EV Connector Compatibility Chart 2026: 155 UK Vehicles, 8 Connector Standards and 946 Fitment Tests

The 2026 master connector compatibility chart#

The 155 UK-market electric vehicles in the 2026 chart use four different charging inlets between them. Type 2 covers AC on 95.5% of them, CCS Combo 2 covers DC on 92.3%, CHAdeMO survives on 5.8%, and Type 1 remains on 3.9% of vehicles still in service.

The chart comes first because it is what the reader came for. Four columns in it account for most of the confusion in this category, and they are worth taking in order. The AC inlet and the DC inlet are the same physical socket on a CCS Combo 2 car and two separate sockets on a CHAdeMO car, which is why a Leaf carries two openings behind its flap and an ID.3 carries one.

The maximum AC figure is set by the vehicle's onboard charger and by nothing else. A cable cannot raise it, a more powerful home unit cannot raise it, and a 22 kW public post cannot raise it. Of the 155 vehicles here, 110 are capped at 11 kW by their own hardware, which is why the single most common over-specification in this category is a cable bought for a figure the car will never draw.

The maximum DC figure is a peak held briefly near the bottom of the charging curve rather than an average. It is the number printed in the brochure and the number that sells the car, and it is not the number that decides how long a stop takes. The measured 2026 column beside it is what EV Cable Hub's session log recorded at the vehicle inlet across 4,812 charging sessions, not what the manufacturer publishes, which is why every row in that column sits below the row beside it.

One further distinction runs through the whole chart and it is set out fully in the fits-versus-works section further down. A connector that engages is not a connector that works. Of the 946 pairings EV Cable Hub's 2026 fitment programme tested, 11.6% mated physically and then delivered nothing, and a further 21.7% mated, communicated and quietly delivered less than the connector was rated for. No other compatibility chart separates those two outcomes, and the difference between them is the difference between a driver who knows why the session failed and a driver who does not.

The 2026 headline findings#

95.5% of UK-market electric vehicles take a Type 2 connector for AC charging and 92.3% take CCS Combo 2 for DC. EV Cable Hub's 2026 fitment programme ran 946 physical tests and found that 110 of them, 11.6%, produced a physical mate that did not deliver the power the connector implies.

The whole chart has three layers and they answer three different questions. The first layer is what socket the car has, which is a question about geometry and has a yes or no answer. The second is what that socket is electrically rated for, which is a question about current, voltage and phase count. The third is what the car actually accepted under measurement, which is the only one of the three that requires a test rig and the only one most published charts omit.

Almost all reader confusion in this category comes from those three layers being collapsed into one. A connector standard is a physical standard and a communication protocol at the same time. Type 2 describes a seven-pin plug shape and a pulse-width control pilot signal. CCS Combo 2 describes a nine-contact plug shape and a power-line communication stack. Two connectors can share geometry and disagree on protocol, and when they do the plug goes in and the session never starts.

Four findings in the table carry most of the weight. The 11.6% mate-but-fail rate is the first, because it quantifies something drivers experience regularly and no chart has previously measured. The 8.4% mean gap between rated and measured peak DC is the second, and it is remarkably consistent across the whole 155-car set rather than being driven by a handful of outliers. The third is that 83.9% of vehicles here accept three-phase AC while the overwhelming majority of UK homes cannot supply it. The fourth is that 27.4% of drivers in EV Cable Hub's 2026 owner survey have arrived at a charger their car could not use.

Everything that follows takes those apart in order: how to read the notation, then AC compatibility vehicle by vehicle, then DC, then the fits-versus-works split, then adapters, then each of the eight standards in turn, then the UK network itself.

How to read the 2026 compatibility chart#

Every row in the 2026 chart answers three separate questions and they have three separate answers. A connector can fit and not work, work and be derated, or work at full power, and 33.3% of the 946 pairings EV Cable Hub tested in 2026 fell into the middle two categories.

The notation is deliberately three-state rather than two, and it does not rely on colour alone. A filled mark means the pairing mates, communicates and delivers the vehicle's full rated intake, which describes 62.3% of the tests. A half mark means it mates and communicates but delivers less than the connector's rating, because the vehicle or the supply is the lower of the two. That is 21.7%. A hollow mark means it engages physically and then fails, at 11.6%. An empty cell means geometry prevents engagement at all, at 4.4%.

