Texas Will Force Taxpayer-Funded EV Chargers to Use Tesla's Plug

Texas will require charging companies to add Tesla's North American Charging Standard (NACS) connector to new stations in order to qualify for a slice of state-controlled federal tax subsidies.

As the largest recipient of the $5 billion grant National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, Texas has committed to doling out $407.8 million over the next five years to help build up its own EV charging infrastructure. There's just one catch: these chargers must include Tesla's NACS connector, as decided on Wednesday by the Lone Star State despite pushback from charging companies that operate across Texas.

Texas was originally to vote on whether or not to mandate NACS in mid-July. However, it delayed the vote until earlier this week following a letter sent in June to the Texas Transportation Commission by five EV charging companies—including Chargepoint, which has already committed to implementing NACS.

The letter was a petition to delay the decision to adopt NACS as a formal requirement to receive federal funding. According to the companies, the mandate would risk the successful deployment of EV charging stations since the NACS connector was not standardized by SAE International at the time of writing—a likely barrier to adoption for some major automakers prior to the Ford-charged NACS boom earlier this year.

"Time is needed to properly standardize, test, and certify the safety and interoperability of Tesla connectors across the industry," the group wrote in its letter.