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Customers of Rivian, which has its own small network of fast
chargers, will be able to access 12,000 Tesla Superchargers with adapters in
the United States and Canada as early as spring 2024, the Irvine,
California-based company said. Rivian also said it would make a Tesla-style
charging port standard on its vehicles, starting in 2025.
Tesla has struck comparable deals in recent weeks with
General Motors and Ford. While other automakers get access to Tesla's charging
network, Tesla stands to profit from selling power to a bigger group of
electric vehicle drivers.
Tesla shares are up more than 40 percent since late May when
the leading US electric carmaker announced its deal with Ford.
Automakers need access to reliable charging to allay
customers' fears of being stranded when a battery runs out of power, but most,
with the exception of Tesla, have stayed away from building their own networks.
Installing a network of chargers - and maintaining them —
requires substantial investment for still —limited returns because of the
relatively small number of EVs automakers other than Tesla have on the road,
analysts have said.
Tesla's Superchargers account for about 60 percent of the
total fast chargers available in the United States, according to US Department
of Energy.
Services and other revenue, which includes the fees for
using Tesla's Superchargers, made up just under 10 percent of revenue in the
past quarter. The company does not break out charging revenue alone.
Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe said in a statement the deal would
let buyers of Rivian electric pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles
"leverage Tesla's expansive Supercharger network."
Tesla has made major strides in displacing a rival standard
known as the Combined Charging System (CCS) that had the earlier backing of the
Biden administration, which is offering $7.5 billion in funding to speed the deployment of EV chargers in the United States.
Qualifying for some of that federal money had required Tesla
to open up its network for charging.
Tesla's charging standard had been proprietary until
November, when it made the design and specifications public and rebranded the
technology as the North American Charging Standard (NACS).
"It's great to see the industry coming together to
adopt the North American Charging Standard," Tesla's senior director of
charging infrastructure, Rebecca Tinucci, said in a statement.
Manufacturers and operators of CCS chargers such as ABB E-mobility
North America, a unit of Swiss industrial firm ABB, Tritium DCFC, EVgo and
FreeWire have raced to announce the addition of NACS plugs to their charging
stations since the Ford and GM announcements.
Rivian, which makes the R1T pickup truck and the R1S SUV,
will continue to expand its own charging network, the company said. The company
had previously said it plans to build more than 3,500 charging stations.
China, the world's largest market for electric vehicles, has
its own charging standard. Automakers in Japan such as Toyota and Nissan have
pushed another standard known as CHAdeMo. © Reuters