Enlarge / Ford was the first OEM to switch from CCS1 to J3400, and it's the first to ready an adapter for cars that have CCS1 ports. (credit: Ford)

Owners of Ford F-150 Lightning electric pickup trucks and Ford Mustang Mach-E electric crossovers will soon be able to reserve an adapter that lets them use Tesla Supercharger stations. Ford CEO Jim Farley—last seen driving Ars around Charlotte Motor Speedway in a 1,300-hp Transit van—took to social media and confirmed that the adapter will be free and that owners will be able to reserve one soon.

"When we announced @Ford EVs would get access to @Tesla Superchargers, I said we'd send customers a Fast Charging Adapter. I'm pleased to confirm that eligible #MustangMachE & #F150Lightning owners in the U.S. + Canada can reserve a complimentary adapter starting soon," Farley wrote .

"This is our way of saying thank you! We want to make charging more convenient for our Ford EV owners, so we're excited to add Tesla chargers and will continue growing our BlueOval Charge Network. More details soon."

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Despite the fact that most of us generally drive short distances when we get in our cars, the time it takes to fast-charge an electric vehicle remains of paramount importance to potential EV buyers. It's hard to blame them—for more than a century, motorists have come to expect short refueling stops, and until someone actually lives with an EV for a while, it can be hard to make that paradigm shift. And of course, not everyone has the ability to slow-charge an EV at home or at work, your author included.

So with that in mind, the consumer advice publication Edmunds decided to test a whole bunch of EVs to find out which one adds the most miles of range in the fewest minutes possible.

Working with the automotive consultancy P3, Edmunds tested 43 different EVs, running down their batteries on its EV range-testing route to calculate the car's efficiency, then fast-charged them from 10 to 80 percent, measuring peak and average charging power and calculating charging losses in the process. Edmunds says it did this because automakers are inconsistent in advertising fast-charging times—some list charge times from 10 to 80 percent, while others simply say their cars can add 100 miles (160 km) of range in a given time.

Enlarge / Mercedes-Benz is launching a network of branded EV charging sites, and some of them are coming to Buc-ee's travel centers, so you can stock up on cake balls while you charge your EV. (credit: Mercedes-Benz/Buc-ee's/Jonathan Gitlin)

Fast electric vehicle charging is coming to Buc-ee's, the Texas-based travel center chain with a cult following. On Thursday it announced a partnership with Mercedes-Benz to build charging hubs at Buc-ee's travel centers along major transit corridors in the South and Southeast, including I-75 and I-95. The announcement says that "about 30" should be operational by the end of 2024, but that Mercedes plans to build charging hubs at most Buc-ee's locations.

Last week Mercedes revealed it is also partnering with shopping center operator Simon to bring Mercedes charging hubs to at least 55 Simon properties across the US and Canada.

Mercedes revealed in January it was getting into the EV infrastructure game with a plan to build out more than 400 charging hubs by 2027, under the Mercedes-Benz HPC North America banner. To do so, it partnered with ChargePoint, which provides EV charging solutions, as well as MN8 Energy, a solar and battery-storage company that will mean the Mercedes charging hubs will use entirely renewable energy to recharge their customers.

Enlarge (credit: StoreDot)

There's a lot to like about electric vehicles. They're quiet, reliable, and about twice as efficient as the most frugal hybrid, not to mention that whole "instant torque" thing. But there's no denying that vehicles with internal combustion engines have a big advantage when driving distances requiring more energy than you set off with. A battery company called StoreDot may have a solution, though—an extremely fast charging cell that could add 100 miles (160 km) of range in just five minutes. And its pack will be tested in a Polestar 5.

More than a century has conditioned us to think that refueling a car should take just a few minutes, so the 30–60 minutes that most EVs require to fast-charge seems offensive to many motorists. And that's assuming the chargers work flawlessly— far from a safe assumption in 21st century America, unfortunately.

Right now, most automakers' solution to this problem is to throw lithium-ion at it, building EVs with such big battery storage capacities that an unaerodynamic pickup truck could go more than 400 miles between plug-ins. There are, of course, problems with this approach.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

More automakers this week announced a switch in the style of charging plugs that will be fitted to their future electric vehicles. On Wednesday BMW broke its news, then yesterday Toyota did the same: Both are ditching the Combined Charging Standard 1 socket for their North American EVs and will instead use the North American Charging System plug, designed by Tesla. Together with the changing plug comes access for their EV drivers to Tesla's Supercharger network.

BMW

BMW's announcement applies to all its car brands, which means that in addition to EVs like the BMW i5 or i7 , it's also swapping over to NACS for the upcoming Mini EVs as well as the Rolls-Royce Spectre . BMW will start adding native NACS ports to its EVs in 2025, and that same year its customers will gain access to the Tesla Supercharger network.

