A Ford Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning being charged at a Tesla Supercharger station.Courtesy of manufacturer
Ford Motor Co. began rolling out Tesla Supercharger capabilities to Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning owners in Canada and the United States on Thursday, making those drivers the first of any non-Tesla brand to gain widespread access on the continent.
Ford also opened the online process for these owners to claim one free adapter from Ford that will allow these vehicles with the larger CCS port to connect to the slimmer NACS (North American Charging Standard) high-speed DC connector and access more than 15,000 Tesla Superchargers. Ford owners will have access to the vast majority of the network, but not the older V1 and V2 locations and some of the V3 stations as well, said Ford officials during an online media briefing. Ford said drivers should use the FordPass app to ensure the Supercharger location is authorized for non-Tesla use with the adapter.
In May, Ford Motor Co. was the first major automaker to announce that its EVs would be able to use Tesla Inc.’s Supercharger network. Since then, more than two dozen brands, including all the big names, have joined with similar announcements.
“[Ford is] seeing that the consumer experience is so much better than most other networks,” Daniel Breton, chief executive officer of Electric Mobility Canada, a Montreal-based national non-profit that promotes EV ownership, said to The Globe and Mail in November. “[Ford chief executive officer] Jim Farley went on a vacation with his kids in a Ford F-150 Lightning and said he saw that the only chargers that always worked were Tesla’s Superchargers. That, to me, says everything.”
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Ford of Canada plans to open the sign-up process to start collecting customer names this week to claim the free adapters and will run this offer to the end of June. Orders are expected to start shipping at the end of March.
As of July 1, the adapters will be available for purchase at US$230, said Ford U.S. officials, with no Canadian price disclosed.
A version of this adapter currently retails for $270, as sold by Montreal-area company A2Z EV. Neither Ford nor Tesla recommend third-party adapters, but chief executive officer Amine Zitour says he is working to change that.
“We’ve sold over 50,000 adapters globally,” Zitour said to The Globe. He said he has sent many prototypes of this latest adapter to manufacturers over the past year and a half, incorporating their feedback into future designs. He said he is working closely with multiple automakers to offer these adapters through them.
The company has been selling these CCS-to-NACS adapters since November, said Zitour, with various social media posts by customers showing them working at certain Superchargers. The A2Z EV adapter worked at those stations even though Tesla hadn’t officially opened their network to any other automaker until Thursday because those Superchargers were equipped with Tesla’s Magic Dock, which uses special software and connector hardware that allows any driver to charge on these Superchargers by using Tesla’s app and their choice of either a NACS (Tesla) or CCS connector.
Texas-based Lectron also sells a similar NACS-to-CCS adapter.
When asked if Ford warranties will be voided if using these adapters, Ford of Canada officials didn’t say it would, but reiterated that it doesn’t “currently” recommend using any other adapter.
“To avoid the risk of serious injury and property damage only use NACS DC adapters sold or provided by Ford for use at Tesla Superchargers,” Ford of Canada spokeswoman Megan Joakim said in an e-mail.
Zitour said there are good reasons for such cautions by Ford, Tesla and other companies, as there are adapters on the market without the necessary engineering safety standards, especially low-priced ones available on Amazon or AliExpress.
“The reason they’re banning third-party adapters is there are multiple factories [of these high-power DC adapters] not doing a proper job – I’ve been to China many times, and there are risks,” he said.
But he also noted that A2Z EV was on the Society of Automotive Engineering (SAE) committee that developed the SAE J3400 (NACS) charging standard that will soon be the de facto connector used in North America, as its former acronym (after Tesla connector) implied.
Full power is available from the Supercharger to each particular model through the A2Z adapter, which has dual temperature sensors to automatically shut off if any excess heat is detected, said Zitour, who expects high demand and likely waiting times for these DC adapters by the automakers and their customers.
The Supercharger network was introduced in 2012 and has grown to more than 2,400 locations in North America, and more than 200 sites in Canada, which is the highest number of any country outside of the U.S. and China, according to the supercharge.info tracking site.
Ford said the plan was to offer similar ease-of-use via over-the-air updates to Ford vehicles set to start deploying Thursday as well.
Once set up, the Plug-and-Charge session starts automatically at a Supercharger, with no cards to scan, no app to open on your phone and no charger screen to input any phone number or swipe any payment card.
General Motors was the next automaker to announce its adoption of NACS after Ford, and its EV owners are expected to receive a similar offer from the company within the next few weeks or months.