Enlarge / Dodge has an all-new Charger on the way. (credit: Dodge)

Dodge unveiled a fully electric version of its Charger muscle car earlier today. The Charger is not quite ready to ditch internal combustion entirely—variants with twin-turbo V6 engines under the hood are on the way, too, but none will have the same performance as the 2024 Charger Daytona Scat Pack, which boasts an electric powertrain with 670 hp (500 kW) and a quarter-mile time of just 11.5 seconds.

The two-door Charger Daytona Scat Pack goes into production later this year at Stellantis' Windsor Assembly Plant in Ontario, Canada, alongside the Charger Daytona R/T, another all-electric model with a slightly less powerful 496-hp (370 kW) powertrain. Four-door versions of the Daytona Scat Pack and R/T models go into production in early 2025, as will two- and four-door versions of the Charger SIXPACK H.O., which uses a 550-hp (410 kW) V6 gasoline engine.

Built on Stellantis' new STLA Large platform, the EV Charger Daytonas use a 400 V powertrain and a 100.5 kWh battery pack with a peak discharge rate of 550 kW. The electric Chargers are all-wheel drive with a pair of 335-hp (250 kW), 300 lb-ft (406 Nm) drive units. However, Dodge says there are actually six different performance levels, including the aforementioned 496-hp R/T, which uses a "Direct Connection Stage 1 upgrade kit" that adds 40 hp (30 kW), and the Scat Pack, which uses a "Direct Connection Stage 2 upgrade kit" that adds 80 hp (60 kW) extra.

Enlarge / Ford was the first OEM to announce it was switching to J3400, and it's the first automaker to gain access to the Tesla Supercharger network. (credit: Ford)

Today, Ford electric vehicles gained access to the Tesla Supercharger network. Last May, the Blue Oval was the first automaker to throw its lot in with what was then called the North American Charging Standard and is now known as J3400. Ford proved to be the first domino falling, and with Stellantis' announcement earlier this month that it too would move to J3400, the more compact DC fast-charging plug will be the de facto standard in the next couple of years.

Until Ford made the switch, every non-Tesla EV in North America had settled on the Combined Charging Standard 1 plug (with the exception of the Nissan Leaf, which still uses CHAdeMO). CCS1 and J3400 use the same electronic communication protocols—only the actual plug and socket are different.

But it will take some time for car makers to start building J3400 ports into their EVs. That should begin next year, probably with the introduction of model year 2026. This means that EVs older than MY26 will need to use a passive adapter to mate a J3400 charger cable with a CCS1-equipped EV.

Enlarge / Lumafield's blog shared this image showing CT scans of three earbuds. The left is a real AirPods Pro (2nd Gen). The wire-riddled two on the right are fakes. (credit: Lumafield)

Whether they're products pretending to be made by a brand or devices claiming to be something they're not, (like a microSD card posing as an SSD), fraudulent electronics pose a threat to unsuspecting shoppers' wallets and, at times, their safety. With their popularity and high prices, scammers often target Apple products. But what's actually inside those faux Apple devices?

To find out, Lumafield busted out its $75,000 CT scanner to illustrate what people get when they end up with counterfeit MacBook chargers or knockoff AirPods Pro.

Lumafield makes industrial CT scanners and software. Lately, it has been using its Neptune scanner to examine electronics, like Apple's $130 Thunderbolt 4 cable. This week, Lumafield provided CT scans (which you can play with via Lumafield's online Voyager software) of the AirPods Pro 2nd Generation (here), two counterfeits (here and here), as well as a look at Apple's 85 W MagSafe 2 Power Adapter (here) and a fake (here).

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

More automakers this week announced a switch in the style of charging plugs that will be fitted to their future electric vehicles. On Wednesday BMW broke its news, then yesterday Toyota did the same: Both are ditching the Combined Charging Standard 1 socket for their North American EVs and will instead use the North American Charging System plug, designed by Tesla. Together with the changing plug comes access for their EV drivers to Tesla's Supercharger network.

BMW

BMW's announcement applies to all its car brands, which means that in addition to EVs like the BMW i5 or i7, it's also swapping over to NACS for the upcoming Mini EVs as well as the Rolls-Royce Spectre. BMW will start adding native NACS ports to its EVs in 2025, and that same year its customers will gain access to the Tesla Supercharger network.

BMW's release doesn't explicitly mention a CCS1-NACS adapter being made available, but it does say that BMW (and Mini and Rolls-Royce) EVs with CCS1 ports will be able to use Superchargers from early 2025.

Enlarge / Tesla-style plugs are coming to ChargePoint chargers. (credit: ChargePoint)

Tesla drivers will soon have a new place to fast-charge their electric vehicles. Today, the charging network ChargePoint announced it will have Tesla-style North American Charging Standard support for both its AC and DC chargers over the next few weeks. And in November, it will start shipping NACS cable upgrade kits for existing DC fast chargers, which will allow Tesla EVs to charge at those ChargePoint DC fast chargers.

"We've already said we're already taking preorders on the home charger, and then over the next few weeks, we'll start shipping the fast-charge cables to preorder customers that have our fast chargers, and you can already order a new fast charger with NACS cables on," said Pasquale Romano, ChargePoint's CEO.

"We think the most important difference is we do not make our customers decide by parking space whether the cable is NACS or CCS. I think that's a mess and no one should do that. No one should have a dedicated parking space because you'll never get the ratio right, and it will change over time. So every solution that we have is going to enable both connector types per parking space," he told Ars.

Enlarge (credit: Hyundai)

On Thursday morning, Hyundai announced that it's the latest automaker to adopt the North American Charging Standard for its battery electric vehicles. Developed by Tesla, NACS was opened up late last year and, since this May, has seen a flurry of automakers pledge to drop the existing Combined Charging Standard plug for the smaller, lighter NACS alternative, together with deals negotiating access to Tesla's robust Supercharger network in the process.

Ford went first, and all the subsequent announcements followed the same pattern: native NACS ports built into new EVs from 2025, with a CCS-NACS adapter made available in 2024 to allow those other brands' EVs to charge at Supercharger stations.

Today's timeline is slightly different, just to make sure we're paying attention. Hyundai says that it's going to start building NACS ports (instead of CCS1) into "all-new or refreshed Hyundai EVs" for the US market in Q4 2024, with Canadian EVs following suit in the first half of 2025.