The Volkswagen Group is the latest automaker to announce it will adopt Tesla’s North American Charging Standard (NACS), making it one of the last major automakers to embrace the de facto EV plug in the United States. The German company said on Tuesday that its future vehicles, including those from brands like Audi, Porsche, and Scout Motors, will have the NACS charge port built in starting in 2025. Volkswagen Group was one of the last holdouts, but with its charging network Electrify America announcing plans to adopt the NACS standard, it was clear that the automaker was not far behind.
The announcement comes after a string of other automakers adopting the charging standard following Tesla’s decision to open up access last year. Ford kicked off the trend in May 2023, announcing that its EV owners would soon have access to about 12,000 Tesla chargers initially via an adapter. Ford also stated that its next generation of EVs would be integrated with Tesla’s charge port NACS starting in 2025. Since then, other major automakers like GM, Rivian, Honda, Mercedes, Hyundai, Kia, Toyota, and most recently Subaru have followed with their own announcements to leverage Tesla’s charging standard. Lucid, a smaller luxury EV company, also declared in November that it would adopt the NACS standard. Stellantis, the parent company of brands such as Jeep, Ram, Chrysler, and Peugeot, has not joined the NACS standard yet but has stated that it is evaluating it.