EVWire brief: In New Jersey, Tesla has to remove 64 Superchargers that it already operates from the highway, because the New Jersey Turnpike Authority (NJTA) has decided not to renew Tesla’s contract and has chosen a sole third-party charging provider, Applegreen Electric, to serve the New Jersey Turnpike and is not allowing Tesla to co-locate. So Tesla has to rip up all the sites it designed.
“RIP, thanks NJTurnpike.”
This is what George Bahadue, a Senior Manager on Tesla’s Supercharging team who has been with the company for 9 years, captioned this photo of him with, at one of the Supercharger sites that was shut down in New Jersey on May 31st.
Tesla also says they’ve “been preparing for 3 years for this potential outcome by building 116 stalls off the New Jersey Turnpike, ensuring no interruption for our customers.”
Here’s the full release from Tesla:
And here are the replacement sites Tesla has created if you’re one of our readers from the area:
Tesla also commented on NJTA’s press release:
We covered Tesla calling for non-exclusive sites just a few weeks ago, on May 7th, sounds likely that this was a statement ahead of time anticipating this news.
This transition of NJTA to use Applegreen’s chargers is a part of a larger agreement, as the NJTA had previously reached an agreement with Applegreen Electric to operate service areas along the New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway. An amendment to the agreement was authorized in 2023 to include the installation of EV chargers. As part of the amended agreement, Applegreen Electric will install and operate 80 EV charging ports by the end of this year and a total of 240 EV charging ports by April 2033.
If you’re wondering about Applegreen Electric, the one chosen to replace Tesla, is an EV charging network that has been operating in UK and Ireland up until recently. Here’s their current footprint in the US:
I’ll leave you with a few comments here from the Tesla team about this:
Sendil Palani is the Vice President of Finance at Tesla, and one of the longest-standing executives in the company:
Elon’s reply? “Sounds like corruption”.
Paul Kanitra, a Republican member of the New Jersey General Assembly, wrote on X: “I agree that these decisions by the NJTA are absolutely absurd and will be asking that it gets looked into immediately,” but the post has since been deleted.
Someone also put together relevant government official contacts and an email template so you could let gov officials know what you think of all this.
We also heard some background on how things are done in New Jersey from one of the Tesla employees from back in 2012, David Havasi:
This seems to be widely regarded as a bad move by the owners and industry alike. Leave us your thoughts in the comments!
Source: @TeslaCharging on X
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