The Lesson of J3400: MOVE FAST AND FIX THINGS

The standard may have changed everything, just not how you think.

On May 25, 2023, Ford made an announcement that seemed unimaginable. For those in the EV and standards industry, it caught many by surprise. Ford was partnering with Tesla to move away from the CCS (J1772/CCS) standard that's on a majority of electric vehicles and would switch to the Tesla NACS (North American Charging Standard) in the future.

“When the J3400 news broke or the NACS partnerships broke, it kind of went around the regulatory ‘there's no way around that’ and it was just the worst day because I thought we were going to lose, open, collaboratively created standards,” Sarah Hipel, standards and reliability program manager for the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation told the audience at SAE's WCX 2024. Hipel was on a panel titled, “In The Wake of J3400 (NACS), Are Standards Still Needed?”