Mercedes-Benz is going to use Tesla’s EV charging too

Mercedes-Benz is the newest automaker to decide to adopting Tesla’s electrical car charging connectors for its automobiles, bringing Elon Musk’s firm one step nearer to whole EV charging dominance.

Beginning in 2024, the German automaker will supply adapters to its prospects to allow them to entry Tesla Supercharger stations, which use the corporate’s North American Charging Customary (NACS) plug and outlet. And in 2025, Mercedes will start to fabricate EVs with Tesla’s charging port, obviating the necessity for an adapter.

The corporate joins Ford, GM, Volvo, Polestar, and Rivian in adopting Tesla’s connector, which is quickly turning into the de facto charging customary in North America and Europe. Mercedes can be the primary German automaker to leap on the Tesla bandwagon, placing stress on Volkswagen and BMW to comply with go well with. VW, together with Hyundai, Kia, and Stellantis, has beforehand confirmed it’s in talks with Musk’s firm about adopting NACS.

Mercedes additionally introduced it plans on increasing its community of EV charging stations in North America to 400 hubs with greater than 2,500 “high-power chargers,” which will even develop to incorporate Tesla’s NACS connector. The corporate plans on putting in 2,000 hubs with 10,000 chargers worldwide.

Mercedes introduced earlier this yr that it was working with ChargePoint and MN8, a photo voltaic firm, to put in chargers in key cities and alongside main highways. The primary stations, which shall be accessible to Mercedes and non-Mercedes EV house owners, are scheduled to open within the fourth quarter of 2023.

Tesla’s Supercharger community is widely known as superior to lots of the third-party EV charging stations, most of which function Mixed Charging System (CCS) plugs and the much less utilized CHAdeMO charging customary. The corporate says it has 45,000 Superchargers worldwide, 12,000 of that are positioned within the US. Based on the Division of Power, Tesla operates practically 2,000 DC fast-charging stations within the US in addition to virtually 5,000 Degree 2 chargers.

And whereas different EV charging stations battle with software program glitches, frayed cables, and damaged chargers, Tesla says its Superchargers are practically good of their reliability. The corporate says that the common uptime of Supercharger websites final yr amounted to 99.95 %, down marginally from 99.96 % in 2021.

For years, Tesla Superchargers have been unique to Tesla house owners — however that modified when the corporate began providing entry to non-Tesla EVs in Europe. Final yr, the Biden administration introduced that Tesla would start to do the identical within the US as a prerequisite to faucet into a few of the $7.5 billion for EV charging within the Bipartisan Infrastructure Legislation.

In contrast to in Europe, Tesla Superchargers within the US use a proprietary connector — this was Tesla’s “aggressive moat,” the factor that originally provided safety from different automakers. The NACS connector is smaller than CCS connectors, making it much less more likely to fail. To be able to enable non-Tesla automobiles to entry the chargers, the corporate put in a tool referred to as the “Magic Dock” through which a CCS adapter is utilized to the connector.