Electric vehicle maker Rivian reportedly said it had agreed to adopt Tesla‘s charging standard, giving customers access to the biggest US charging network and adding momentum to Tesla’s bid to set the industry standard.
Customers of Rivian, which has its own small network of fast chargers, will be able to access 12,000 Tesla Superchargers with adapters in the United States and Canada as early as spring 2024, the company told Reuters. Rivian also said it would make a Tesla style charging port standard on its vehicles, starting in 2025.
The news agency noted Tesla had struck comparable deals in recent weeks with General Motors and Ford. While other automakers get access to Tesla’s charging network, Tesla stands to profit from selling power to a bigger group of electric vehicle drivers.
Reuters said Tesla’s Superchargers account for about 60% of the total fast chargers available in the United States, citing the US Department of Energy.
Services and other revenue, which includes the fees for using Tesla’s Superchargers, made up just under 10% of revenue in the past quarter. The company does not break out charging revenue alone.
Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe said in a statement cited by Reuters the deal would let buyers of Rivian electric pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles “leverage Tesla’s expansive Supercharger network”.
The report noted Tesla had made major strides in displacing a rival standard known as the Combined Charging System (CCS) that had the earlier backing of the Biden administration which is offering US$7.5bn in funding to speed the deployment of EV chargers in the United States.
Qualifying for some of that federal money had required Tesla to open up its network for charging.
The report said Tesla’s charging standard had been proprietary until November when it made the design and specifications public and rebranded the technology as the North American Charging Standard (NACS).
Reuters noted manufacturers and operators of CCS chargers such as ABB E-mobility North America, Tritium DCFC, EVgo and FreeWire had raced to announce the addition of NACS plugs to their charging stations since the Ford and GM announcements.
Rivian, which makes the R1T pickup truck and the R1S SUV, would continue to expand its own charging network, the company said. It had previously said it plans to build 3,500 charging stations.
China, the world’s largest market for electric vehicles, has its own charging standard. Automakers in Japan such as Toyota and Nissan have pushed another standard known as CHAdeMo. The EU uses Type 2.
