Volvo announces they are switching to NACS
Volvo announces they are switching to NACS
As part of Volvo Cars’ aim to be a fully electric car maker by 2030, the company is the first European car maker to sign an agreement with Tesla, giving current and future electric Volvo car drivers access to Tesla’s vast Supercharger network across the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
I’m not seeing confirmation for Polestar yet, but I would guess that is likely coming soon.
Surprising that Polestar didn't announce at the same time. This is good news though.
I'm a little bitter that it's Tesla with the better connector standard but ultimately if every EV in the US does switch to this, it will be a big improvement, especially as regards accessibility/disability concerns with being able to use the connector easily.
Does anyone know, are other charging networks allowed to use NACS on their chargers too? Like will we see NACS handles on Electrify America eventually, or is Tesla wanting to keep chargers with NACS under their own production?
They released it as an open standard back in November 2022, so it should be fair game for anyone to manufacture.
it should be fair game for anyone to manufacture.
No it doesn't. I have been to the spec downloads page at Tesla site. There is no accompanying signed legal letter releasing the patent rights or giving free universal license.
They released the specification publicly. Doesn't make it open standard, unless accompanied with proper licensing documents promising iron clad RAND or FRAND licensing terms. CEO saying so in interview or on twitter is not such legal binding declaration.
No commercial manufacturer risks producing items without clarity on the patent issue, since it risks expensive litigation and having to back pay unknown amount of licensing fees. If the patent owner agrees on licensing in the first place . No in-house legal counsel will accept "but CEO Elon promised on twitter" as sufficient. They will councel "get that on legal letter, signed by CEO and by head of Tesla legal on we aren't shafting you here, honest. If we try to shaft you later, you can sue Tesla for breach of contract"
Tesla has patents on that thing. Until they produce explicit, legal formed paper work, signed and confirmed document to clarify the patent licensing, no blog post or twitter post makes it otherwise. It only implies intent to that end, but not actual binding action. Binding action is a PDF of legal document scan, with lawyer crafted binding text and CEO Elon's notarized signature under that legal letter. Since that is how actual standards organizations like ISO handle this. They have publicly available database of legal letters including F/RAND declarations for each patent involved in every single one of their standards.
Until that process happens it is just publicly released spec prospecting to be standard later. Since you also can publicly see patents descriptions of how make the thing X work, doesn't mean it gives you right to do thing X while the patent protections are in force.
Any and all other commercial players solidly committing to NACS so far must have bilateral legal agreement with Tesla over the licensing situation (or they are really really dubiously idiotic in their business dealings). However of course we wouldn't necessarily hear anything since companies are under no obligation to disclose such bilateral business contract. Guide the opposite, said contract probably comes with confidentiality clause as matter of trade secret for both parties.
Curious when high voltage NACS will be a thing at super chargers. Once that happens, I can see the rest of the industry switching.