Expanded EV Charging Access

­Ars Technica had a rather…unique take on expanded access to electric vehicles, and while I don’t quite agree with the article’s conclusions, it got me thinking about the future of EVs and their wider dissemination. Will charging access hamper the growth of EVs beyond the ubiquitous “early adopters”?

I think we can all agree on several key facts – not everyone lives in a single-family detached home (which offers the greatest “BEV-enabling” characteristics), public charging stations and chargers aren’t nearly as pervasive as gas stations, and as with every new technology, early EV adopters are generally richer than the general population.

According to one study from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a plurality of battery electric vehicle (BEV) households fall in the upper income brackets, with total earnings of $150K+. A full 80% of BEV households own or rent a single-family home and 75% own it and have a garage or access to an outlet.

No surprise, then, that 76% of BEV households rely on home charging. It should also surprise no one that BEV owners are better-educated (75.5% have a Bachelor’s Degree vs. 43.3% of the general population) and an overwhelming 92% of current BEV owners have two or more vehicles.

But it’s not just the upper crust of society speeding around in cars that sound like golf carts. 25% of current BEV owners fall into the $50-75K income bracket, which is inhabited by 60% of the general population. And the EV price premium is dropping fast – EVs now cost less than 15% more than the average gas-powered vehicle.

And once we expand EV patronage across the general population, the overall charging access goes down. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and under their most aggressive residential charging access model, “Enhanced Electrical Access with Parking Behavior Modification,” a minimum of 25% of PEVs will not have access to residential charging. And a full 40% of that group live in apartments, which makes home charging especially challenging.

What’s Ars Technica’s solution, you ask? Clean out your garage.

According to their figures, 42% of homeowners park near an electrical outlet, while that number to grow to 68% if people “changed their parking behavior”, including cleaning their garage. But that excludes non-homeowners plus the percentage of homeowners who still wouldn’t have electric access.

Even Ars Technica begrudgingly admits that an increase in charging infrastructure – i.e., public chargers – is perhaps more important than a thorough garage cleaning.

No matter how clean your garage, at least a quarter of Americans still won’t have charging access. That’s a problem we’ll need to solve for the light-duty vehicle fleet to truly reach 100% electric.