EVwire Brief: Pilot J and Tesla announced they'll build charging sites for heavy-duty electric trucks together. These will be located at Pilot J's premium truck stops initially across five states, feature 1.2MW per stall, and four to eight stalls per site.
Construction of Tesla's Semi Chargers will begin in the first half of 2026 at select Pilot travel centers planned across California, Georgia, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas.
Are these sites open to other manufacturers?
Good question, two answers.
Dan Priestley, lead of the Semi program at Tesla, replied on X:
"Other EVs will be able to use these assuming they're equipped with MCS and ensure interoperability with charging equipment."
Yet in the Pilot J press release, they write:
"This network will initially focus on providing charging infrastructure for Tesla’s Semi trucks. In the future, it may be expanded to be compatible with heavy-duty electric vehicles from other manufacturers."
Either way, MCS is the name of the game.
Jason Gies from the Tesla Semi team lays out the key points of the sites:
Premium Pilot Flying J truck stops drivers already use
Megawatt-scale charging for truck + trailer
Built for regional and long-haul freight
Designed to scale as fleets scale
Dan Priestley, Semi lead at Tesla, says:
"The Semi charging network brings the Tesla Supercharging experience to heavy trucks. Fleets can confidently replace diesels 1:1 with Semis knowing there will be abundant, reliable charging now planned for many Pilot locations they already visit. Excited to grow the network!"
The map Tesla shared there, shows at least 35 sites for Tesla's Mega Charging network, although it's currently unclear if these shown are only the planned Pilot J sites or Tesla's own as well.
For the keen eye not to be confused: The image Pilot J shared on the press release (below) is not of one of these new sites, but rather an older press photo I recognize from Tesla's own gallery.
If you’ve somehow never heard of Pilot J, here’s a quick intro: As the largest network of travel centers, Pilot has more than 900 locations in 44 states and five Canadian provinces, serving an average of 1.2 million guests per day. In addition to travel center services, Pilot and its partners offer trucking fleets a variety of solutions for fuel, credit, factoring, maintenance and rewards.
This isn’t the first Tesla partnership on heavy-duty charging in the US — just last week, we broke the news on bp Pulse installing Tesla 750 kW MCS Megachargers at its first public e-truck depot in California. Those, however, used the older high voltage cabinet, duplicated, which results in that charging power difference with our news today.
Click to read the article
Added context: Tesla Semi incoming
Meanwhile, Tesla is no doubt ramping up the Semi charger deployments — several under permits across states now — as it is about to complete its massive Semi production plant next to Giga Nevada.
The Semi factory is designed for high-volume production of the electric semi-truck, with volume ramp-up targeted for 2026, aiming for 50,000 units annually.
Here’s a look inside and some renders from July 2025:
Currently actively producing on the pilot lines and delivering to early customers (mostly pilots)
Image by the OG Semi factory drone watcher, Zanegler
SOURCES: Pilot Flying J, Tesla Charging on X
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