Today was supposed to be the day that Kia owners gain access to Tesla’s Supercharger network, but on Monday the brand announced that access would be delayed until spring. However, some owners have figured out a way to charge on Superchargers already.
The North American electric vehicle industry’s transition to NACS, the popular charging proposed through Tesla and now popularized through SAE, has been a busy time.
We’ve noticed that several brands were added to the “coming soon” list, and even beyond that, VW and Honda have made their own announcements that they’ll soon have access.
But the wait might not be that long for all owners, if you’re willing to do something unsanctioned to get a charge.
Kia and Hyundai electric cars are built on the same E-GMP platform, famous for its DC charging capability. And those brands were the first brands other than Tesla to ship cars with a local NACS port, without having to use an adapter.
Currently, we’ve heard reports of Hyundai electric cars qualifying without factor on Tesla’s network, even though that logo was just added to Tesla’s “coming soon” page this week. And, it is said, this also applies in some cases to Kia, with a small twist.
A Kia EV6 owner, who is taking Technically Jeff’s call on Youtube, posted a video of himself charging his EV6 into a Tesla Supercharger today, the day Kia originally intended to have access to it.
It does not have an EV6 2025 with a local NACS port and instead used a third-party adapter from A2Z. This is not the official Kia approved adapter as the official Kia adapter is not yet available. Manufacturers sometimes prefer to use an official adapter instead of a third-party adapter.
In order for the Supercharger to recognize your vehicle, you opened the Tesla app and indexed your vehicle as an Ioniq 5, instead of an EV6. We’ve heard from other owners who see the same thing with Honda Prologues, classifying them as Chevy Blazers. (again, due to the usual underpinnings of the car) and being able to charge.
You pre-conditioned the battery by tricking your car into thinking you were going to use some other CCS DC tester nearby, so the battery was only partially conditioned and the initial fast speed was not optimal.
Additionally, because it was charged in a Tesla V3 case, which is not capable of generating 800V, the EV6’s 800V charging formula was limited, so it ended up peaking at around a hundred kW, which is about some of the most productive functionality those cars can handle. Until Tesla releases more V4 cases, 800V cars can expect slower charging functionality on the Superchargers than on an 800V charger.
The change allowing this seems to have been recent as well. Other owners have tried recently to charge Kias using the same method with no luck. But now we’re seeing this report that it is possible today, if you have a third-party adapter and don’t mind telling a little lie to Tesla.
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Jameson has been driving electric cars since 2009, and covering EVs, sustainability and policy for Electrek since 2016.
You can reach him at [email protected].