We Charged Our 2024 Kia EV9 at a Tesla Supercharger; Here’s How It Went

You might be hearing a lot lately about Tesla opening up its Supercharger DC fast-charging network to non-Tesla brands. And it’s true, the automaker has, creating partnerships with a number of companies to allow everything from Ford Mustang Mach-Es to Chevrolet Blazer EVs at the red-and-white chargers dotting the American landscape. The reasons are simple: Tesla gets revenue from additional customers using its chargers; competing automakers get access to perhaps Tesla’s greatest accomplishment in creating demand for electric cars, a highly reliable, widely available network of DC fast chargers.

To say that competing DC fast-charging networks haven’t had a smooth rollout would be a staggering understatement — it’s been a disaster by most measures, from terrible customer satisfaction to notoriously unreliable equipment to a glacially slow pace of construction, and it’s led to a lot of EV intenders souring on their purchases.

Tesla has faced none of that dissatisfaction. By heavily investing in a proprietary quick-charging infrastructure, the company has made sure that people who buy its cars can quickly, easily and reliably fast-charge them just about anywhere in the country now (provided there isn’t a massive line of other Tesla owners already ahead of you, as is now common in some parts of California in particular). Wouldn’t it be nice if your non-Tesla EV that’s not yet part of the network could also use it? Well, it can — if you use a Tesla Supercharger with a Magic Dock adapter.

Currently, you can only charge a non-Tesla vehicle at a Supercharger one of two ways. For brands that are part of the network, you can use a Tesla-to-CCS1 adapter (available from third-party providers online, some of which are reputable). You can also use a Tesla Supercharger station equipped with the Magic Dock connector. Tesla-style connectors (now called the North American Charging Standard or NACS style, or officially the SAE J3400 connector) are unique to Teslas and haven’t fit any other cars, though that’s changing: Tesla has convinced much of the rest of the auto industry to adopt its style of connector as the new industry standard in the U.S., and other brands are integrating it with their upcoming vehicles. Magic Dock connectors, however, are not terribly common; they can be located in the Tesla app.

How to Charge at a Tesla Magic Dock

That’s the first step: Download the Tesla app, make an account and enter a payment method. You don’t actually have to own a Tesla vehicle to do this, but you will need to do it to use its charging network (for now). Your phone communicates with the charger to activate it when you get to a charging station; actual Teslas do it automatically when you plug one in, but as of right now, other brands’ cars do not. Such was the case with our long-term Kia EV9.

The second step is to locate a Magic Dock charger. There’s one not too far from the Cars.com Detroit Bureau offices in the parking lot of a local chain of supermarkets called Meijer, in Ypsilanti, Mich. Upon arriving at the 250-kilowatt Tesla Supercharger with a 35% state of charge and 90 miles of range on our EV9, I located the Magic Dock charger, backed the EV9 up to it, unlocked it by holding down the charger’s button for two seconds while it was still in the charging station, and out it popped with the Magic Dock adapter attached.

More From Cars.com:

• When Will All Fast-Charging Stations Be Open to All EVs?
• Tesla to Open Charging Network to All EVs Following New Federal Regs
• ChargePoint Omni Port Adds EV Adapter to Charging Stations
• Which Electric Cars Are Still Eligible for the $7,500 Federal Tax Credit?
• Here Are the 11 Cheapest Electric Vehicles You Can Buy

How It Charged Our Kia

I activated the charger using the app and plugged the connector into the EV9, where it quickly ramped up to a roughly 75-kW charging speed … and held there for all 35 minutes until it reached the prescribed 80% state of charge I had set for the car. Despite both the EV9 and the Supercharger being capable of charging at far higher speeds, it never went above 76 kW the entire time. No other vehicles were at this charging station, but a quick online search of various forums shows that no 800-volt EV9 seems to go above 80 kW at a 400-volt Magic Dock Supercharger anywhere, so my lackluster charging experience was apparently not unique.

The total energy dispensed was 44.7 kilowatt-hours at a cost of $22.81, with Tesla charging $0.51 per kilowatt-hour (including sales tax). This makes charging at a Tesla Supercharger rather problematic for us. On one hand, the process worked flawlessly and was super easy to use, something that cannot be said for many of my visits to ChargePoint or Electrify America chargers. On the other hand, the same DC fast-charge at a (perfectly working) non-Tesla charging station would’ve taken less than half the time it did at the Supercharger at more than twice the charging speed. We’ve seen the EV9 get up to an indicated 240 kW on a 350-kW Electrify America DC fast charger before, and most Hyundai/Kia/Genesis vehicles have reliably demonstrated the same capability. (Kia’s stated peak power for most trims, including our EV9 Land, is 210 kW, but the brand says the base Light trim can achieve 235 kW.)

Next Steps for Kia and Tesla

Kia says that early in 2025, all of its EVs will be able to seamlessly charge at Tesla Superchargers using the Kia Access app provided you have a connector adapter (see more about how that’s going to work). Whether or not that means you’ll have better charging speeds for your Kia on Tesla’s equipment remains to be seen, but it’s been suggested that newer, more updated Tesla Superchargers will be able to charge Kias more rapidly than older ones. For now, I’d likely still just stick to the much faster non-Tesla DC fast chargers for quick-charging our EV9 — provided you can find one that works. 

Related Video: 

Cars.com’s Editorial department is your source for automotive news and reviews. In line with Cars.com’s long-standing ethics policy, editors and reviewers don’t accept gifts or free trips from automakers. The Editorial department is independent of Cars.com’s advertising, sales and sponsored content departments.