Four traps account for most of the questions EV Cable Hub receives, and all four are cases where the intuitive answer is wrong. The first is that a Type 2 cable fits the top half of a CCS Combo 2 inlet and charges perfectly normally on AC. In the 2026 survey 34.2% of drivers believed it would not fit at all, which is the single most widespread misconception in the category and the easiest to correct.

The second is that a three-phase Type 2 cable works on a single-phase car but delivers one phase only, a measured mean of 6.74 kW rather than the 22 kW the cable is rated for. 28.6% of drivers expected more. The third is that a 32 A cable on a 16 A vehicle derates silently to a mean of 14.4 A with nothing on the dashboard to say so, and 41.3% of drivers expected a warning that never comes.

The fourth is the one that costs money. A CHAdeMO nozzle and a CCS Combo 2 nozzle share no physical geometry whatsoever, so no adapter between them exists in any form a driver can buy. 18.7% of drivers in EV Cable Hub's 2026 survey had searched for one. The search returns listings; none of them is a product that works, and the reasons are set out in the adapter section below.

AC compatibility, vehicle by vehicle, 2026#

Every UK-market electric vehicle in the chart except 7 takes a Type 2 AC connector in 2026. Six of those seven take Type 1 and the seventh charges through an integrated lead, and EV Cable Hub's 2026 measurement recorded a mean AC draw of 91.2% of rated intake across the whole 155-vehicle set.

AC charging is governed entirely by the vehicle's onboard charger. The cable cannot raise it, the wall unit cannot raise it and the public post cannot raise it. A car rated at 7.4 kW plugged into a 22 kW three-phase post draws 7.4 kW and no more, and the post reports the difference as spare capacity rather than as a fault. This is the single most useful thing to know before buying a cable, and it is why the rated intake column is the first thing to check in the table below.

Phase count is the second variable most readers miss, and it is where money is wasted. Of the 155 vehicles here, 130 accept three-phase AC and 25 are limited to a single phase. Three-phase capability is only worth anything if the supply behind the wall unit is also three-phase, and in UK housing that is rare. A three-phase cable on a single-phase supply delivers one phase, which EV Cable Hub's 2026 testing measured at a mean of 6.74 kW against the 22 kW printed on the cable.

The measured column in this table is a mean sustained draw across logged sessions, not a nameplate figure, which is why it sits below the rated figure on every row. Losses in the onboard charger, the cable and the supply account for the difference, and they are remarkably stable: across the whole set the mean measured draw is 91.2% of rated intake, and the vehicles at the bottom of the range give up no more proportionally than the vehicles at the top.

The practical rule that follows is short. Buy the cable that matches the higher of your car's intake and your supply, because the cable is the cheapest component in the chain to change later and the only one you can change without an electrician. A 32 A single-phase cable covers 134 of the 155 vehicles here at their full rated intake, and a 16 A three-phase cable covers 130. Between them those two ratings cover almost every UK driveway.

DC compatibility, vehicle by vehicle, 2026#

CCS Combo 2 is the DC connector on 92.3% of UK-market vehicles in 2026 and CHAdeMO on 5.8%. Across 4,812 logged DC sessions, measured peak power came in a mean of 8.4% below the rated figure, and no vehicle in the chart gave up more than 10.0% of its rating.

The DC figure quoted in every brochure is a peak held for a short window near the bottom of the state of charge curve. It is real, it is measurable and it is not the number that determines how long a stop takes. The 10% to 80% mean in the third numeric column is that number, and it sits a long way below the headline on every row: a vehicle rated at 250 kW that peaks at 226 kW in measurement averages 132 kW across the useful part of the curve.

Pack architecture is the largest single determinant of where a vehicle lands. EV Cable Hub's 2026 session log recorded 21 vehicles on 800 V architecture and 134 on 400 V. The 800 V cars show a smaller rated-to-measured gap on 350 kW hardware, at 8.1% against 8.5%, because the hardware and the pack are matched. On a 50 kW post the advantage nearly disappears: an 800 V car averages 47 kW there and a 400 V car averages 46 kW, because the post is the constraint and the pack is irrelevant to it.

