Fords taking two Superchargers at once is OK for Tesla but three is bad parking

Tesla's open-sourced NACS system is now the de facto standard when it comes to electric vehicle charging as nearly every major manufacturer has adopted it by now.

While early North American Charging Standard adopters will only start placing Tesla ports in their vehicles next year, Tesla nevertheless just opened its Supercharger network to other EV brands, starting with Ford.

For now, it only supports the F-150 Lightning and the Mustang Mach-E by means of a free CCS adapter that Ford will start sending out to their owners, after CEO Jim Farley himself tested it for interoperability with Tesla's Superchargers.

Ford drivers will pay 30% higher prices per kWh at Superchargers than Tesla owners if they charge on a pay-as-you-go basis, or the same rate if they get a $12.99 monthly membership. As if to soothe the pricing pain, Tesla now generously lists that they can occupy two charging spots at once but not more.

That was probably hardly the intention with which Tesla created the new Supercharger parking schematics in its app, but that's the way it comes out. On one of the pictures in the app update that explains how to top up a Ford F-150 Lightning, the pickup is shown parked over the line and essentially taking up two spots unless all drivers before it parked at the right of the Superchargers.

Funny as that may be, those Tesla directions on how to charge a Ford vehicle at a Supercharger are rather self-explanatory since the F-150 Lightning has its charging port at the front left of the truck. The Tesla app, however, also shows another picture to advise not to park sideways at a Supercharger and occupy three or four spots at once. Taking two spots while parking a Ford F-150 Lightning at a Supercharger seems OK with Tesla, though.

It remains to be seen how Tesla owners will react when other EVs with charging ports all over the place start popping up at crowded stations, though, since Rivian, GM, Volvo and Polestar will be given access this spring. All of that diagonal parking drama is avoided at the new V4 Supercharger stations which have much longer cables running on the outside of the pile.

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