The days of lining up at Supercharger stations might soon be over. Tesla is testing a Supercharger “waitlist” in its mobile app that amounts to a virtual queue for EV drivers.
As Tesla explains, the upcoming feature will provide live app notifications once you arrive at a Supercharger location where the stalls are full. You’ll know how many cars are ahead of you in the queue. It uses both the positions of the car and your phone to determine how you qualify.
You don’t need a Tesla-made EV to use the feature, but there’s also no system in place to deny charging to queue-jumpers. You’ll have to trust that fellow drivers will wait.
The virtual queue test is currently limited to five Superchargers, four in the San Francisco Bay Area (including San Francisco, San Jose, Los Gatos, and Mountain View) as well as one in New York City’s Bronx borough. Tesla hasn’t said when it will expand the pilot or make the feature widely available.
Virtual Supercharger queues are overdue
Non-Tesla drivers can lead to busier charging stations
Tesla originally hoped to test Supercharger waitlists in spring 2025. It’s not known what prompted the delay, but there have been mounting incentives to queue drivers.
Some Supercharger stations can be busy, particularly in EV-heavy cities like San Francisco and New York City. That frequently leads to long lineups, and in extreme cases has led to literal fights between impatient drivers. While Tesla maintained that waits only occurred about one percent of the time, it vowed to address the situation.
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There’s also the decision to open up Superchargers to non-Tesla cars, both through adapters and a growing number of cars with built-in NACS charging ports. While Tesla still dominates the EV market in the U.S. and some other countries, the broader support adds to the potential congestion. Virtual queues could help Tesla manage that load as overall EV interest grows.
Buying Tesla some time
There’s also a financial motivation to introducing digital queues even when wait times aren’t immediate problems at a given location. They theoretically reduce the pressure to either expand existing stations or build new ones, particularly if a spike in demand is short-lived. That helps Tesla’s bottom line, even if the waits are signs that more chargers will eventually be necessary.
Source: Tesla Charging (X)
