Mercedes-Benz calls Tesla’s EV charging connector a “ja”

Mercedes-Benz is the latest automaker to commit to adopting Tesla’s electric vehicle charging connector for its vehicles, bringing Elon Musk’s company one step closer to total EV charging dominance.

Starting in 2024, the German automaker will offer its customers adapters so they can access Tesla Supercharger stations, which use the company’s North American Charging Standard (NACS) plugs and outlets. And in 2025, Mercedes will begin manufacturing EVs with Tesla’s charging ports, eliminating the need for adapters.

The company joins Ford, GM, Volvo, pole Star, and Rivian adopted Tesla’s connector, which is fast becoming the de facto charging standard in North America and Europe. Mercedes is also the first German automaker to jump on the Tesla bandwagon, which has put pressure on Volkswagen and BMW to follow as well. VW, along with Hyundai, Kia and Stellantis, has previously confirmed it is in talks with Musk’s company about adopting NACS.

Mercedes also announced that it plans to expand its network of EV charging stations in North America to 400 hubs with more than 2,500 “high-power chargers,” which will also incorporate Tesla’s NACS connector . The company plans to set up 2,000 hubs with 10,000 chargers across the globe.

Mercedes announced earlier this year that it was working with ChargePoint and MN8, a solar company, to install chargers in major cities and on major highways. The first station, which will be accessible to Mercedes and non-Mercedes EV owners, is scheduled to open in the fourth quarter of 2023.

Tesla’s Supercharger network is widely regarded as superior to many third-party EV charging stations, most of which have Combined Charging System (CCS) plugs and the less-used CHAdeMO charging standard. The company says it has 45,000 Superchargers worldwide, of which 12,000 are located in the US. According to the Department of Energy, Tesla operates about 2,000 DC fast-charging stations as well as about 5,000 Level 2 chargers in the US.

And while other EV charging stations have struggled with software glitches, frayed cables and broken chargers, Tesla says its Superchargers are near-perfect in their reliability. The company says Supercharger sites had an average uptime of 99.95 percent last year, down slightly to 99.96 percent in 2021.

For years, Tesla Superchargers were only for Tesla owners – but that changed when the company started offering access to non-Tesla EVs in Europe. Last year, the Biden administration announced that Tesla would begin doing so as a condition of tapping some of the $7.5 billion for EV charging in the bipartisan infrastructure legislation in the US.

Unlike Europe, Tesla superchargers in the US use a proprietary connector – this was Tesla’s “competitive moat”, something it initially protected from other automakers. The NACS connector is smaller than the CCS connector, making it less prone to failure. To allow non-Tesla vehicles to access the charger, the company installed a device called “”.magic dock” In which a CCS adapter is mounted on the connector.