Honda
On Thursday morning, Honda became the latest automaker to announce that it is switching away from the Combined Charging Standard port for fast-charging its electric vehicles. Since May of this year, beginning with Ford, multiple OEMs have signed on to the North American Charging Standard, which uses a plug of Tesla’s design.
Perhaps more important than the plug itself is the fact that Honda has negotiated access for its customers to use Tesla’s Supercharger network. These are far more numerous than CCS fast chargers in North America, and they’re far more reliable—although much of that reliability is down to the tightly integrated Tesla ecosystem, and there are no guarantees that third-party vehicles will find the process as friction-free.
That’s particularly true since some of those vehicles—including Honda EVs—will have to use a CCS-to-NACS adapter. Each automaker announcement has followed the same pattern, with NACS ports only appearing on cars from 2025 onward. EVs built before then will need adapters, which are supposed to be available sometime in 2024.
That means that next year’s Honda Prologue and Acura ZDX will fast-charge via CCS, at least for their first model years. Honda will launch another EV in the US in 2025—this one designed internally rather than sharing a General Motors platform—and this car will feature NACS ports from day one.
Tesla Superchargers won’t be the only option for Honda EVs, however. In June, seven automakers—including Honda—announced that they will build a new network of 30,000 DC fast chargers across North America. The chargers will offer both CCS and NACS plugs, with the promise of far higher reliability than Electrify America has been able to manage.
