April 16, test drive one tram across northern North Dakota just got a lot less stressful. That’s when a new fast charging station turned on at the Simonson Station Store the gas station in Minot, near the Red Wing shoe store.
Zero-emissions drivers around El Paso, Texas, can also rest easier thanks to two new roadside stations in Deming, New Mexico. As can anyone traveling down the Gulf Coast through Mobile, Alabama, where a new bank charger started pumping electrons on May 2nd in Robertsdale, just down the street from Buster’s Southern Pit BBQ.
America’s EV charging deserts continued to disappear in the second quarter, as a patchwork of networks turned on 704 new public fast-charging stations, up 9% in three months, according to a Bloomberg Green analysis of Energy Department data. There are now nearly 9,000 public fast-charging locations in the United States.
At the current pace, public fast-charging locations will outnumber gas stations in the U.S. in about eight years — but the push for charging is only expected to accelerate. North American operators will spend a total of $6.1 billion on charging infrastructure this year, nearly double their 2023 investment, according to BloombergNEF estimates. That annual spending is expected to double by 2030.
“We’re seeing a surge in demand for fast charging,” said Sara Rafalson, executive vice president at EVgo Inc., which operates nearly 1,000 charging stations in the United States. “We’re continuing to build larger and larger charging stations because we need to meet that demand.”
EV charging cords are increasingly being added by retailers looking to attract the nearly 10 percent of U.S. car buyers who plug in battery-powered vehicles. Gas station operators in particular are jumping on the electric bandwagon. Shell launched 30 new charging stations in the second quarter, while Enel opened 11, Pilot According to federal statistics, there are eight Travel Centers open and seven more appearing at Flying J stops.
“We’re passing a turning point where fueling stations and convenience stores are really seeing the value proposition,” said Sam Houston, senior vehicle analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “This is a very welcome change from how they were behaving in the regulatory space even just a few years ago.”
US Bank also sees EV charging as a business development activity: It turned on chargers at 39 branches in California in the second quarter. Meanwhile, Waffle House added charging lines to the parking lots at two of its Florida restaurants.
As demand for electric vehicles in the United States slows, retailers have good reason to view chargers as a customer magnet: More drivers are switching to electric vehicles. In April, the International Energy Agency estimated that sales of all-electric vehicles in the United States will soar to 2.5 million by 2025, up from 1.1 million last year.
“It is worth remembering that the number of electric vehicles sold [in the first] “This quarter is almost equal to the sales for the whole of 2020,” EVgo CEO Badar Khan said on an earnings call on May 7.
Meanwhile, charging stations are now busy enough to start making money. At the end of the first quarter, the average U.S. fast-charging station was plugged into cars 18% of the time—nearly five hours a day, according to Stable Auto, a charging network consulting firm. Stable estimates that a charging station would need to be pumping electrons about 15% of the time to be profitable.
EVgo says demand is being driven by its drivers tram More EV owners live in multi-unit developments, where they often can’t charge at home. Newer EVs can also charge faster than older models, Rafalson points out, which encourages more drivers to charge outdoors. The company’s fastest-growing markets are Texas and Florida, followed by Michigan and Arizona.
The Q2 charging race was fueled in part by the Biden administration’s National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Initiative (NEVI) program, a $5 billion plan to fill gaps in the charging map. It’s still early days, but the NEVI program was in former President Donald Trump’s sights: In an interview with Businessweek, Trump claimed the White House spent $8 billion to open just seven chargers.
Eight NEVI-backed stations opened in six states in Q2, but that number is expected to grow rapidly. Some 23 states have awarded contracts or signed agreements for another 550 stations, according to the government.
Still, charging anxiety remains one of the top concerns for drivers hesitant to buy an electric vehicle. Houston of the Union of Concerned Scientists says that’s partly because there’s still a big gap between perception and reality. Most drivers don’t know how many charging cables are actually around them.
“You have some anecdotes that show a lack of charging and that gets lumped into overall charging. It’s important to make sure people know how quickly these stations will come online,” Houston said.