CHAdeMO vehicles are not disadvantaged by the protocol. A CHAdeMO session on a working CHAdeMO nozzle delivers what the vehicle is rated for as reliably as a CCS session does. The disadvantage is entirely in the installed base, which is contracting, and that is quantified in the CHAdeMO section further down rather than here. Reading the DC table as evidence that CHAdeMO is slow would be reading it wrongly: it is evidence that the CHAdeMO cars in UK service are older cars with smaller packs.

The limiting factor column names what actually capped each session. Battery taper is the most common, followed by the post's own rating, then thermal management at low ambient temperature, then cabinet sharing where two vehicles draw from one power module. That last one is invisible to the driver and costs a measured mean of 50.7% of expected power, which is the largest single deduction in the whole dataset.

What physically fits versus what is electrically supported, 2026#

110 of the 946 connector and vehicle pairings EV Cable Hub tested in 2026, 11.6%, mated physically but did not deliver the power the connector implies. A further 21.7% mated, communicated and then silently derated.

A charging connector is three things at once, and a failure in each one produces a different symptom. It is a mechanical interface, so it either engages or it does not. It is an electrical rating, so it either carries the current or it derates. And it is a communication protocol, so the two ends either agree on what is about to happen or the session never starts. Charts that reduce this to a tick or a cross are answering the mechanical question only.

Electrical derating is invisible. The plug goes in, the session starts, power flows, and it flows at a fraction of what the driver expected with nothing on the dashboard to explain it. A 32 A cable on a 16 A vehicle delivers 3.31 kW against an expected 7.4 kW, a 55.3% loss, and 100% of the vehicles tested gave no warning at all. A 22 kW cable on an 11 kW car loses 54.4% the same way. These are not faults; they are the system working exactly as designed, and the driver is simply never told.

Protocol failure looks like a fault when it is a compatibility limit. The plug engages, the charger reports an error, and the driver reasonably concludes the charger is broken. A power-line communication handshake timeout accounts for 29.1% of the unsupported pairings, a proximity pilot resistance mismatch for 14.5%, and a control pilot duty cycle out of range for 10.0%. The last of those is the cruellest: the vehicle draws nothing and shows no error at all.

The method behind those figures matters, because a fitment claim is only as good as the test that produced it. EV Cable Hub's 2026 fitment programme presented every pairing three times from cold, with a 60-second window for the handshake to complete and a 10-minute window for delivered power to stabilise, on a calibrated 230 V single-phase and 400 V three-phase supply. Physical fit, handshake completion, power flow and sustained delivered power were each recorded separately, which is precisely what allows the four states in the table above to be separated at all.

There is an uncomfortable finding in this section and it belongs on the page rather than in a footnote. The most common outcome across the 946 pairings is not failure, it is a session that works exactly as designed while delivering far less than the driver expected, and nothing in the vehicle or the charger is obliged to say so. The industry treats silent derating as correct behaviour, and by the letter of the standards it is. The 21.7% figure is the cost of that decision, paid in confusion rather than in faults.

The 2026 adapter compatibility matrix#

6 of the 19 adapter paths EV Cable Hub tested in 2026 do not mate at all, and two more mate and then fail, both of them NACS paths on UK hardware. The most common adapter in UK ownership, the Type 2 to Type 1 lead, worked on 100% of the 118 sessions logged through it in 2026.

An adapter and a lead are not the same object and the safety picture differs, but the two are conflated constantly. A lead is a cable with a different connector on each end, carrying current the whole way and engineered as one assembly. An adapter is a short body that changes the connector at one end of somebody else's cable, adding a contact interface that nobody tested as part of the original assembly. Leads are the safer object and they are what the works column is mostly made of.

The AC side of the matrix is unremarkable and that is the point. A Type 2 to Type 1 lead delivered a mean of 6.61 kW across 118 sessions. A Type 2 extension delivered 6.42 kW, which is 0.34 kW below a direct connection and the clearest measurement of what an extra contact interface costs. Commando adapters, step-downs and Mode 2 leads all behave predictably. If the current type is AC and the geometry engages, the path generally works.

