A Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Kia EV6 have been spotted at a supercharger, but not charging with an adapter – this time they were using a native NACS port, suggesting native NACS support could be coming soon.
The sighting occurred yesterday at a Magic Dock equipped Supercharger, and was spotted by Sam Abuelsamid, an independent automotive journalist. Abuelsamid lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan, where a Magic Dock charger exists, so we suspect that charger is the one.
Abuelsamid posted about it on Threads. Head on over to see his post (Threads is not embeddable, it seems).
In the post, the Hyundai and Kia vehicles are both clearly visible, though camouflaged with cladding on the front and rear.
But rather than using the Magic Dock as Abuelsamid was using in his Mach-E, the Hyundai is plugged directly into the regular Supercharger plug.
This is particularly interesting, because it may be the first non-Tesla car we’ve seen charging in public with a native NACS port, not via an adapter.
We’ve spotted other cars charging through adapters, including Hyundais and Kias. We’ve also heard reports (but not seen photos) of GM testing its adapter, which was supposed to come out in Q2 of this year, but has been pushed back likely due to the Supercharger chaos that Tesla CEO Elon Musk created when he unceremoniously fired the whole Supercharger team.
As of now, Tesla’s NACS website says two makes are “supported” for Supercharging via adapters, Ford and Rivian. It says support is “coming soon” for GM, Volvo, Polestar, and Mercedes.
Hyundai and Kia are not listed on Tesla’s website, and no adapter is yet available, nor have we heard of one coming soon. The two brands have been doing very well in EV sales, but were somewhat late to join the NACS announcement train.
Now, having spotted them charging with a native NACS port, this catapults Hyundai and Kia potentially to the front of the line in terms of how rapidly their NACS rollout is developing.
Most automakers have promised that they will give out adapters first, and adopt a native port later. But Hyundai/Kia’s announcement stated that native ports will roll out first, at the end of 2024, with adapters being shipped to existing users in Q1 2025.
But timelines for many manufacturers have been pushed back due to Tesla’s Supercharger chaos, so we weren’t sure if that timeline would be held. However, seeing Hyundai and Kia testing a native NACS port already suggests that they may still be on the same timeline. Stay tuned.
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