What this article (and analysis) misses is that a location with 2 DC fast chargers is in no way, shape, or form the equivalent of a gas station, if for no other reason than the average gas station in the US has 8 peds capable of refueling 16 vehicles at the same time.
Bloomberg’s estimate of 120k gas stations times 16 simultaneous vehicles means that, worst case scenario, you can refuel 1.9MM vehicles simultaneously.
That is leaps and bounds more than what’s even imaginable for EV quick charging.
Hell, when’s the last time you saw a line for gas other than a Costco?
Skilk
Is that a plug vs pump basis? Because I’d believe that there is 1 charging station for every gas station but a gas station has like 10 pumps on average while most charging stations only have a couple plugs. Not to mention the time it takes to fill up being way longer for the charging stations. That being said, the majority of charging is done at home so that alleviates a lot of congestion at the charging station.
RioRancher
That’s actually pretty good
Captain_Aware4503
I’ve travelled back and forth across the US and was always amazed that there was Tesla Super Charger nearby. We went to Caprock Canyons State Park in Texas in the middle of nowhere, and there was a Super Charger in Childress just several miles away. There was another in St. Quanah too. Neither are anywhere near Interstates.
Even better, we stayed at a cabin that had free EV charging. We stayed for a week and also went to Palo Duro Canyon, and never had to “fill up” because we charged overnight.
I love that my car can tell me where the nearest charger is and how many stalls are open.
EqualShallot1151
Aren’t all the home charging points being forgotten here.
Anaxamenes
Which seems pretty good already when most people will charge most often at home or maybe work.
Lorax91
Here are the numbers Bloomberg uses:
8,200 “quick-turn EV stations” (whatever that means), of which slightly over 25% are Tesla chargers.
120,061 convenience stores that sell gas, accounting for ~80% of the gas sold here. If we assume the other 20% has a corresponding number of locations, that works out to ~150k gas stations total.
So ~2,200 or so Tesla charging stations and 6,000 CCS charging locations, versus 150,000 gas stations. Bit of a stretch to call that a 1:15 ratio.
Bay1Bri
That’s shockingly high! Now if like to see the ratio of plugs to pumps. And where are these stations? I hardly see any.
sarhoshamiral
That’s no way true. Are they counting pumps and charger plugs or stations?
WildDurian
There’s a lot of people in the comments saying public ev chargers do not need to match the number of gas stations, people can just charge at home. You folks are overlooking the fact that a large chunk of the population lives in cities and apartment building, they don’t have access to a garage or driveway to charge their vehicle. The lack of public charging is a huge roadblock to ev adoption.
eyehatesigningup
Needs to be 10 chargers at every gas station at least
NiroNut
I’m not buying it. Maybe if you count all the dealerships that were contractually obligated to install a DC fast charger, but then they go out of their way to make it hard to access the chargers, turn them off before they even close for the night, and overtly show disdain towards anyone who dares to try to use them… Yeah, if you’re counting all those gems, then maybe you’ll reach 1 charger for every 15 gas stations, provided you don’t count every single gas station, because let me tell you… there are a lot of gas stations.
14 Comments
the ratio of working chargers to gas stations is 1:50, unfortunately.
Account for time spent at the pump/charger and that ratio gets a lot worse.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-18/the-us-now-has-a-fast-ev-charging-station-for-every-15-gas-stations
The actual article.
What this article (and analysis) misses is that a location with 2 DC fast chargers is in no way, shape, or form the equivalent of a gas station, if for no other reason than the average gas station in the US has 8 peds capable of refueling 16 vehicles at the same time.
Bloomberg’s estimate of 120k gas stations times 16 simultaneous vehicles means that, worst case scenario, you can refuel 1.9MM vehicles simultaneously.
That is leaps and bounds more than what’s even imaginable for EV quick charging.
Hell, when’s the last time you saw a line for gas other than a Costco?
Is that a plug vs pump basis? Because I’d believe that there is 1 charging station for every gas station but a gas station has like 10 pumps on average while most charging stations only have a couple plugs. Not to mention the time it takes to fill up being way longer for the charging stations. That being said, the majority of charging is done at home so that alleviates a lot of congestion at the charging station.
That’s actually pretty good
I’ve travelled back and forth across the US and was always amazed that there was Tesla Super Charger nearby. We went to Caprock Canyons State Park in Texas in the middle of nowhere, and there was a Super Charger in Childress just several miles away. There was another in St. Quanah too. Neither are anywhere near Interstates.
Even better, we stayed at a cabin that had free EV charging. We stayed for a week and also went to Palo Duro Canyon, and never had to “fill up” because we charged overnight.
I love that my car can tell me where the nearest charger is and how many stalls are open.
Aren’t all the home charging points being forgotten here.
Which seems pretty good already when most people will charge most often at home or maybe work.
Here are the numbers Bloomberg uses:
8,200 “quick-turn EV stations” (whatever that means), of which slightly over 25% are Tesla chargers.
120,061 convenience stores that sell gas, accounting for ~80% of the gas sold here. If we assume the other 20% has a corresponding number of locations, that works out to ~150k gas stations total.
So ~2,200 or so Tesla charging stations and 6,000 CCS charging locations, versus 150,000 gas stations. Bit of a stretch to call that a 1:15 ratio.
That’s shockingly high! Now if like to see the ratio of plugs to pumps. And where are these stations? I hardly see any.
That’s no way true. Are they counting pumps and charger plugs or stations?
There’s a lot of people in the comments saying public ev chargers do not need to match the number of gas stations, people can just charge at home.
You folks are overlooking the fact that a large chunk of the population lives in cities and apartment building, they don’t have access to a garage or driveway to charge their vehicle. The lack of public charging is a huge roadblock to ev adoption.
Needs to be 10 chargers at every gas station at least
I’m not buying it. Maybe if you count all the dealerships that were contractually obligated to install a DC fast charger, but then they go out of their way to make it hard to access the chargers, turn them off before they even close for the night, and overtly show disdain towards anyone who dares to try to use them… Yeah, if you’re counting all those gems, then maybe you’ll reach 1 charger for every 15 gas stations, provided you don’t count every single gas station, because let me tell you… there are a lot of gas stations.