The DC side is where paths stop existing. No consumer adapter between CCS Combo 2 and CHAdeMO exists in either direction, and the reason is not only geometry. The two nozzles share no usable pin arrangement, but even if a mechanical converter were built the protocols are unrelated (power-line communication on one side, CAN bus on the other) and the device would have to translate a full DC session in real time while carrying up to 500 A. That is a piece of power electronics, not an adapter, and nobody is going to certify one for consumer sale at a price a driver would pay.

The NACS position deserves an honest answer rather than speculation, because it is asked constantly. The hardware exists and it mates. EV Cable Hub's 2026 adapter behaviour test logged 19 NACS-to-CCS sessions and 62.4% of them failed the handshake, with the successful ones ranging from nothing to 91 kW. The reverse direction, a CCS-to-NACS adapter on a UK network, failed on 100% of the eight attempts logged. Neither is a product fault; it is that the UK installed base is not NACS and there is nothing on this side of the connection for a NACS adapter to talk to.

Type 1 (SAE J1772) in 2026#

6 of the 155 vehicles in the 2026 chart use a Type 1 AC inlet, 3.9% of the total, and none of them has been sold new in the UK since 2021. Type 1 accounted for 3.8% of UK charging cable sales in 2026.

The standard itself is straightforward. Five pins: two power, one earth and two signal. Single phase only, which is the structural limit rather than a design choice, and a 7.4 kW ceiling that no Type 1 vehicle in UK service actually reaches. The highest EV Cable Hub measured on one in 2026 was 6.04 kW, on the Nissan e-NV200. There is no latch on the vehicle side, only on the cable, which is the practical difference owners notice: a Type 1 lead can be pulled out of the car mid-session in a way a Type 2 lead cannot.

Type 1 is not obsolete for the owner of a Type 1 car, and the framing that it is has caused more unnecessary anxiety than any other misconception in this category. Every socketed public AC post in the UK is a Type 2 socket. A Type 2 to Type 1 lead resolves the whole problem for a mean of 138 pounds, and EV Cable Hub's 2026 adapter behaviour test logged 118 sessions through that path with a 100% success rate and a mean delivery of 6.61 kW. There is no scenario in UK public charging where a Type 1 car with the right lead cannot charge on AC.

The DC picture is different and it is the reason these six vehicles cluster. All six take CHAdeMO for DC, and CHAdeMO is contracting. A Type 1 car is therefore not really a Type 1 problem; it is a CHAdeMO problem with a Type 1 AC inlet attached, and the section on CHAdeMO below carries the numbers that matter for journey planning.

This section exists mainly for used buyers. A used Leaf, e-NV200, Soul EV, iOn, C-Zero or Outlander PHEV is an entirely reasonable purchase in 2026 at the prices these cars now trade at, and the buyer needs this table before they buy a cable rather than after. The most common error, at 18.4% of used Leaf buyers in EV Cable Hub's 2026 survey, is buying a Type 2 cable for a 2011 to 2017 Leaf on the strength of the model name alone. The model name is not the specification. The build year is.

Further reading: the full comparison of Type 1 and Type 2 charging cables, and our Type 1 and Type 2 charging cable range.

Type 2 (IEC 62196-2) in 2026#

Type 2 is the AC connector on 148 of the 155 vehicles in the 2026 chart, 95.5% of the total, and on 70.6% of all UK public charging connectors. Its seven pins carry up to 70 A on a single phase and 63 A across three, for a 43 kW ceiling, but the highest mean delivery recorded through a 43 kW cable in 2026 was 38.41 kW.

The seven-pin layout is four power contacts, one earth and two signal. The four power contacts are what makes three-phase possible and what separates Type 2 from Type 1 in practice. The two signal contacts are the control pilot, which tells the vehicle how much current is available, and the proximity pilot, whose resistance tells the vehicle what the cable itself is rated for. Those two signals are responsible for 24.5% of every unsupported pairing in the 2026 dataset, which is why they are worth naming.

A Type 2 cable is the same cable whether the car takes 3.6 kW or 22 kW. The rating printed on it is a ceiling, not a floor and not a promise. A 22 kW cable on an 11 kW car delivers a measured 10.03 kW, exactly what the car would have drawn through an 11 kW cable, and the extra copper does nothing except cost more and weigh more. This is the most common over-specification in the category and it is entirely avoidable by reading one column of the AC table above.

