My wife plans to get a new Kona EV, with NACS, to replace her 2021 Kona EV

This doesn't qualify as solid information, but our wonderful moderator, @electriceddy, posted this news in the Ioniq 5 forum showing the 2025 Ioniq 5 sporting a NACS charging port. Would Hyundai make the change on the Ioniq 5 and not the Kona EV?

 

I would suspect the contrary, but opinions are like a**hem. We all have them. I think the swap to NACS is more about availability of the components that make up the charging system. I'd bet even money all the onboard chargers, are going to be very similar. Thus if any vehicle gets NACS we just set up a supply chain that supports it, and supporting another distinct supply chain for CCS is going to escalate production costs for both.

Reality is the changes required CCS->NACS are pretty trivial. Since the plug is smaller overall, retrofitting the box/mount for the charging port on the vehicle is a simple mold design. Next is the wiring harness, again, no real change size wise, and the NACS actually uses LESS wire. Now $5 might not seem like much but that get's significant over a production run of 100,000 cars. Next is the charging unit itself. This is a generally solid-state product in a box. It does require the additional internals and logic to support both AC and DC on the same wires, but I'd bet that is not going to change production costs significantly over the existing stuff. I might note "connections cost money". Removing two (2) wires probably ends up with a manufacturing cost push at the end of the day. Everything behind the charging and control unit doesn't change, basically you zap it with programming for whatever battery/BMS system that it feeds.

The only way I see Kona/Niro with CCS is if they have significant leftover inventory of components.

 

Regardless of whether the vehicle has NACS or CCS they will need an adapter to have access to all charging options for quite some time. Tesla has a NACS to CCS right now. The other thing is that Hyundai don't have access to Tesla Superchargers yet other than locations where the Magicdock locations. The Canadian Tire near me has magicdock and I see all sorts of vehicles charging other than Tesla and Ford.

The Kona has an advantage for a better experience at the Superchargers since they are on the 400V architecture compared to the Ioniq 5/6.

 

This I think is the crux. The shift to NACS is going to hurt sales of any car that doesn't adopt the plug. I know *I* for one would not buy a new car that did not have a NACS plug at this point. Adapters are fine for the existing vehicles, but long term I hope we see harness/component changes that allow retro-fitting a NACS plug to a CCS vehicle. Frankly it really should not be that difficult, I expect an aftermarket for the stuff as the technology matures.