If Electric Vehicles Are Truly the Future, When Will There Be Enough Charging Stations?

The world is in a pickle. More than 100 years of scientific research have shown that trapped gasses have slowly and systematically raised the Earth's temperature, leading to record high temperatures, drought, rising seas, and severe flooding. Further, research shows that the average internal combustion engine emits around 24 pounds of global-warming gasses for every gallon of gasoline burned and that approximately one-third of all U.S. emissions are due to gas-guzzling cars.

We know there's a problem, and we know what's causing it, yet we've been slow to adopt potential solutions, like switching from combustion engines to electric vehicles (EVs). And yet, who can blame us? To date, there haven't been enough charging stations to assure us that there will be somewhere to stop and charge our EVs when we're on the open road.

If you'd like to do your part for the planet and your bank account by driving an EV but are concerned about the hassle of making sure a charge is available when you need it, help appears to be on the way. While we can't give you a specific date as to when there will be enough charging stations, we can share what the experts are saying.

Picking up steam

Corporations need assurances that they can turn a profit before investing the money and resources needed to build charging stations. According to Stable Auto, a company dedicated to quickly adding new EV charging networks, a single charging station must pump electrons around 15% of the time to turn a profit. In other words, there needs to be a vehicle plugged in and charging 3.6 hours a day.

EVgo Inc. operates around 1,000 charging stations in the US and reports that almost one-third of them were busy charging cars at least 20% of the time by September 2023. That's good news for companies looking to build profitable stations and may help explain why the number of U.S. fast-charging stations not operated by Tesla doubled last year, from 9% to 18%.

Better yet, by the end of 2023, every fast-charging EV cord in the U.S. was in use for an average of nearly five hours a day, more than required to make charging stations profitable.

In other good news for those who would like to transition from a combustion engine to an EV, 1,100 new fast-charging stations were installed in the second half of 2023. That means that there is now one quick-turn EV station for every 16 gas stations in the U.S.

When can we expect more?

As companies like Stable Auto and EVgo are busy expanding the number of EV charging stations, corporations are also doing their part to make it easier for drivers to find the chargers they need. For example, Tesla is beginning to open its network of chargers to vehicles manufactured by other automakers. Given that approximately two-thirds of all charging cords in the U.S. are currently designed for Tesla ports, opening them up to other types of EVs will provide the country with a sudden rush of charging stations for non-Tesla vehicles.

In 2021, when it became clear that drivers weren't budgeting to buy cars that might be difficult to charge, the Biden Administration got a bipartisan bill through Congress called the Nation Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program. The commitment is to build a nationwide network of at least 500,000 public charges by 2030 and to have high-speed charges spaced no less than every 50 miles along major roads, freeways, and interstates.

As of today, urban dwellers have easier access to existing charging stations than those living in rural areas, and some states are further ahead than others. For example, fast-charging stations are in use in Illinois, Connecticut, and Nevada eight hours a day. NEVI aims to make charging cords equally accessible to drivers in other states.

With NEVI's $7.5 billion investment, it's fair to say that the next few years will see a jump in the number of EV charging stations and a drop in the number of people worried that they won't be able to charge an EV. While we can't provide a precise timeline for the switch, we can safely predict that it will be far easier to find a charging station in 2030 than it is today.