used with this adapter for fast DC charging of Rivian EVs. The charging works only at (newer) V3 superchargers, and does not work at (older) V2 superchargers. (See this blog article that discusses the differences between V2 and V3 superchargers.) As a fun fact, one way that a person can figure out whether they are looking at a V2 or V3 supercharger is by looking at the charging plug.
V2 supercharger | V3 supercharger | |
works for Rivian EVs | no | yes |
As of right now (March 2024) the number of V3 charging kiosks in the US is about 15,000. For the owner of a Rivian CCS1 EV, the use of this adapter approximately doubles the number of places where the owner can accomplish fast DC charging.
This brings to two the number of makes of non-Tesla CCS1 EVs that can charge at NACS Tesla supercharging stations (see canonical list).