BMW's release doesn't explicitly mention a CCS1-NACS adapter being made available, but it does say that BMW (and Mini and Rolls-Royce) EVs with CCS1 ports will be able to use Superchargers from early 2025.

Enlarge / Tesla-style plugs are coming to ChargePoint chargers. (credit: ChargePoint)

Tesla drivers will soon have a new place to fast-charge their electric vehicles. Today, the charging network ChargePoint announced it will have Tesla-style North American Charging Standard support for both its AC and DC chargers over the next few weeks. And in November, it will start shipping NACS cable upgrade kits for existing DC fast chargers, which will allow Tesla EVs to charge at those ChargePoint DC fast chargers.

"We've already said we're already taking preorders on the home charger, and then over the next few weeks, we'll start shipping the fast-charge cables to preorder customers that have our fast chargers, and you can already order a new fast charger with NACS cables on," said Pasquale Romano, ChargePoint's CEO.

"We think the most important difference is we do not make our customers decide by parking space whether the cable is NACS or CCS. I think that's a mess and no one should do that. No one should have a dedicated parking space because you'll never get the ratio right, and it will change over time. So every solution that we have is going to enable both connector types per parking space," he told Ars.

Enlarge (credit: Hyundai)

On Thursday morning, Hyundai announced that it's the latest automaker to adopt the North American Charging Standard for its battery electric vehicles. Developed by Tesla, NACS was opened up late last year and, since this May, has seen a flurry of automakers pledge to drop the existing Combined Charging Standard plug for the smaller, lighter NACS alternative, together with deals negotiating access to Tesla's robust Supercharger network in the process.

Ford went first , and all the subsequent announcements followed the same pattern: native NACS ports built into new EVs from 2025, with a CCS-NACS adapter made available in 2024 to allow those other brands' EVs to charge at Supercharger stations.

Today's timeline is slightly different, just to make sure we're paying attention. Hyundai says that it's going to start building NACS ports (instead of CCS1) into "all-new or refreshed Hyundai EVs" for the US market in Q4 2024, with Canadian EVs following suit in the first half of 2025.

Enlarge / This cube is Nxu's new charging system, designed to handle up to 4.5 MW of bidirectional power. You can test it out in Mesa, Arizona, between September 28 and October 1, 2023. (credit: Nxu)

Electric vehicles have matured over the past decade to the point where, with few exceptions, they're now a superior alternative to internal combustion engines. They're quiet, produce instant torque, and have roughly triple the energy efficiency of a hydrocarbon-burning powertrain. The problem is that recharging an EV battery takes longer than refilling a fuel tank with liquid fuel. A lot longer—even the fastest fast-charging EV still needs 18 minutes to get from 10 to 80 percent state of charge, with 30 to 40 minutes being more common for most EVs on sale today.

Those long charge times are one of the driving forces behind the interest in hydrogen fuel cell EVs, despite the terrible efficiency losses involved in making and using that fuel versus simply storing electricity in a battery. But there are other solutions being pursued. Currently, the most powerful fast chargers an EV driver might encounter in the wild max out at 350 kW—still more than any EV I can think of is capable of accepting. But even more powerful DC chargers are in the works, like the one that Nxu is deploying in Arizona.

"EV users are looking for charging solutions that are reliable, consistent, and convenient. Today, they often only get one of those three, if any at all, when they charge their vehicles," said Nxu founder, chairman, and CEO Mark Hanchett. "Nxu aims to deliver on all three, starting with our proprietary, powerful Nxu One Charging System. We anticipate a very favorable response from those who experience our charging technology, and we can’t wait to put charging power back in the hands of EV drivers," Hanchett said.

Enlarge / If my dad had been able to show me the intricate dance between smartphone app, car, cable, and station, perhaps my first outing wouldn't have been quite so confusing. (credit: EVgo)

EVgo, one of the nation's largest DC fast charging providers, seems to be coming around to the idea that while having more chargers would be nice, having reliably functioning chargers is more important at the moment. So it's doing something that would be odd for most other companies and announcing its progress in fixing and upgrading its network.

As part of " EVgo ReNew ," the company's plan focuses on "overall network performance and the holistic customer experience." EVgo says it "upgraded, replaced, or decommissioned" charging gear at 120 of its more than 850 stations. It has also brought at least one 350 kW charger to nearly all its stations, claims to have cut its average station repair time in half over the last 12 months, and improved its repair parts inventory and customer service staffing. And EVgo says it will track "One & Done" success rates, measuring how many people are able to initiate a charging session on their first attempt.

EV charging reliability has been an issue for a few years now. It's something we wrote (warned, really) about in 2022 , and a JD Power study on the EV public charging experience last month showed it's not getting better. EVgo rated a 569 out of 1,000 in that study, roughly midway between ChargePoint at 606 and Electrify America at 538, with all of them dropping from 2022. Tesla, meanwhile, with its nationwide network of Supercharger spots with first-mover placement advantage, rated 739 out of 1,000, unchanged from 2022.