Hopefully it works out that this simplifies road trips for people - that's the real goal here. Competing "standards" suck. I just wish Tesla had done this from the start. Obviously they had a strong incentive not to, but still.
Tesla couldn't really do it unitarily themselves. No one would trust single company to not pull rug later on. Hence it needs to be either new wide industry consortium with enough foot area or one of the existing trusted standardisation organisation.
Since SAE lawyers will demand iron clad enough licensing lettering signed and verified from Tesla and keep it in archive to ensure Tesla (or any patent holder of the patent relating to one of their other standards) can't do a rug pull. They try to rug pull, the defendant can in court just go "your honor, here is a verified, notarized copy of the original legal letter Tesla/GE/ABB sent to SAE regarding this patent in question. As you see they were generously verified releasing the patent to Free of Charge, Reasonable and non discriminatory licensing to any and all entities".
Which is on what this will hinge on hiw fast this goes through SAE. How fast can SAE get sufficient legal assurances from Tesla. After that it is just matter of writing the Tesla spec out to SAE style guides and notations standard specification document.
I assume SAE has gotten atleast initial legal commitment from Tesla. Otherwise they wouldn't even start the process. However the process is done only when it's done. It can still could snag mid process for legal or technical reasons.
However I assume agreeing to SAE (or other respected standards organization) standardisation process completion is condition of say GM and Ford agreeing to adopt NACS. So I doubt Tesla would rock the boat on this one, there is lot of relations and money on the line.