Lead Hook
EVgo has opened its first Tesla Supercharger station, and it is not in a Tesla-branded lot but in a grocery store parking lot on Chicago's South Side. According to Electrek, the site at Riverside Square & River's Edge, 3145 S Ashland Avenue, carries 12 fast-charging stalls fitted with both NACS and CCS plugs, and it is the first of hundreds of Tesla Supercharger stalls the company plans to add across the United States. The opening is notable less for the location than for the arrangement behind it: Electrek reports that EVgo owns and self-brands these Superchargers while Tesla runs and maintains them — a split that turns a competitor's hardware into a capital-light expansion channel. Independent outlets including Not a Tesla App, Drive Tesla Canada, and Yahoo Finance corroborated the Chicago opening, though the technical and rollout details below come from Electrek alone.
Deep Dive
The Chicago hardware is rated at 325 kW, per Electrek — a figure that sits below the "up to 500 kW" EVgo cited in its August announcement for the Supercharger rollout. Whether the lower rating reflects a phased debut, a different hardware tier, or a deliberate derating is not explained in the source material; what is clear is that the gap between the two numbers is the single most unresolved technical question in the announcement.
Interoperability is the headline feature. Electrek reports the site uses Magic Dock technology, meaning both NACS and CCS vehicles can charge without a separate adapter. Drivers of compatible non-Tesla EVs can start a session through the Tesla app, while Tesla vehicles display the station in the car's navigation and Trip Planner. Electrek also notes that other EVgo fast chargers with NACS plugs have been appearing in Tesla navigation since early September, provided drivers enable third-party charging — suggesting the Chicago site slots into an already-live discovery layer rather than a new one.
The ownership model is the economic story. EVgo owns the Superchargers and self-brands them; Tesla runs and maintains them. The first sites will be at Regency Centers shopping plazas with grocery stores, per Electrek — a siting strategy that puts charging where drivers already linger. EVgo CEO Badar Khan framed the move in market terms:
"By serving both Tesla and non-Tesla NACS drivers, we're doubling EVgo's addressable market and continuing to meet EV drivers where they are and where they want to charge,"
according to Electrek.
The NACS expansion runs on a separate track. Electrek reports EVgo began adding NACS plugs to its regular fast-charging network in 2025 and aims to have 500 of those stalls across the US by the end of 2026 — with Supercharger stalls counted separately. Over the next two years, the company plans to put at least one NACS plug at every EVgo site built in 2023 or later. Looking further out, Electrek flagged that EVgo's 750 kW charging system is coming in 2027, implying a tiered power roadmap that runs from today's 325 kW Supercharger stalls up to a much higher ceiling.
Audit & Contradictions
The fact-check record is clean on contradictions: no contradictions were identified in the provided material, and the contradiction level is Low. What is corroborated is narrow — independent outlets confirmed that EVgo opened its first Tesla Supercharger site in Chicago as part of a network expansion. Everything else is single-source and should be read as Electrek's reporting rather than independently verified fact: the 12-stall count, the 325 kW rating, the August "up to 500 kW" figure, Magic Dock, the ownership-and-maintenance split, the Regency Centers siting plan, the 500-stall NACS target by end of 2026, the one-NACS-plug-per-site commitment, and the 750 kW system slated for 2027.
The announcement also leaves significant gaps. There is no pricing, no cost or revenue-sharing detail for the EVgo-Tesla arrangement, no firm date or count for "hundreds" of additional stalls, and no explanation for why the Chicago site runs at 325 kW rather than the 500 kW cited in August. Those omissions are worth noting for anyone weighing the economics of the partnership: the capital-light model is described but not quantified.
Future Outlook
If the model holds, the implications extend beyond EVgo. A network operator that owns and brands hardware while a rival operates it suggests a possible template for charging infrastructure in which asset ownership and operational expertise are unbundled — potentially lowering barriers for regional operators that lack Tesla-scale maintenance fleets. Competitors will be watching whether the 325 kW debut scales to the higher tiers Electrek flagged, and whether the grocery-plaza siting strategy delivers the dwell-time economics the location choice implies. For now, the Chicago site is a proof of concept: 12 stalls, two plug standards, one shared upkeep agreement, and an open question about how fast and how far the rollout runs.