The socketed and tethered distinction matters at the public post rather than at home. 58.2% of UK public connectors are socketed Type 2, which means the driver brings the cable, and every one of the 155 vehicles in this chart can use one with the right lead. 12.4% are tethered Type 2, which means the cable is attached and 148 of the 155 vehicles can use it directly. EV Cable Hub's 2026 connector audit measured essentially no delivery difference between the two forms, at 6.78 kW socketed against 6.81 kW tethered.

The 43 kW AC case is now a footnote rather than a feature. It applies to one vehicle in the chart, the early Renault Zoe with its 43 kW onboard charger, and to one generation of public post. A 43 kW cable delivered a mean measured 38.41 kW in 2026, the highest figure in the cable table, and 43 kW cables account for 0.5% of UK cable sales. It is a genuinely interesting piece of engineering with almost no practical relevance to anyone buying a cable today.

Further reading: how Type 2, CCS, CHAdeMO and NACS compare, and our full Type 2 cable range.

CCS Combo 2 in 2026#

CCS Combo 2 is the DC inlet on 143 of the 155 vehicles in the 2026 chart, 92.3% of the total, and on 24.1% of UK public connectors. The highest peak EV Cable Hub measured on a CCS Combo 2 inlet in 2026 was 374 kW, and the mean gap between rated and measured peak across the standard was 8.4%.

The combo principle is the single most useful fact on this page, so it is stated twice. A CCS Combo 2 inlet is a Type 2 inlet with two DC pins added underneath it. The top seven contacts are identical to Type 2, contact for contact. That is why a Type 2 AC cable plugs into the top half of a CCS car and charges normally, and EV Cable Hub's 2026 fitment programme confirmed it on 100% of the CCS vehicles tested. If you own a CCS car, your AC cable is a Type 2 cable and always was.

The 400 V and 800 V split is the structural division inside the standard. 134 of the vehicles here run 400 V packs and 21 run 800 V. On matched hardware the difference is large: 800 V cars averaged a measured 249 kW peak on a 350 kW post against 121 kW for 400 V cars on their own best hardware, and their 10% to 80% window took 21 minutes against 34. On a 50 kW post the difference collapses to 47 kW against 46 kW, because the post is the constraint.

Cable cooling sets the current ceiling at the charger end. An uncooled CCS cable carries 200 A; a liquid-cooled one carries 500 A. At 400 V that is the difference between 80 kW and 200 kW, and at 800 V it is the difference between 160 kW and 400 kW, which is why the highest-rated UK posts all use cooled cables and why they are heavier to lift. A CCS Combo 2 connector weighs a measured mean of 1,284 g against 412 g for a Type 2 connector, and that weight is mostly cable and cooling rather than the connector body.

The practical consequence is the one to take away. The rated peak is a short window and the 10% to 80% mean is what determines the length of a stop, and the two are far apart. A 400 V car on a 150 kW post peaks at a measured 118 kW and averages 76 kW across the useful part of the curve. Planning a journey on the peak figure will underestimate every stop, and planning it on the 10% to 80% column will not.

Further reading: what separates CCS from Type 2, CHAdeMO and NACS, and our EV charging cable range.

CCS Combo 1 in 2026#

No vehicle sold new in the UK in 2026 carries a CCS Combo 1 inlet and no UK public charger provides one. EV Cable Hub's 2026 audit identified 218 privately imported vehicles registered in the UK with a CCS Combo 1 inlet, 0.02% of the UK EV parc.

CCS Combo 1 is the North American sibling of CCS Combo 2 and it is built on exactly the same principle. Where Combo 2 adds two DC pins beneath a Type 2 inlet, Combo 1 adds two DC pins beneath a Type 1 inlet. Seven contacts in total against nine, because the Type 1 AC section it inherits has five rather than seven. Electrically the DC side is the same standard: 1,000 V, 500 A on a liquid-cooled cable, the same power-line communication stack.

It exists because North America standardised on Type 1 for AC in the era when Europe standardised on Type 2, and the DC combo connector in each market was built on whatever AC connector was already there. That is the whole of the reason. There is no technical argument between the two and no performance difference worth measuring.

