Electrify America Begin to phase out CHAdeMO In 2022

Beginning in 2022, the EV charging infrastructure giant will focus solely on CCS outside of California.

In recent years, the automotive industry has converged on CCS as the non-proprietary standard of choice for vehicles in the U.S. Nissan, the last BEV manufacturer producing CHAdeMO vehicles for the North American market, has announced that the upcoming Ariya will use CCS charging (Goodwin, 2020).

As sales of all new BEVs shift to CCS, Electrify America forecasts that over 90% of the non-Tesla BEVs in operation will use CCS by 2025. Electrify America is already seeing this shift at our stations. CHAdeMO usage (including Tesla via CHAdeMO adapter) accounted for just 9% of station usage in the first quarter of 2021, down from 15% in 2019, despite CHAdeMO chargers making up over 20% of all DCFC equipment at our stations.

In addition, whereas historically a CHAdeMO adapter was the only way to fast charge Tesla vehicles outside of the Supercharger network, in late-2020 Setec Power released a CCS to Tesla adapter (Moloughney, 2020), thereby unlocking CCS chargers to interested Tesla drivers.

It's another reason why CHAdeMO was no longer needed on its sites. Since a CCS adapter is now available, Tesla owners no longer need to use a CHAdeMO adapter to charge on DC Fast charge stations. It's rumored that soon Tesla will also be releasing its own CCS adapter for the North American market.

Through Cycles 1 and 2, Electrify America will have built over 800 CHAdeMO stations across the country. Together with nearly 5,000 chargers built by other networks, legacy CHAdeMO drivers have access to a robust charging network. At the time of writing, the ratio of CHAdeMO vehicles in operation to CHAdeMO DCFC is just 22:1.

Given this, Electrify America will focus its Cycle 3 investment on the future of electrification and deploy CCS as the non-proprietary standard at our stations. This action helps to reinforce the automotive manufacturers’ convergence on a single standard, reduces customer confusion, reduces capital and operating costs, and ultimately is expected to lead to increased EV adoption.