Public Charger Growth in US

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DanWheeler

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Pretty cool to see the growth of public charging stations in the United States.

California alone has 20,854, 4x more than New York & Texas.
 
DanWheeler said:
Pretty cool to see the growth of public charging stations in the United States.
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This chart paints a nice picture, but the picture may not really reflect the state of EV charging.

There are about 120,000 gas stations in the US (https://www.statista.com/statistics/525107/number-of-gasoline-stations-in-the-united-states/). One could argue that with about 80,000 charging stations EVs are almost caught up. That is not true as it is not an apples to apples comparison. We need a lot more charging stations today, based on current charging times for a variety of reasons.

  1. Many people charge at home, so this will reduce the number of required charging stations.
  2. Most charging stations have about 1-2 chargers, gas stations have 6 pumps.
  3. A single pump can service about 12 cars in a hour. A single charger can process 1-2 cars an hour. As per my back of napkin calculation, you need more than a million charging stations if even 50% of the cars are EV
  4. Many of the charging stations are today clustered or in private establishments (hospitals, parking lots etc.) where you may not have easy access. In the map below for Chandler, AZ, most of the chargers are in Auto dealerships. So it may appear there are many chargers, but most practically unavailable.
  5. Concentrated in very few states.
The unknown here is when new technology will come in that can reduce charging times to 5-10 minutes. This will be the game changer and you would not need too many public chargers as people will charge at home also.

I know it has been a long post, but my short message is "Nice chart, impressive numbers, but misleading. We have a long way to go".



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My experience:
  • 24x7, +100 kW, fast DC chargers - critical for practical cross country travel, ~100-150 mi gaps between
    • 50 kW DC chargers are neither fast nor affordable for cross-country
  • 24x7, 10 kW, L2 chargers and NEMA 14-50 at motels and RV parks - critical for overnight charging battery to max range
  • business hours, L2 chargers at restaurants, grocery stores, and mini-markets - needed for around town errands
Bob Wilson
 
I'm satisfied with charging options in my area (Central Florida)
Fortunately, there are alternatives to price gouging Electrify America here in FL. Greenlots has come a long way in the area. Their older chargers were unreliable and they took long time to fix them. Now, most of them were replaced with newer, more reliable options. Right now, I got about 7 FREE 50kw DC Fast Greenlots chargers within 70 miles of my hone. There are other ones that are cheap (11.53 cents per kwh).
Unfortunately, Greenlots only seems to be well represented in Central Florida but not in the rest of the state. Pinellas Country (Clearwater/St. PETE tops the list with 4 free Greenlots 50kw Level 3 chargers)
We also have free chargers at many larger malls. Tampa International Mall has 8 free Level 2 spots to charge.. My town has gone from about 5 chargers last June to 14 chargers right now. Things are looking good here..
 
For me my options are either ChargePoint or EVgo (assuming I don't use EA). EVgo just last week opened a 100kW charger about 15 minutes from the office, and they have an 80kW charger that I know of not far from where we used to live (it is my backup charger if the free 50kW charger is busy).

EA is still more convenient - I can literally look out the window of the apartment and see the chargers at their HQ in Reston. But I split my time between the apartment, and our house in Delaware (where I have an EVSE).
 
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