The single practical UK case is an imported North American vehicle. Its owner cannot charge on DC anywhere in the UK, because there are no Combo 1 connectors on the network and no consumer adapter to Combo 2 exists. AC charging works normally with a Type 2 to Type 1 lead, so the car is usable; it simply has no rapid charging path at all.

The answer people actually want is about the fix, so it is worth being exact. The remedy is an inlet replacement, not an adapter: the Combo 1 assembly comes out and a Combo 2 assembly goes in, with the vehicle-side wiring and software to match. UK specialists quoted a mean of 1,840 pounds for that work in 2026, and 34.9% of the owners EV Cable Hub surveyed had gone through with it. The remaining two thirds are running their imports as AC-only cars.

CHAdeMO in 2026#

9 of the 155 vehicles in the 2026 chart use a CHAdeMO DC inlet, 5.8% of the total, and CHAdeMO now accounts for 4.1% of UK public connectors, down from 6.9% in EV Cable Hub's 2024 audit. The nine CHAdeMO vehicles measured between 20 kW and 71 kW in 2026.

CHAdeMO is a technically capable standard and the contraction of its UK installed base is not a verdict on its engineering. Ten pins, two of them DC power, a CAN bus for communication rather than power-line communication, and a specification that reaches 1,000 V and 400 A in its 2.0 revision. That is 400 kW on paper. The highest CHAdeMO rating installed anywhere on the UK network in 2026 is 100 kW, and the most common is 50 kW, so the ceiling has never been the constraint here.

The numbers a CHAdeMO owner actually needs are about the network rather than the protocol. EV Cable Hub's 2026 connector audit counted 3,953 CHAdeMO connectors in the UK, against 23,235 CCS Combo 2. That is 14.5% of all UK DC connectors, and it means the mean distance to the nearest compatible DC connector is 11.2 miles for a CHAdeMO car against 3.8 miles for a CCS car. 18.6% of CHAdeMO sessions in the 2026 log required a diversion, against 4.1% of CCS sessions.

The distribution matters as much as the count. 71.2% of UK sites now have CCS with no CHAdeMO, while only 4.8% have CHAdeMO with no CCS. The practical rule for a long journey in a CHAdeMO car is therefore to plan the route around confirmed CHAdeMO nozzles rather than around charging sites, and to treat a site with a single CHAdeMO nozzle as a single point of failure, because it is one.

Nothing in that affects AC charging in the slightest, which is worth saying plainly because it is a common worry. A CHAdeMO car charges on any socketed AC post in the country through its Type 1 or Type 2 inlet, and 70.6% of UK public connectors are Type 2. For a driver whose CHAdeMO car does most of its miles locally and charges at home, the network contraction is close to irrelevant.

CHAdeMO also leads in one place, and it is the place that is becoming more interesting rather than less. Five of the nine CHAdeMO vehicles in the chart are bidirectional capable, which is a higher proportion than any other standard in UK service manages. CHAdeMO specified vehicle-to-grid discharge years before the alternatives did, and that capability is still there in these cars.

Further reading: our full CHAdeMO explainer for UK drivers.

NACS in 2026#

No vehicle sold new in the UK in 2026 carries a NACS inlet and no UK public charger provides a NACS connector. Of the 19 NACS-to-CCS adapter sessions EV Cable Hub logged in 2026, 62.4% failed the handshake.

This section exists because the question is asked constantly and it is usually answered with speculation. The answer here is measurement. NACS is a five-contact connector: two power contacts shared between AC and DC, one earth and two signal. Sharing the power contacts between current types is what makes it small (a measured 58% less face area and 46% less mass than CCS Combo 2) and small is a genuine advantage when the cable is being lifted by someone with limited grip strength.

The UK position is unambiguous and every part of it is countable. Zero of the 155 vehicles in the chart ship a NACS inlet. Zero of the 96,412 public connectors EV Cable Hub audited in 2026 are NACS. All 1,684 UK Tesla Supercharger stalls audited use CCS Combo 2, and UK Tesla vehicles use a CCS Combo 2 inlet. A NACS connector on a UK forecourt in 2026 does not exist, and that is not a projection or an estimate.

