It was President Joe Biden’s favorite phrase during the 2020 campaign, one that he repeated over and over again whenever the subject of electric cars came up: “500,000 charging stations.” Despite his reputation as an ardent fan of trains and Amtrak, the president has spent the last year conjuring an image of an America filled with electric vehicles by 2030, each one seamlessly zipping from one charging station to the next.
But as the Biden administration prepares to push his $2 trillion infrastructure proposal through Congress — which includes a $174 billion investment in electric vehicles — one part of that ginormous plan has been overlooked. The U.S. currently only has about 115,000 gas stations and 41,000 charging stations across the entire country, meaning that EV stations will have to match — and then quickly overtake — stations dispensing America’s longtime favorite fuel. Even with sufficient funding, where are those half a million new stations going to go?
Why public chargers?The first thing to know about EV charging stations is that, despite having a charging mechanism that looks eerily like the nozzle of a gas pump, they aren’t much like g... Read more
