CEO of General Motors (NYSE:GM), Mary Barra, held a live "twitter spaces" meeting with Elon Musk on Thursday to announce a deal between GM and Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) to integrate Tesla’s North American Charging Standard (NACS) charging connections into their vehicles. The deal follows a similar announcement by Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) in late May.
Before the ink could dry, shares of some electric vehicle charging companies were spiraling. ChargePoint Holdings Inc (NYSE:CHPT) shares were down more than 3% premarket before falling more than 13% by the afternoon. Shares of EVgo Inc (NASDAQ:EVGO) were down more than 4% premarket, also falling more than 13% Friday afternoon.
Blink Charging Co (NASDAQ:BLNK), with over 4,000 charging stations in the U.S., opened trading on Friday down 0.5% before eventually falling by almost 10%.
Piling on to the troubles of EV charging startups, the White House revealed Friday that Tesla chargers would also become eligible to receive a piece of the billions of dollars in federal subsidies so long as the chargers also included CCS connections.
This is the first time the Biden administration has mentioned Tesla as a potential recipient of EV charging subsidies, leading others to speculate if the NACS connectors may become the standard for all electric vehicles in the near future.
"Earlier this year, we developed minimum standards to ensure publicly funded EV charging is accessible, reliable, and affordable for all drivers, and we required interoperability to promote competition. Those standards give flexibility for adding both CCS and NACS, as long as drivers can count on a minimum of CCS," White House spokesperson Robyn Patterson said in statement.
Shares of EVGO and CHPT are down 13% and 12.75% in afternoon trading on Friday while shares of BLNK are down 9.52%.