Tesla's German Supercharger network has been open to other brands for years. Most drivers of other brands still do not use it.
A survey of 2,507 German drivers of battery-electric cars who charge in public, published on 7 October 2026 by the Stuttgart research firm USCALE, finds that 88% of Tesla drivers use the Superchargers. Among drivers of every other brand, 13% use them, and 3% use them as their preferred charging service.
How German drivers pick a charging service
USCALE also ran BDEW's annual charging survey this summer, which did not mention Tesla once. This study measures it directly. The preferred service is the one that matters commercially. USCALE's respondents actively use about three charging services each, 2.4 for newer EV drivers, but their favourite handles 68% of their charging sessions and so takes roughly two-thirds of the revenue.
Leaving Tesla drivers out, the preference splits like this:
| Type of provider | Share of preference |
|---|---|
| Major utilities (EnBW mobility+, E.ON Drive, EWE Go) | 32% |
| Oil majors (Aral pulse, Shell Recharge) | 23% |
| Carmakers' own charging services | 18% |
| Pure charging networks (IONITY, Fastned, Allego) | 11% |
| Retailers (Aldi, Lidl, Edeka) | 8% |
| Municipal utilities | 2% |
| Roaming providers | 2% |
Drivers name three things that decide their favourite: suitable locations, reliability and an easy app. Price matters when they first choose a service and, contrary to expectations, matters less once they are using it.
Known, rated highly, not used
The gap does not look like a reputation problem. USCALE's chart of how well each brand turns awareness into use puts the share of non-Tesla drivers who know the Superchargers but do not use them at roughly 36%, against the 13% who do. That is the largest group of aware non-users on the chart, narrowly ahead of E.ON Drive. Across all providers, USCALE says most non-users see the brands they know positively or neutrally, and around a third would try one.
The people who do use Tesla's charging rate it near the top. On net promoter score it ranks second of the 17 services in the study:
| Charging service | Net promoter score |
|---|---|
| Carmakers' own services | 53 |
| Tesla | 52 |
| IONITY | 49 |
| Shell Recharge | 48 |
| Aral pulse | 47 |
| Allego (lowest of 17) | 16 |
Among Tesla's own drivers the Superchargers score 62, against an average of 16.8 for the German energy sector. That is a different picture from the US, where J.D. Power's 2026 study dropped the Supercharger network to fourth place on cost.
What it means for Tesla drivers
The survey fits the session data TeslAnt reported a day earlier. Tesla runs roughly one in fourteen of Germany's fast chargers but took 15.2% of DC charging sessions in the third quarter. With only 13% of other drivers using the network at all, that traffic is likely to come mostly from Tesla's own fleet.
For a Tesla driver, the practical reading is that opening the network has so far added relatively few regular users from other brands in Germany. For Tesla, it is an untapped market: a network that its users rate near the top, where almost three other-brand drivers know it and stay away for every one who uses it. More of them on the stalls is also how a site gets cheaper to run, which is the argument Tesla now makes to its Supercharger for Business hosts.
Two caveats. USCALE surveyed online in July 2026, and 505 of the 2,507 respondents came through social media, a group the firm calls opinionated and not representative of most EV drivers. The 36% figure is read from USCALE's chart rather than published as a number.