Infrastructure
This Is the Easiest State to Find an EV Charging Station
Published:
Tesla, the leading electric car maker in the United States by unit sales, shipped just over 300,000 cars in the fourth quarter of last year. For the entire year, the figure was 936,000, which means Tesla will ship well more than a million cars this year. While Tesla may be the leader, it is not alone. General Motors has announced it will invest $35 billion in electric and autonomous car production and have the capacity to make a million of these in 2025.
Ford has similarly ambitious plans, and all major foreign car companies that ship or make vehicles in America want a large share of the electric vehicle (EV) market as well. Not every one of these manufacturers will be a winner. Some will invest billions and end up with little to show for it.
One major hurdle EV makers have is the number of charging stations. In a recent survey, half of those polled worried about whether they could find a charging station if they ran low on charge.
These concerns are not misplaced. There are more than 150,000 gas stations in the United States. Tesla has just over 1,000 charging stations in the country, and it has the largest network by far. It will be years before the number of charging stations for EVs in America comes even close to the gas station number.
Data for the just-released The 2022 EV Charging Station Report: State-by-State Breakdown from online driver’s education resource Zutobi came from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Alternative Fuels Data Center. Vehicle registration data came from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration Office of Highway Policy Information.
The primary conclusion of the study was: “The US is a vast country, with each state playing by its own rules to a certain extent and, with EVs relying heavily on a network of charging stations to operate effectively, there’s still a long way to go before the country is really ready for a large rollout of electric vehicles.”
The state with the largest number of charging states per EV was North Dakota at 63.2.
These are the 10 states with the most charging stations per EV:
| State | Registered EVs | Stations per 100 EVs |
|---|---|---|
| North Dakota | 220 | 63.2 |
| Wyoming | 330 | 55.8 |
| Mississippi | 780 | 55.5 |
| West Virginia | 600 | 51.2 |
| Rhode Island | 1,580 | 40.0 |
| Vermont | 2,230 | 39.4 |
| South Dakota | 410 | 39.0 |
| District of Columbia | 2,360 | 35.0 |
| Arkansas | 1.330 | 34.8 |
| Maine | 1,920 | 33.3 |
Click here to see which are the fastest-selling cars in America.
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