Rivian, the electric truck and SUV company backed by Amazon, announced on Tuesday that it will join Ford and General Motors in adopting Tesla's so-called North American Charging Standard (NACS).
Rivian said it will start building its R1T pickup and R1S SUV with NACS-style charging ports starting in 2025. Its upcoming smaller models will also have the Tesla-style charging ports.
By spring, 2024, Rivian owners will be able to use adapters to access Tesla's, Supercharger network, with its roughly 12,000 fast charging stations throughout the US and Canada. While Rivian isn't nearly as large of an automaker as GM or Ford, it's reasonably popular among EV buyers, so the move marks a significant step for broader acceptance of the Tesla standard.
Tesla's charging system had been proprietary and only usable by Teslas, although Teslas could use industry standard Combined Charging System (CCS) chargers with an adapter. But CEO Elon Musk announced in late 2022 that he was inviting other automakers and charging companies to use his company's system and its charging design standards. In recent weeks, Ford and then GM both announced that they would also switch from CCS for EV fast charging to Tesla's tech.
Various charging companies, such as EVGo and Chargepoint, have also said they would begin building chargers that, in addition to charging vehicles using the CCS standard, would charge ones with NACS ports without the need for an adapter.
Having more automakers and charging companies using its standard has been seen as a win for Tesla. For one thing, analysts have pointed out, it could allow Tesla to argue it should have access to federal funds to support charging infrastructure since the NACS is no longer just for charging its own vehicles.
Rivian sells fewer electric vehicles than Ford or GM -- and far fewer than Tesla itself -- but was still one of the major players in the field In the first quarter of this year, Rivian sold almost 8,000 EVs compared to Ford's nearly 11,000 and GM's more than 20,000, according to data from Cox Automotive. That puts Rivian ahead of other luxury brands like BMW and Audi, per Cox, and far ahead GM's own Cadillac brand in EV sales. Tesla, meanwhile, sold more than 161,000 EVs in the United States in the first quarter, more than all other automakers combined.
