Pilot opens its first Tesla Megacharger site, six stalls in Georgia

Pilot Travel Centers and Tesla have opened six Megacharger stalls for heavy electric trucks at Pilot #1390 in Ellabell, Georgia, the first site to come out of the deal the two companies announced in January. Pilot said on October 8, 2026 that 12 more heavy-duty charging locations are under construction and three of them are near completion, among them a Flying J in Tulare, California, scheduled to open October 9.

The other two near-finished sites are a Flying J in Fort Stockton, Texas, and a Pilot in North Las Vegas, Nevada; Pilot gives no opening date for either. Each location will get four to eight stalls on Tesla's V4 cabinet hardware, and according to Tesla each stall can deliver up to 1.2 megawatts, enough for a Tesla Semi to recover 60% of its charge in 30 minutes. That half hour is the point of the exercise. Pilot's January release put it in trucking terms: Tesla has stated that most of the Semi's 500-mile range can come back in a 30-minute session, "matching a normal mandated break period for professional drivers."

Tesla's account of the day had a second site in it. The Tesla Semi account posted at 7:10 p.m. Eastern on October 8 that "New Megacharger sites between Atlanta & Savannah now online," over a map marking a Conley Megacharger near Atlanta and the Ellabell Megacharger near Savannah, joined by a route along I-16, and promised "Many more Southeast sites coming soon." Pilot's release does not mention Conley; Electrek reports that Tesla's location page lists it with eight Megachargers and puts the two stations roughly 220 miles apart, which Electrek calls the Semi's first public charging corridor outside California.

Later than planned, and in a different set of states

The opening arrived after the schedule Pilot set. Pilot's January 27, 2026 release said "The first sites are expected to open in Summer 2026," with construction to begin in the first half of the year at travel centers "planned across California, Georgia, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas."

The state list has changed too, though not where the next openings are: the three sites nearest completion sit in California, Texas and Nevada, states on both lists. Pilot's October release describes the collaboration announced in January as carrying plans for Megachargers along I-5, I-10 and other major freight corridors "across California, Georgia, Indiana, Nevada and Texas." Against January, New Mexico is out and Indiana is in, and the October release does not explain the change.

Who may plug in is the other thing the newer release leaves out. In January, Pilot said the network "will initially focus on providing charging infrastructure for Tesla's Semi trucks" and that it "may be expanded to be compatible with heavy-duty electric vehicles from other manufacturers." The October release describes the network as "designed to support heavy-duty electric trucks along major U.S. freight corridors" and does not say whether trucks from other makers can charge there, or at what price.

How far the network has to go

Tesla has set itself a large number for the rest of the year. At its September 24, 2026 Semi launch event, Tesla said it would have more than 30 Semi charging stations representing over 200 megawatt-capable posts by the end of 2026, per The Verge, as The Duck Curve reported in our coverage of the launch. Electrek, counting Tesla's public Megacharger list plus Ellabell, which the list did not yet show, got to four customer-facing sites and 26 stalls on October 9.

Pilot's part of the build-out can at least be sized. Built out at four to eight stalls each, its 12 sites under construction would add 48 to 96 stalls by our arithmetic, on top of the six in Ellabell. Pilot calls itself the largest travel center network in North America, with more than 900 locations in 43 states and five Canadian provinces; when it announced Ellabell on October 8, that was the only one with Megachargers, and the Tulare Flying J was scheduled to follow on October 9.

Some of the trucks those stalls are meant for are on order. Catalyst Mobility and the Smart Freight Centre said their ZET SCALE program enabled a 2,500-truck order with Tesla as primary OEM and Kenworth, RIDE and Volvo as secondary OEMs, with no split among the four manufacturers stated (2,500 trucks ordered through ZET SCALE), and Einride plans to deploy 500 Semis phased in over 24 months from September 2026 (Einride's Semi deployment).

Pilot framed the pace as the customers' call. "With these initial locations, we're making fleet electrification a more accessible option for long-haul transportation and are excited to continue working with Tesla to move at the pace and preference of our customers," said Shannon Sturgil, Pilot's senior vice president of alternative fuels.