Tesla has officially filed plans to construct a massive 96-stall charging location in Willows, California, aiming to provide a major charging hub for travelers along a busy U.S. highway corridor. The news comes courtesy of @MarcoRPi1, a Tesla enthusiast and longtime Supercharger watcher, who spotted the initial paperwork filings and shared them on X.
According to the permit documentation, the site is slated for construction directly off Interstate 5 on N Humboldt Ave. Looking at a recent aerial map of the area, the chosen real estate sits next to a Starbucks and is adjacent to both a Holiday Inn and a Best Western. Specifically, the site layout plans position the infrastructure on the currently empty, grassy patch right next to the coffee shop parking lot, as seen from street views.
A Phased V4 Deployment
The scale of this project will comfortably overshadow older charging depots. Earlier this spring, Tesla celebrated hitting 80,000 stalls worldwide when a 48-stall location opened up in France. This new Willows site will double that capacity once it is complete.
According to the site plans, Tesla is rolling this Supercharger out in two steps. Phase 1 will deliver the first 56 operational stalls, accompanied by 2 solar canopies, a Megapack energy storage system, and a pre-fabricated amenity building. Phase 2 will fill out the remaining space to bring the location up to its full 96-stall capacity.
Every single stall on the site plan is mapped out as a newer V4 variant. All of the new Superchargers being opened right now are fully V4, featuring not just V4 stalls but also upgraded V4 cabinets that cut down deployment costs while being able to power twice as many outlets as older V3 cabinets.
Handling Major Highway Traffic
The location choice is quite strategic. Once this new site comes online, there will be a Supercharger in every town along the I-5, including Dunnigan, Williams, Corning, Red Bluff, Cottonwood, Anderson, Redding, and now Willows.
In the first quarter of this year alone, Tesla’s global Supercharger ecosystem recorded a whopping 53 million charging sessions. With demand scaling quickly, Tesla recently deployed a virtual waitlist queue to curb wait times at high-traffic locations, backed by AI-powered forecasting to accurately predict stall availability.
While those software features help clean up logjams, the most direct solution to peak travel congestion is adding raw pavement and plugs. By installing 96 new stalls with food and lodging right next door, Tesla is ensuring this section of Interstate 5 will be fully prepared for the next wave of holiday travel.
