Nissan on Wednesday became the first Japanese automaker to confirm a move to Tesla’s North American Charging Standard (NACS) connector in future electric vehicles, starting in 2025.
The transition will begin in 2024 with the NACS adapter to be made available to Ariya models in North America, all of which are now equipped with CCS1 DC fast charging. That would allow Nissan drivers — provided their vehicle is an Ariya — to access Tesla Superchargers.
Meanwhile, the Nissan Leaf 2024 is continuing with its CHAdeMO charging port. Leaf’s fast charging is slower than Ariya’s due to the air-cooled battery pack, but it’s still real many places to quickly charge the Leaf due to the early construction of stations to that standard and the earlier requirement of Electrify America to support that standard.
Nissan has been one of the companies to emphasize the CHAdeMO standard, which is offered in more locations than CCS until recently, when the standard started to catch on. Only in 2020, Nissan will confirm the switch to CCS starting with the Ariya.
Electrify America Hardware with CCS and CHAdeMO – Hood River, Oregon – July 2020
Nissan Americas President Jérémie Papin emphasized in a statement that the change gives Nissan drivers access to “thousands of faster chargers”.
The timeline for change sounds like the timeline of Ford, GM, Rivian, Volvo, Polestar, Mercedes-Benz—all of which have announced converter support in 2024 as well as building ports for vehicles. its new facility by 2025.
“Starting in 2025, Nissan will begin offering electric vehicles to the U.S. and Canadian markets with the NACS gateway,” the automaker announced — though it didn’t explicitly confirm that it will move the Ariya to native NACS support at the time.
Concept Nissan IM
Native Tesla NACS-enabled models will include those built at Nissan’s Canton, Mississippi plant beginning in late 2025. That will include at least two new North American-focused electric vehicles, includes an “enhanced” sedan that is expected to replace the Maxima and be based on the IM conceptas well as a sedan or crossover Infiniti evolved from Concept Inspiration Qs.
As Nissan has emphasized, it is still targeting more than 40% of its sales in the US to be all-electric by 2030.
