Efforts to build a national network of electric vehicle charging stations are falling behind the number of EVs on the road. In some states, registered EVs are far outpacing a sufficient number of charging stations. The challenge for individual states is that public funding for EV chargers essentially helps determine early winners and losers in a new market. The
Efforts to build a national network of electric vehicle charging stations are falling behind the number of EVs on the road.
And there is the question of reliability.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/07/electric-cars-are-doome…
Finding a charger isn’t actually the problem, though, even if it adds another 50 miles to your road trip…No, the problem is whether or not any of the chargers will be working when you arrive. (Unless you’re driving a Tesla, since Superchargers are painless to use and appear to be extremely reliable.)…
At each charging stop, in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York, I ran into problems. A five-minute wait to see if the car and charger would establish communications was invariably the case. Waiting 10 minutes was not uncommon. Even then, there was no time to relax; more than once, an error somewhere in the loop shut everything down after just a few kWh…Only one of six charging stops was painless…
Then there was the problem of whether or not all of the chargers at a given location were even functional. At one EA station with a Plugshare rating of 9.8, two of four chargers were completely inoperable and a third was reduced to just 50 kW. Four days later, nothing had changed other than its Plugshare rating, which had increased by 0.2 points to the maximum score of 10, with a note in italics about the reduced-power machine.
At the moment (in UK) electric cars aren’t really viable as only cars, even if as for me, 95% of outings are easily within 200 miles round trip so all the charging can be done at home … what about that other 5% … ? The last thing I want to do is be arguing with other electric car owners about how long we can each use the charging station for …
Full marks to Tesla for getting it all together in sync.
"The new Charging and Fueling Infrastructure grant program, which was authorized by the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, will spend $2.5 billion over five years to build electric vehicle charging stations and refueling infrastructure for hydrogen, propane or natural-gas vehicles.
“Administration officials told reporters in a press call Monday the program would help President Joe Biden meet his goal of 500,000 public charging stations by the end of the decade.”
The Mar 14 article reports that the federal govt allocated funds for changing stations in 2021.
This year they are finally ready to accept applications for grants under the law. The applications are due May 30. Processing might take months. Winners will probably learn this fall. So program maybe begins in 2024 if all goes well.
It’s incredible how long it takes for govt to take action and still longer for it to be implemented. Govt funding takes lots of patience.