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Anyone who studies US electric vehicles probably knows California is the state with the largest number of fully-electric vehicles. California also has the largest number of public EV chargers, and not by a little. What might be less known is that California also has an estimated 800,000 home EV chargers to go with its over 200,000 public chargers. If you asked someone walking on a sidewalk if there are more gas station fuel pumps or public EV chargers, the person may say it’s gas pumps, because there aren’t enough EV chargers. The same person might not know exactly how many public EV chargers there are, but probably believes there aren’t enough chargers — without any precise data.
There seems to be some confusion about how public EV chargers relate to public gas stations, in the assumption there must be the same number of EV chargers as there are gas station fuel pumps. If about 80 percent of EV charging happens at home, and home charging provides enough electricity to cover most EV driving, why would a huge number of public EV chargers be necessary?
For one thing, at the moment, most apartment and condo complexes don’t yet have onsite EV chargers. When they do, the picture may become more clear that perhaps enormous numbers of public EV chargers are not required. This is to say, we might be further along the path toward widespread personal transportation electrification than many people understand.
