If your road trip runs through Massachusetts, your usual Supercharger stop just got more crowded — on purpose. Tesla and the Massachusetts Department of Transportation amended their agreement to open fast chargers at four state-owned rest stops to every EV brand, not just Tesla, adding 32 charging ports that were previously Tesla-only, according to The Boston Globe. The newly opened stations are at both Charlton rest stops on the Mass Pike and at Lexington and Newton on I-95.
What changes for you at these stops
The chargers themselves haven’t changed — you’ll plug in the same way you always have. What’s changed is who else can use them. Non-Tesla EVs without a native NACS port need an adapter to charge, and the Globe reports non-Tesla drivers pay noticeably more than Tesla owners at these locations: roughly 46 cents per kilowatt-hour overnight, rising to about 70 cents during peak hours at the Newton site. If you’re used to having these four stations mostly to yourself, expect more competition for a stall, especially during the same peak afternoon and evening windows non-Tesla drivers now have an incentive to avoid.
How to plan around it
Before you commit to one of these four stops on a Massachusetts road trip, check live stall availability in the Tesla app or your car’s navigation rather than assuming a stall will be open — the same advice that applies to any Supercharger during a busy travel weekend. If Charlton, Lexington, or Newton show heavy use when you’re planning to pass through, Tesla’s trip planner will route you to the next-nearest Supercharger automatically, which may be the better bet rather than waiting.
This is part of a broader pattern: Tesla has been opening Supercharger access to other EV brands at a growing number of sites nationwide since 2024, and the Massachusetts rest-stop expansion is the latest example of what that looks like once non-Tesla traffic actually shows up at a shared location.
