613 car-charging stations needed per month
If you own an all-electric car, you’re probably still not planning any long-distance trips across the US … though you could probably enjoy a relatively worry-free tour of California and the West Coast. A drive across the Dakotas or the Deep South, however, is still right out.
While federal officials are aiming to have 22,000 charging points for plug-in vehicles deployed across the country by the end of 2013, and claim stimulus funds have helped boost the national count by more than 1,800, you won’t find anywhere near that many yet if you search online for the nearest place to plug in.
The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Alternative Fuels and Advanced Vehicles Data Centre, for example, counts just 948 electric-car charging locations on its state-by-state list right now, with California (492 charge points) accounting for more than half of the nation’s total. The breakdown is as follows:
- California – 492
- Washington – 68
- Oregon – 40
- Texas – 36
- New York – 35
- Michigan – 34
- Florida – 32
- Illinois – 29
- South Carolina – 26
- North Carolina – 21
- New Jersey – 11
- Wisconsin – 10
- Connecticut – 9
- Iowa – 9
- Maryland – 9
- Colorado – 8
- Minnesota – 8
- Massachusetts – 7
- Virginia – 7
- Utah – 6
- Georgia – 5
- Missouri – 5
- Idaho – 4
- Louisiana – 4
- New Hampshire – 4
- Washington, DC – 4
- Hawaii – 3
- Ohio – 3
- Vermont – 3
- Indiana – 2
- Nevada – 2
- Kansas – 1
- New Mexico – 1
- Pennsylvania – 1
- Rhode Island – 1
- Tennessee – 1
- West Virginia – 1
Obviously, there’s a lot of work left to get from here — 948 or 1,800-plus, depending upon which DOE figure of existing charging stations you go with — and there, which is 22,000 total with a little more than 2 1/2 years to go. Let’s be charitable and say there are 3,000 charge points in operation or ready to open soon. That means we’ll need to deploy 20,o00 more charging stations over the next 31 months to meet our EV infrastructure goals, or about 613 new charge points a month — 20 1/2 new sites a day — between now and December 31, 2013.
