The two adapters, line by line
Every cell below is what the manufacturer publishes for that model, read from Lectron’s own product pages on the date in our sources. Where a page does not publish a figure, the cell says so — and on this comparison the blanks are the whole story.
| | Vortex Plug | Vortex Plus |
|---|
| Published ceiling | 500 A / 1,000 V / 500 kW | 500 A / 1,000 V / 500 kW |
| Certification, as worded | “UL2252 Compliant”; FAQ: “adheres to UL 2252 design standards” | “UL2252 Certified”; FAQ: “UL 2252 certified and tested by SGS” |
| How the connection is held | Manual locking latch | Automatic internal dual interlock, NACS side and CCS1 side |
| Ingress protection | Not published | IP67 |
| Warranty | Not published | 2 years |
| Weight | Approximately 2 lb | Not published |
| Supercharger generations | Not stated | V3 and V4; Lectron says it will not work on older V2 units |
| Works on a home charger | No — DC only | No — DC only |
| Works on a Tesla | No | No |
Certified versus compliant is not a quibble
It is the single most important line in that table, so it is worth being precise about what the two words mean. A manufacturer saying a product complies with or adheres to the design standards of a safety standard is making a claim about its own engineering. A manufacturer saying a product is certifiedto that standard is saying an independent body tested a sample and issued a mark — and Lectron names the body for the Plus, SGS, which is a real and checkable third-party testing house.
We hold every charger on this site to the same line. It is why our guide to cheap chargers treats a named listing as the floor rather than the ceiling, and why our reliability roundup ranks how specifically a certification is stated as one of its four criteria. Neither of these adapters is a no-name part, and we are not suggesting the Plug is dangerous. We are saying that when the same company sells you two versions of the same part and uses the stronger word on only one of them, the stronger word is the one worth paying for.
The interlock belongs in the same paragraph. UL 2252 is the adapter standard, and an interlock is the mechanism that keeps the two halves mated while hundreds of amps of DC are flowing. A manual latch depends on a person seating it properly; an automatic dual interlock engages on both faces by itself. Lectron also describes the Plus’s interlock as automaker-approved, which matters for a practical reason covered below: the automakers, not Tesla and not Lectron, decide whether your car is allowed on the network at all.
The mistake that brings most people to this page
Search traffic for these two adapters is full of people who want to charge at home. Neither of these will do it. Both are DC fast-charge adapters for the Tesla Supercharger network, and Lectron states plainly that they do not work with Level 1 or Level 2 AC charging, with Tesla Destination Chargers, or with your wall unit in the garage.
If what you actually have is a Tesla-style connector on a wall and a J1772 car — a Destination Charger at a hotel, or a friend’s Tesla Wall Connector — the part you want is the third pick above, a NACS-to-J1772 AC adapter, and it costs a small fraction of either Vortex. If it is the other way around and you have a NACS car in front of a J1772 charger, you want a J1772-to-NACS adapter instead. Our guide to EV charging adapters lays out which direction each one runs, and J1772 vs NACS explains why the connector on your car is about to stop being the connector on your next one.
What to look for in any DC fast-charge adapter
These two are not the only NACS-to-CCS adapters on the shelf, and the cheapest listings in that search are generic brands at well under half the price of either Lectron. We have not ranked those here, because the criteria below are the ones that decide whether an adapter is a tool or a liability, and the budget end of this category tends to fail the first one. If you are comparing any adapter against these two, these are the four questions worth asking in this order.
1. Is it certified, and to what, by whom? UL 2252 is the standard written for EV charging adapters, and the word that matters is certified rather than compliant, designed to or meets the requirements of. A named test house is better than an unnamed one. This is the same bar we apply to wall chargers in our guide to cheap EV chargers, and it is the one place in this category where we would spend the extra money without thinking about it.
2. How is the connection held, mechanically? A DC fast charge runs hundreds of amps through two mated interfaces instead of one, and a partial disconnect under that load is the failure nobody wants to describe in detail. An automatic interlock on both faces removes the human from that job; a manual latch does not. If a listing does not say how the adapter is retained, treat the silence as the answer.
3. Does it publish an ingress rating? This part lives in a trunk and gets used in rain, road salt and slush, then goes back in the trunk wet. An IP67 rating is a specific, testable claim about dust and water. No rating is not a claim at all. The same logic runs through our outdoor charger picks, where the enclosure rating is the ranking criterion rather than a footnote.
4. Is there a warranty term, in writing? A warranty is the only durability signal in this category that costs the manufacturer money, which is exactly why we use it as one of the four criteria in our reliability roundup. Two years on a $200 adapter is a modest promise. No published term is worse than a modest promise.
Notice what is noton that list: the amp and voltage numbers. Both of these adapters are published at 500 amps and 1,000 volts, and so is almost every competitor, because the adapter is never the bottleneck — the Supercharger and your car’s own pack decide the rate. A listing competing on a bigger headline number than 500 A is selling you a specification that cannot be used. We make the same point about AC adapters on the adapters page.
Three things to check before you buy either one
Your automaker has to have granted Supercharger access.The adapter is the easy part. Lectron’s FAQ for the Plus names the cars it expects to work — the Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning, Chevrolet, Cadillac and GMC EVs, the Rivian R1T and R1S, the Hyundai IONIQ 5 and IONIQ 6, the Kia EV6 and EV9, the Genesis GV60 — and both pages tell you to check with your automaker. If your car is not enrolled, no adapter in the world opens that stall.
A new car may not need an adapter in this direction at all. The whole reason these adapters exist is that cars built with CCS1 inlets came before the industry agreed on NACS. Newer cars are shipping with the NACS port built in and the adapter in the other direction in the trunk — Hyundai, for instance, publishes that the current IONIQ 5 has a native NACS port and comes with a CCS adapter in the box. If you are shopping for a car as well as an adapter, check our IONIQ 5 charging guide for what that change does to the home-charging side of the question.
Supercharger generation.Lectron states the Plus works at V3 and V4 Superchargers and not at older V2 stalls, and publishes nothing on the question for the Plug. That is not a reason to prefer the Plug — an unstated limit is not an absent one.
The verdict
The Vortex Plus is the one to buy, and the gap is not close. Certified rather than compliant, tested by a named third party, an automatic dual interlock on both connector faces, IP67, and two years of warranty. On our read the price difference between the two was roughly the cost of one fast-charging stop.
The Vortex Plug only makes sense if the gap on the day is large. It is the same published electrical ceiling in a lighter package, and if the Plus is out of stock or the Plug is deeply discounted, it is a real product from the same company. Go in knowing the three things it does not publish, and seat the latch deliberately every time.
And most readers want neither. If your charging problem is at home rather than on a road trip, the money belongs in a Level 2 charger or, if the connector is your problem, in a ten-dollar-class AC adapter. A DC adapter is a road-trip purchase for a specific network, nothing more.
