Tesla already has a number of large Supercharger stations in California, including the world’s largest at Harris Ranch. However, that 98-stall station will soon be dwarfed by one in Kern County, which if approved, will easily become the world’s largest with 164 Supercharger stalls.
According to plans filed with Kern County uncovered by Supercharger sleuth Marco (@MarcoRPi1), Tesla is planning to build 164 Supercharger posts on a vacant lot on Hwy 46, just northwest of Bakersfield along the I-5 corridor. This will add to the 20-stall V3 Supercharger located in the Denny’s parking lot just a few hundred feet away.
The plans reveal that 16 of the stalls will be pull-through, allowing easy charging for Tesla owners pulling a trailer. Additionally, all 164 stalls will be covered with solar canopies to take advantage of the California sun. Presumably the site will also include a Tesla Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) with Megapacks to store excess energy and deploy it during peak periods.
A review of Kern Country records by Drive Tesla shows the company filed the plans on January 30, 2024, and those plans are currently “in review.”
Interestingly, 164 is the same number of stalls that Tesla was planning to build about one hour away in Coalinga. In 2022 Drive Tesla reported exclusively that the company had secured funding for a 164 stall station at an undisclosed location in the city, with 50% of the stalls also having the ability to charge EVs equipped with CCS charge ports.
Tesla ultimately walked away from the $1.6 million in funding over what the company called “unnecessarily cumbersome payment infrastructure requirements.” Those requirements stated that the charging stations must support various payment options, including both credit and debit cards, alongside mobile app transactions. Given that Tesla’s Superchargers lacked the necessary interfaces for such payment mechanisms, and the cost of upgrading them to comply would have been excessively high, it was deemed more practical to walk away from the funding rather than attempt to satisfy the program’s criteria.
However, Tesla has since launched their V4 Superchargers, which now include screens with payment terminals allowing for credit card transactions.
