Tesla Opens 55 V4 Supercharger Stations Across Chongqing — Its Biggest Highway Charging Push in China

March 28, 2026 • Infrastructure • 4 min read

Tesla has just executed the largest single expressway Supercharger deployment in its China history. On Saturday, March 28, 2026, 55 V4 Supercharger stations — comprising 212 individual charging piles — went live simultaneously across Chongqing municipality's highway network. For a region home to roughly 32 million people, this is a meaningful leap in charging accessibility, and the implications stretch well beyond Chongqing's city limits.

📊 Key Figures

What Just Happened — and Why Chongqing?

Chongqing is not a random choice. As one of China's four direct-controlled municipalities, it functions as both a massive population center and a gateway to the country's southwestern interior. Its highway network radiates outward toward Sichuan, Guizhou, Hubei, and Hunan — making expressway charging coverage here disproportionately valuable for long-distance EV travel across a wide swath of China.

The 55 stations are positioned at key transport nodes around Chongqing's main urban area, as well as along the northeastern and southeastern sections of its highway network, according to verified reporting from Xinhua. That geographic spread is deliberate: it eliminates range anxiety on routes that were previously underserved, not just within Chongqing but on cross-provincial journeys that pass through it.

Critically, all 212 piles are open to non-Tesla electric vehicles. This is consistent with Tesla's broader China strategy — over 950 of its 2,500+ mainland stations now accept third-party EVs. In a market where domestic competitors like BYD, NIO, and Li Auto have built out their own charging ecosystems, Tesla is positioning its network as neutral infrastructure, not a walled garden.

V4 Superchargers: The Hardware Behind the Rollout

Every one of the 55 new stations runs on V4 Supercharger technology. Tesla began deploying V4 hardware on the Chinese mainland in June 2025, initially in Shanghai, Gansu, and Zhejiang. The Chongqing rollout represents a significant westward expansion of V4 coverage.

V4 Superchargers support charging power of up to 500 kW — roughly double the peak output of the V3 units that make up the bulk of Tesla's existing global network. In practice, the charge rate any individual vehicle receives depends on its own onboard charging limits, but the headroom matters: as Tesla and other manufacturers push vehicle charging ceilings higher, V4 infrastructure is already ready for them.

🔭 The BASENOR Take

The scale here is the story. Tesla has opened new Supercharger stations in China regularly, but 55 stations going live on a single day — all on expressways, all V4, all non-Tesla accessible — is a different category of deployment. Huang Lei, Tesla's general manager for Western China, framed it explicitly as a template: the Chongqing project is intended to establish a foundation for expanding expressway service area charging to other provinces and cities.

Read that as a pipeline announcement. If Chongqing is the proof of concept, similar multi-station expressway packages in other major municipalities are likely already in planning. China's national highway network is vast, and Tesla has just demonstrated it can execute at scale on it.

There's also a competitive dimension worth noting. China's EV market is the most contested on earth, and charging network density is a genuine purchase consideration for buyers. By deploying V4 hardware that's open to all EVs, Tesla is making a bet that being the best charging network — not just the best Tesla charging network — is a durable competitive advantage. Whether that bet pays off depends on how quickly rivals can match the hardware quality and geographic coverage, but for now, 212 new V4 piles across 10 national expressways is a lead that will take time to close.

For Tesla owners in Chongqing and anyone driving through the region: the charging map just got substantially more useful. Check the Tesla app for the updated station locations before your next long-distance trip — the coverage gaps on those 10 expressways have largely been filled.

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Sources verified at publish time. Spotted an inaccuracy? Email editorial@basenor.com.