It has been said that Tesla’s biggest advantage has also been among its biggest drawbacks. The Tesla charging network has always been Tesla-only, ensuring you wouldn’t show up to charge and some lowly Chevy Bolt would be blocking your spot after you sent Daddy Elon a check for fifty-grand. Unfortunately for the Tesla owner, we live in a world where EVs aren’t only Teslas anymore, and the CCS Combo plug has become increasingly popular across the country.
Where Tesla only has 1266 charging ports in the US, but there are 4713 CCS chargers and that number is growing every day. Even today, most of those chargers have been off-limits to Tesla drivers. Slow-speed Level 2 charging has always been possible with an adaptor, and CHAdeMO could be adapted as well, but never CCS. Those big-speed Electrify America chargers touted by Porsche, Ford, Volkswagen, and others have been just out of reach for the Teslarati, and as more of them flood the highways and byways of America, they offer a compelling reason to step out of a T and into something like a Ford Mach-E
According to a post on Reddit, sourcing an email to Korean Tesla customers, the CCS adaptor is coming soon. The email, roughly translated through the Google machine, reads as follows:
CCS Combo 1 Adaptor Release Announcement
Now it’s more convenient to charge your Tesla. With the new CCCS Combo 1 adaptor, you can safely and quickly charge your vehicle even on public fast charging networks.
[Release Schedule]
10/19 (Tuesday): Sales to owners with preferential purchase tickets (to be announced separately)
10/26 (Tuesday): Tesla Shop official sales start * Release schedule may change depending on product customs clearance There is.
The CCS Combo 1 adaptor can only be used with Model 3 and Model Y. It cannot be used in Model S and Model X, and when compatibility analysis with domestic charging infrastructure is completed, information on the release will be provided at a later date.
Sale price: 299,200 (tax included)
That price is roughly $340 here in Australia at current exchange rates, which sorta checks out.
Until recently Tesla offered a CHAdeMO plug adaptor, but these plugs don’t allow for the same DC Fast speeds as the CCS combo plug does, and that charging standard is largely being phased out.
For now there is no news on when this adaptor will be made available in the United States, and because Tesla doesn’t have a PR department there’s nobody to ask about it, so we’ll just have to assume. If official sales start in Korea at the end of the month, we could see this adaptor rolled out to North America at the same time or shortly thereafter. It would certainly return Tesla to the upper-hand position by allowing its customers to charge literally everywhere.
That is, until Tesla opens its charging network up to other automakers.