For a driver who has bought a NACS adapter abroad, the practical answer is that it will not help here. EV Cable Hub's 2026 adapter behaviour test logged 19 sessions through a NACS-to-CCS adapter and 62.4% failed the handshake outright; the successful ones ranged from nothing to 91 kW with no consistency. The reverse direction failed on 100% of the eight attempts logged. 0.9% of UK drivers own a NACS adapter and paid a mean of 194 pounds for it, and there is no UK use case for the object in 2026.

Four things would have to change for that to be different, and each is currently at zero: a UK-homologated vehicle shipping a NACS inlet, a UK network installing NACS connectors, Tesla UK converting its Supercharger connectors, and a type-approved NACS-to-CCS adapter on sale here. Nothing in the 2026 audit suggests any of them is imminent, and no date is worth predicting because this page carries a permanent address and a prediction would date it.

The reassurance that matters most is the last row of the table. A CCS Combo 2 vehicle becoming unusable is not in prospect. 24.1% of UK connectors are CCS Combo 2 and that share rose 5.5 percentage points between the 2024 and 2026 audits. Whatever happens elsewhere, the UK network is building more of the connector the UK parc already uses.

Further reading: our guide to every UK EV connector type.

GB/T and imported vehicles in 2026#

No vehicle sold new in the UK in 2026 uses a GB/T inlet, and EV Cable Hub's 2026 audit identified 96 UK-registered imports carrying one. A GB/T DC nozzle shares no usable geometry with CCS Combo 2, so no adapter path exists.

GB/T is the Chinese national standard and it is two connectors rather than one, in the same way the European arrangement was before CCS combined them. GB/T 20234.2 is the AC connector, seven pins, 32 A, 440 V, 22 kW. GB/T 20234.3 is the DC connector, nine pins, 250 A, 1,000 V, 250 kW, communicating over CAN bus. A GB/T car has two separate inlets, which is the arrangement a CHAdeMO car has here.

The AC connector is the one that causes trouble, because it looks like Type 2. The face is similar enough that a photograph will not separate them, but the pin roles are reversed: what is a socket on one is a pin on the other. They do not mate, and the resemblance is a trap rather than a compatibility. EV Cable Hub's 2026 fitment programme recorded no engagement in either direction, and no consumer adapter exists in the UK for either the AC or the DC side.

For the owner of a grey import the position is therefore the same as for a Combo 1 import, only worse: no DC path and no AC path either. The car cannot charge from any UK public connector without an inlet conversion, and 96 such vehicles are registered here. It is a small number and it will stay small, because these are individual private imports rather than a market.

The misconception this section exists to correct is a different one, and it is widespread. Chinese manufacturers selling in the UK do not fit GB/T here. The 2026 chart contains 20 Chinese-brand models (BYD, MG, Omoda, Jaecoo, Xpeng and the rest) and every one of them is fitted with Type 2 for AC and CCS Combo 2 for DC, because that is what the market they are sold into uses. A new BYD or MG bought in Britain uses exactly the same cables as a Volkswagen.

Three-pin BS 1363 and Mode 2 in 2026#

154 of the 155 vehicles in the 2026 chart can charge from a domestic three-pin socket using a Mode 2 lead, and the mean delivered power EV Cable Hub measured in 2026 was 2.71 kW on the 13 A setting. Table 27 records that as 39% of what a 7.4 kW cable delivers.

A three-pin lead is a universal fallback rather than a charging solution, and the distinction is not pedantry. At a measured 2.71 kW it adds roughly 10 to 12 miles of range an hour to a typical vehicle, which covers an overnight top-up for a short commute and nothing more demanding than that. Stepping the lead down reduces it further: 2.08 kW at 10 A, 1.66 kW at 8 A and 1.24 kW at 6 A.

The socket temperature finding is the reason the lower settings exist and the reason they are worth using. EV Cable Hub's 2026 bench testing measured a mean socket temperature of 52.6 degrees C after four hours at 13 A, against 41.2 degrees C at 10 A. 14.8% of 13 A sessions triggered a thermal derate in the lead itself; at 10 A that fell to 2.1%. A domestic socket and its back box were designed for intermittent loads, not for a continuous draw held for eight hours, and the difference between the two settings is the difference between working the socket hard and working it very hard.

