Hot on the heels of Kia’s addition to Tesla’s “coming soon” page for Supercharger access, we now learn that the Supercharger may not arrive as soon as expected for Kia, with a delay of several weeks or months before the Kia owners. the largest fast charging network in North America.
Earlier today, Kia and several other brands were added to Tesla’s upcoming page, suggesting it may be imminent.
This coincides with an earlier announcement from September that would be made in January, with a date scheduled for January 15, just two days away.
Specifically, Kia has updated a press release on its website which previously stated a launch date of January 15. The press release now says “Access to the DC fast chargers is planned for the first quarter of 2025.”
That means it could be any time in the next three months, assuming there are no further delays.
PC Magazine quoted James Bell, Kia’s head of PR, as stating that “a delay has occurred and we are working with the appropriate teams to confirm new availability/date.” We also reached out to Bell to see if we could get any more information, but hadn’t heard back as of press time.
It’s unclear if this delay will affect other brands, such as Hyundai and Genesis.
Kia and Hyundai (and the Hyundai Genesis sublogo) share a platform for their electric cars and were the first to offer cars with local NACS ports in the 2025 models, rather than adapters as both logos have done so far. /Hyundai cars without a local NACS port will still be able to use an adapter once the cars have access to the network.
We reached out to Hyundai to see if they were affected by the same delay, but have not yet gotten a response. We will update it if we do. We’ve heard that Hyundai homeowners are having good luck charging on Tesla’s network, although it’s still indexed as “coming soon” on Tesla’s site.
In 2022, Tesla announced it would open its charging network, lured by big money promised in President Biden’s federal EV charging grants.
For a while, this seemed a bit of a hail, as many believed that most of the industry had already committed to the popular SAE CCS for fast charging.
But then, in 2023, Ford announced it would adopt Tesla’s “NACS” connector and all the dominoes fell. Very quickly, the entire sector announced its transition to the Tesla charging standard.
But those things take time, and he’s had to work on redesigning vehicles, building adapters, arranging software handshakes, and crafting an official standard. Today, several Array brands can already use Superchargers, and there will be more in the future.
The rollout appeared to slow down for a while, after Tesla CEO Elon Musk abruptly fired the entire Supercharging team, which had been guilty of effectively executing this coup that could allow Tesla to take a lasting lead in charging. electric vehicles, with those layoffs. causing widespread chaos and undermining the transition.
Earlier today, when so many brands were added to the “coming soon” page, it seemed like the dust had settled on the chaotic loading scenario that had caused my Musk to become unstable. But perhaps this news from Kia indicates that there are still problems to be resolved. be solved.
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Jameson has been driving electric cars since 2009, and covering EVs, sustainability and policy for Electrek since 2016.
You can contact him at jamie@electrek. co.