If you drive an electric Polestar or a Volvo and you've ever stared longingly at the Tesla owners enjoying an abundant and seamless charging experience, your day has arrived.
Today, the two European brands—both corporate cousins in the Geely Group—announced that their EVs will gain access to more than 17,800 Tesla Supercharger stations in the U.S. and Canada. If you've been following news of the American auto industry's migration to the Tesla fast-charging network and plug standard, you know the drill by now: these two automakers will provide an adapter to owners of their EVs, and eventually, the cars will natively use Tesla's North American Charging Standard (NACS)-style plug from the factory.
Volvo said that a Tesla adapter will be included free of charge with the purchase of a 2025 model year Volvo EX90, EX40 or EC40 (formerly the XC40 Recharge and C40 Recharge, respectively.) Existing owners can order an adapter for $230 (or $310 Canadian) from their dealers starting today. Adapters will begin shipping to retailers on Nov. 18. The adapters for the EX30, which is currently only sold in Canada due to U.S. tariffs on Chinese-made EVs, will be announced later, the automaker said.
It's a similar story over at Polestar. "Owners of existing Polestar products can order a NACS adapter through their local Polestar Service Point today with deliveries planned for mid-November," the automaker said in a news release. "In addition, Polestar’s in-car Google Maps will be updated to show all available NACS chargers." That means the Polestar 2 sedan, new Polestar 3 crossover and the upcoming Polestar 4 will all get easy access to Tesla's vast and industry-standard charging apparatus. A Polestar official confirmed to InsideEVs that those adapters will also cost $230 in the U.S.
More electric models are coming from both brands, all of which will join the rest of the industry in using Tesla's plug standard from the factory. Ford kicked off that migration by forging a deal with Tesla in 2023, starting with adapters and followed by native NACS (now technically the SAE J3400 standard) plugs in subsequent years. The moves were made amid the auto industry's widespread frustration with various different EV charging networks, many—if not most—of which have struggled with reliability, uptime and compatibility with a growing number of EVs. That hasn't been a problem for Tesla, which spent more than a decade building out the world's largest fast-charging network and was able to do so because it controls all of its software and components in-house.
The move hasn't been without some headaches, however. Adapters from Ford and General Motors were both delayed for months, in the latter's case while it finalized details with Tesla. And one batch of Ford adapters was recently recalled for poor performance and potential unit damage over time. With any luck, this process will be a smoother one for owners of Volvo and Polestar's EVs.
Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com.
