Is Downtown Missoula Getting a New Tesla Supercharger?

Did you know that back in January, according to an article in InsideEvs.com, a map of 50 new Supercharger locations was leaked--and that it included locations in Montana? That report indicated a Supercharger was planned for Billings, but then I visited the Tesla website and found something even more interesting.

Tesla Shows a Supercharger Location for Downtown Missoula

I played around with the settings a couple of times just to make sure I knew what I was looking at, and yes, it showed a Supercharger location planned for Missoula.

I was also surprised to see the location had a target opening date in Q3 2023, being that today, September 29, is basically the last day of the quarter. I zoomed in on the icon to see exactly where the Supercharger was planned, and that's when I got really confused.

The Supercharger would supposedly be installed in the heart of downtown, at the intersection of Broadway and Higgins.

This is when I thought, this might be a mistake. The information does say, "Timing and location subject to change New locations added and timing updated quarterly." Still, I was curious if anything was in the works.

I reached out to the City of Missoula and spoke with Ian Ortlieb, the Parking Services Director for the Missoula Parking Commission.

"This is the first I'm hearing of it," Ortlieb said. He pulled up the website on his own computer and confirmed what I was seeing.

We discussed where a Supercharger could even go at that intersection--would it have to take up a parking space on Higgins? Was it meant for Main Street and Higgins instead of Broadway?

"I haven't heard of anything in downtown in terms of Tesla installing anything," Ortlieb confirmed.

Given the disclaimer on the site, this might have been a plan that fell through before they would have reached out to the City of Missoula. Then again, the locations are updated quarterly and we're about to begin Q4. Maybe Tesla will update their map with a different potential Missoula Supercharger location.