No, Tesla is not phasing out the J1772 adapter

Recently on Facebook a claim has gone around that Tesla is phasing out the J1772 adapter. This adapter is required for a Tesla car to charge at a regular charging station, since Tesla cars have a Tesla-specific charging port. There is a lot of history behind why Tesla has a non-standard charging port, but one thing it means is that Tesla owners must have this adapter to use the prevailing standards-based public charging network.

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Tesla cars are sold with a J1772 charging adapter. And the adapter is available through the Tesla online store.

There are several postings claiming that

  • Some Tesla Model 3’s are being delivered without a J1772 adapter
  • The new Model 3 owner called the Tesla Store and informed that the J1772 adapter is no longer included with the car, and would have to be purchased separately
  • The J1772 store is shown as out of stock in the online store
  • Further inquiries to Tesla staff say that Tesla is simply phasing out the J1772 adapter

If this were indeed the case it would be an utterly wrong move for Tesla to take. It is bad enough that Tesla cars use a non-standard charging port. But to not sell the adapter with the car, and to not make the adapter available at all, is beyond wrong.

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To try and verify these claims I went to the Tesla online store, and was able to find the J1772 adapter for sale, and added it to a shopping cart. Nowhere was there an indication the J1772 adapter was out of stock.

Then I queried Tesla and was told clearly that this adapter is not being phased out, and they will reach out to the customer(s) to determine why the adapter was not included in their purchase.

An important detail to this is that the answer Tesla gave was not crystal clear on whether a free J1772 adapter would continue being included with cars sold by Tesla. That the response included a promise to reach out to customer(s) seems to imply the free J1772 adapter would continue being supplied with Tesla cars, but it was not clearly said.

Other actions Tesla is taking suggests Tesla is in a cost cutting phase because of the need to increase profit margin to make it possible to sell the long-promised affordable Tesla Model 3. In theory it is possible Tesla might stop supplying the J1772 adapter for free as a cost cutting move.

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While Tesla has been doing some crazy things of late, it is reassuring to know that Tesla is not crazy enough to stop selling the J1772 adapter.

About David Herron

David Herron is a writer and software engineer living in Silicon Valley. He primarily writes about electric vehicles, clean energy systems, climate change, peak oil and related issues. When not writing he indulges in software projects and is sometimes employed as a software engineer. David has written for sites like PlugInCars and TorqueNews, and worked for companies like Sun Microsystems and Yahoo.

About David Herron

David Herron is a writer and software engineer living in Silicon Valley. He primarily writes about electric vehicles, clean energy systems, climate change, peak oil and related issues. When not writing he indulges in software projects and is sometimes employed as a software engineer. David has written for sites like PlugInCars and TorqueNews, and worked for companies like Sun Microsystems and Yahoo.

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