America’s public DC fast-charging network crossed 80,000 ports this summer. That sounds like a victory lap until you read the fine print. The country is opening fewer charging sites than it did a year ago. The ones it does open are bigger and faster, and Tesla drivers without a membership are paying more to use them.
The numbers come from data firm Paren’s Q3 2026 report, which monitors more than 98% of U.S. fast-charging ports in real time. Operators added 664 stations and 4,106 ports from July through September. That brings the national count to 80,964 ports at 14,614 locations.
Fewer pins on the map, more stalls per pin
Through the first nine months of 2026, operators opened 2,158 stations, roughly 20% fewer than in the same stretch of 2025. Ports fell only about 9%, to 12,354, so the average new site is getting chunkier.
New non-Tesla sites averaged 5.0 ports, up from 4.1 a year earlier. Electrify America opened a 24-port location, its largest ever. Tesla’s new Superchargers averaged 13.1 stalls, topped by a 48-stall site in Fort Lauderdale.
Related Articles
- A Loose Fuel Tube Is Sending 106,000 Land Cruisers Back to Toyota Dealers
- Cartels Love U.S. Rental Trucks for One Reason: The Theft Paperwork Is Slower Than the Drive to Mexico
Station count is a vanity metric. Ports per site is a sanity metric. At a two-stall site, one broken dispenser takes out half your options. At a 20-stall site, two broken dispensers barely register. Not every network has gotten the memo, though: 71% of ChargePoint’s and 74% of Blink’s sites with new Q3 ports had two ports or fewer.
Tesla’s slice shrinks, with an asterisk
Tesla still added the most ports, 1,287, or 31.3% of the quarter’s total. Even so, its share of the installed base slid from 54.3% to 49.3% year over year. Tesla isn’t stalling. It added about 5,700 ports in 12 months. Everyone else combined just added more than twice that.
Ionna vaulted to second place with 378 new ports, more than double its Q2 total. Read the methodology appendix before celebrating. A site counts as new when a different operator takes it over and replaces the hardware, and much of Ionna’s jump came from converting 44 former Circle K stations. That is a genuine hardware upgrade, but it adds no new locations to a road-trip map.
Power is the real headline
Seventy-three percent of new ports carry a nameplate rating of at least 250 kW, up from 60% a year ago. Among non-Tesla networks, 35% of new ports were rated 400 kW or more, up from 10%. Tesla also added 26 sites with V4 cabinets rated at 500 kW.
The nameplate is a ceiling, not a promise. What your car actually pulls depends on its pack voltage, battery temperature, state of charge, and the cable’s current limit. An 800-volt car can make real use of a 400-kW dispenser. A typical 400-volt pack runs out of current headroom well before that. If you’re shopping for an EV, weigh the charging curve and battery architecture as heavily as range.
The plug war stalled at halftime
NACS made up 23% of new non-Tesla connectors, essentially flat against 22% in Q2 and 21% in Q1. CCS still accounted for 74%. NACS-only sites are starting to appear, including Ionna’s first in Lancaster and Perris, California, and three new Rivian locations. CCS owners can keep the adapter in the frunk, but they shouldn’t sell it yet.
Busy, mostly reliable, and pricier where it counts
Drivers logged 50.4 million sessions, up 26%, and July set a record at 17.6 million. National utilization held at 15.9%. Ports in the top 30 metros ran at 21.1%, compared with 11% everywhere else, and Los Angeles led at 31.8%. The national reliability score barely moved, to 93.9, but 29 of 52 states and territories slipped year over year.
Average pricing data shows $0.540 per kWh nationally, up 2.7%, and Paren attributes the increase to Tesla. Its non-member rate jumped 15% to $0.569, and its member rate rose 9% to $0.396. Non-Tesla networks have held near $0.533 for five quarters.
Related Articles
- Alexandria Seminary Road Camera’s Bad Tickets Climb to 834 After Audit
- Watch: A Sacramento Garage Camera Caught a 1970 Chevelle Leaving in About 2½ Minutes, Then a Retired CHP Investigator Spotted a “Dad” Shirt
The member discount works out to roughly $10 on a 60-kWh stop, so frequent road-trippers should run the math on a membership. Time-of-use pricing is another lever. Peak rates averaged $0.637 while off-peak held at $0.438, so drivers who can charge off-peak save about 10 cents per kWh compared with a fixed-rate station. Location matters even more: Hawaii averaged $0.877 per kWh, while Nebraska averaged $0.424.
Tom Moloughney stated the stakes plainly in a guest column: “Public charging must work for people who have no interest in troubleshooting equipment or becoming experts in charging networks.”
What to watch
So far, 2026 has followed 2025’s pattern: a slow first quarter, a peak in the second, and a dip in the third. Last year, Q4 delivered 6,191 ports, the strongest quarter of the year, and Paren expects a similar year-end push. If that happens, the year-over-year gap shrinks. If it doesn’t, the slowdown narrative gets louder, even as the hardware keeps improving.