Honda to adopt North American Charging Standard for its EV models

I'm not sure if there's enough here to make a whole news item out of, so I figured I'd at least share it here on the forum.

TL;DR: Honda is going to adopt Tesla's North American Charging Standard. Honda EVs built after 2025 will be equipped with a NACS port those built before 2025 will be fitted with a Combined Charging System plus a NACS adaptor.

Honda Motor Co., Ltd. today announced that it has reached an agreement with Tesla, Inc. to adopt Tesla's North American Charging Standard (NACS) for the charging port of its EV models that will go on sale in North America starting from 2025.

In 2025, Honda is planning to launch a new EV model in North America equipped with a NACS port. From that point forward, Honda will continue adopting NACS standards for its models.

EV models the company will launch in North America before 2025, which will be equipped with a Combined Charging System (CCS) port, are also being developed to be compatible with the NACS through the use of a charging adaptor.

In North America, Honda recently announced that it has agreed to establish a joint venture among seven automakers* to build a high-powered charging network for EVs with the aim of building a reliable charging infrastructure. In addition to this initiative, Honda has agreed to adopt the NACS to enable its customers to use Tesla Supercharger stations, which will significantly enhance charging convenience.

Honda will continue offering a reliable and convenient charging environment for its customers to achieve widespread EV adoption and support Honda's efforts to realize carbon neutrality. 

How many dominoes are left to fall at this point? VW?

To what extent is Honda using GM's platforms? Will all of their EVs be Ultium based, or just a few? Switching to NACS at this point makes sense, but with GM signed on to NACS for awhile now I'm not sure that Honda really had a choice in the matter.

In reply to Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) :

Volvo, maybe? BMW? I don't know if Hyundai/Kia have committed yet, and they're a fairly high volume EV maker. 

will  NACS  be the standard for Europe ?  or Japan , China , Korea  ?

And is it just a NACS  plug or is there also software  that has to be in each EV ?

The NA part stands for "North American", so probably not. Japan seems to be using Chademo, China is using something else, Europe uses CCS but not the same CCS as the US. Basically, cars will probably be happiest staying in their home market.

In order to get the full Tesla charging experience, the EVs will have to implement Plug and Charge or a subset of it. They'll also need the appropriate modem, although it sounds as if Tesla is going to modify their chargers instead of the fleet of EVs needing to be retroffited. I think there was a lot of background work done in that regard already on Tesla's part - Model 3s made after late 2019 come with a CCS-compatible modem. My guess is that the Tesla chargers will learn to speak the CCS protocol, but will still speak the Tesla protocol for Teslas when necessary. 

thanks Keith , I was pretty sure you would know the answer  :)

That answer comes with a full money-back guarantee in the case of my complete misunderstanding of the situation :)

SAE is working to 'officially' standardize NACS and may have it done by the end of the year.  It will remove any concerns over Tesla still having control.  An article which only adds some more details over what Keith already said: https://electrek.co/2023/07/12/sae-wants-to-certify-nacs-by-end-of-year-and-fix-plug-charge-too/

The standard will likely take the official name “J3400,” similar to the name of the current J1772 plug used in SAE CCS chargers. Though it could colloquially be known as J3400, NACS, or even “the Tesla plug,” depending on which name the EV-owning public seizes on.