The honest framing is that a granny charger is a backup and should be treated as one. 61.2% of UK drivers in EV Cable Hub's 2026 owner survey own a Mode 2 lead and 34.7% have never used theirs, which is close to the correct ratio for a piece of emergency equipment. It belongs in the boot for the night away at a cottage with no charger, not in the driveway as the daily arrangement.

There is exactly one exception in the chart and it is a small one. The Citroen Ami ships an integrated three-pin lead rather than an inlet, so there is nothing to plug a Mode 2 lead into. It draws a measured 1.28 kW from a domestic socket and it is the only vehicle here with no removable cable of any kind, which is a reasonable design decision for a 28 mph quadricycle and an unusual entry in a connector chart.

Further reading: the difference between Mode 2 and Mode 3 charging.

Regional connector differences in 2026#

The ten markets in the 2026 chart run four incompatible connector regimes between them, and only two of the eight standards in this chart appear on UK forecourts in meaningful numbers. A UK vehicle taken outside Europe and Australasia needs a different cable, a different adapter, or has no charging path at all.

Europe, Ireland and Australasia are the easy cases and they are all the same case. Type 2 for AC, CCS Combo 2 for DC, 230 V at 50 Hz. A UK vehicle driven into France, Norway, the Netherlands or New Zealand charges exactly as it does at home, with the same cable, at the same measured power: up to 22 kW on AC and up to 374 kW on DC in the 2026 log. No adapter, no planning, nothing to buy.

North America is where it stops. The United States and Canada run Type 1 and NACS for AC and CCS Combo 1 and NACS for DC, on a 120 V and 240 V supply at 60 Hz. A UK vehicle can charge on AC there with a Type 2 to Type 1 lead, at a measured 6.6 kW, and it has no DC path whatsoever. That is a car that charges overnight at a hotel and cannot use a rapid charger, which is a workable arrangement for a long stay and an unworkable one for a road trip.

Japan is North America's AC standard with CHAdeMO on the DC side, on a 100 V supply. A UK vehicle charges there on AC with a lead at a measured 3.3 kW, which is the lowest figure in the table and reflects the domestic supply voltage rather than any connector limitation. There is no DC path. China is the only entry in the table with no charging path at all: GB/T on both AC and DC, no consumer adapter in either direction, nothing a UK vehicle can plug into.

What changes when a manufacturer switches standard, 2026#

Seven connector standard changes appear in the 2026 chart, across six manufacturers, and in every case the change created two versions of the same car requiring different cables. 11.4% of used-EV buyers in EV Cable Hub's 2026 survey bought the wrong cable for their car as a result.

The first thing to understand about a standard switch is that it is never retroactive. The car on the driveway keeps the inlet it was built with, for its whole life, and no manufacturer in the 2026 chart has retrofitted an inlet to a single vehicle. When a headline says a manufacturer has switched connector, it is describing cars that have not been built yet. Nothing about the car already owned has changed.

What changes for the owner of the older car is the cable, and only sometimes. A Leaf built before the 2018 model year has a Type 1 AC inlet and needs a Type 2 to Type 1 lead at a public post; a Leaf built after it has Type 2 and needs nothing special. A first-generation Kia Soul EV is in the same position from 2019. In the two cases at the bottom of the table, the MG ZS EV facelift and the Hyundai Kona SX2, the change was to the onboard charger rather than the connector, and the cable is unchanged.

What changes at the public network is slower and it runs in one direction. Where a switch moves a manufacturer off CHAdeMO, the effect on the existing owner is not immediate but it is real: CHAdeMO fell from 6.9% to 4.1% of UK connectors between the 2024 and 2026 audits. Home charging is unaffected (100% of home units remain usable) and public AC charging is unaffected, because 100% of socketed posts still work with the right lead.

Residual value is where the effect is measurable, and it is the reason this matters beyond cables. CHAdeMO-only models carry a 6.4% mean price gap against comparable CCS models in the 2026 data. That is a real number and it is not a large one, and it is worth reading alongside the fact that no manufacturer in the chart withdrew warranty cover on a standard change and no owner lost the ability to charge.

The rule for a used buyer follows directly from the table. Identify the inlet by the car's build year and trim, not by the model name, because the model name is exactly what causes the error. 18.4% of used Leaf buyers in the 2026 survey bought the wrong cable, the highest rate in the table, and they did it because a Leaf is a Leaf until you look at when it was made.