27,500+ Supercharger Stalls Are Open to Other Brands — Referral Credit Still Isn’t
By David · Published
As of March 2026, more than 27,500 Supercharger stalls globally are open to non-Tesla brands, including Ford, GM, Rivian, Hyundai and Stellantis marques. That is a genuine change to charging in North America, and it produces a reasonable-sounding question with an unambiguous answer: no, it does not make referral charging credit portable.
Why people expect otherwise
Opening the network blurred the line between "Tesla's charging network" and "a charging network Tesla operates". If a Rivian can plug in, the intuition follows that Tesla-issued charging value ought to be spendable there too. The intuition is wrong because the credit was never a network entitlement.
Where the credit actually lives
Referral rewards are posted to a Tesla account and, for charging distance, are consumed by a Tesla vehicle on that account — automatically at the stall, with no charge appearing until the allowance runs out. A non-Tesla charging session is billed through that manufacturer's or a third-party app, which has no view of your Tesla account balance. There is no mechanism for the two to meet.
How the billing actually splits
The mechanics are worth stating because they explain why no exception is possible. A Tesla charging a referral allowance is authenticated by the car itself at the stall, and the allowance is drawn down before any payment method is touched. A non-Tesla plugs in through its own manufacturer's app or a third-party account, which authenticates against that account's payment method. Two different authentication paths, only one of which can see a Tesla account balance.
The practical case this rules out
A two-car household — one Tesla, one other-brand EV — cannot spend a Tesla referral charging allowance on the second car, even at the same stall on the same day. Nor can the allowance be transferred, cashed out or reissued; those limits are in the programme rules and apply to credits generally.
The adjacent question: what happens when the car goes
If the credit is a property of the account and the charging allowance is consumed by a car on it, the obvious follow-up is what happens when that car is sold or traded. This desk will not assert a rule it cannot source — the programme terms do not spell this case out publicly — but the shape of the answer follows from the parts that are documented: credits are not transferable and cannot be reissued, and a charging allowance is spent by charging. The safe reading is that an allowance you have not spent is worth nothing to the next owner and nothing to you once the car is gone. If a sale is on the horizon, spend the allowance first.
What it changes for a buyer using a code
Nothing, and that is worth saying plainly rather than manufacturing a connection. In North America the referral benefit is 3 months of free FSD (North America) or free Supercharging (Europe), which is unaffected by who else can charge. The open network is good news for road-tripping; it is not referral news — and treating it as referral news is how pages end up implying a portability that does not exist.
For the full mechanics of where the code goes and when, see how the referral program works.
Disclosure: I'm an independent Tesla owner writing this myself. This site is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by Tesla, Inc. If you eventually order through the referral link in the site header or footer I may earn Tesla Credits — that costs you nothing and changes nothing about your benefit.