About a year ago, BMW announced its electric vehicles would gain access to designated Tesla Supercharger stations in early 2025. To make it happen, cars from BMW, MINI, and Rolls-Royce will adopt the North American Charging Standard (NACS). However, there’s been a slight change of plans as you won’t be able to plug your car at the beginning of next year as originally announced.
CarsDirect got a hold of a dealer bulletin sent on October 1 that mentions owners of electric vehicles with a Combined Charging System (CCS) port will have to wait until later in 2025. In an e-mail to BMWBLOG, a company spokesperson confirmed the minor setback. The new timeline is the second half of the year. While that’s disappointing to hear, there’s a good reason for the delay.
“We’re working on a full integration to allow BMW Group customers to access the network via their respective vehicle apps, and working with our suppliers to develop an approved adapter solution.”
In other words, BMW wants to make the transition as smooth as possible for EV owners. It’s better to postpone access to the Supercharger network than to roll it out too early and risk frustrating drivers with imperfect software. The adapter plays a crucial role and has to be fully compatible to work as advertised. Until it’s ready, “it is recommended to exclusively use charging stations equipped with CCS1/J1772 connectors,” according to the dealer bulletin.
If you plan on buying one of the future Neue Klasse models, you might not even need an adapter. As previously reported, NK-based electric vehicles are expected to be NACS-compatible. At the moment of writing, there are nearly 2,700 stations in the US, according to Supercharge.info. BMW will launch at least six models on its first dedicated electric car platform by 2028. In addition, the iX5, iX6, and iX7 are all coming in a few years but on CLAR instead.
Source: BMW, CarsDirect, Supercharge
