Following other car manufacturers, Volkswagen is now also looking into adopting Tesla's charging network standard for its electric cars in North America.

"The Volkswagen Group and its brands are currently examining the introduction of Tesla's North American Charging Standard (Nacs) for its North American customers," the German company announced on Thursday. The startup Rivian, General Motors and Ford have recently announced that they will install the Tesla variant. VW's subsidiary for the charging network, Electrify America, has more than 850 charging stations with around 4000 chargers in the USA and Canada.

Tesla is getting ever closer to its goal of setting the standard on the North American market. According to data from the US Department of Energy, billionaire Elon Musk's company provides around 60 percent of fast-charging stations in the USA. While Tesla has invested a lot of money in building its Supercharger network, the other US manufacturers have transferred charging to independent providers. These use the Combined Charging System (CCS), which the US government has also backed. CCS charging plugs are standard in Europe. Tesla has adopted this technology here.

(Report by Akash Sriram and Nathan Gomes; Written by Scot W. Stevenson; Edited by Ralf Bode; If you have any questions, please contact our editorial team at berlin.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for politics and the economy) or frankfurt.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for companies and markets)).