The Expert Podcast

Take a look at this map of the U.S. This is a map that depicts the current distribution of electric vehicle charging stations and, you know, you have some dots here that represent the frequency and saturation of EV charging stations. A lot of white on this chart, and even the ones where there's a dot, it doesn't mean that that whole dot is just covered with charging stations. It means that that town has a certain number of stations. So if you're going to take a cross-country trip, even if you're going to go from Florida

to Texas, where are you going to charge? Yeah, there's some dots along the route, but imagine if this was a cell phone coverage chart. You know your cell phone carrier has a similar map on their website showing where their cell coverage is. Would you drive with your car with a cell phone if this is what the chart looked like? And what's more important, cell phone coverage or being able to recharge your electric vehicle? This is a serious impediment to adoption of EVs. In fact, even if all of these charging stations were good enough

we don't know if these are level one, two, or three. There's very few level three chargers, which charge quickly. A level two charger takes an hour to restore 25 miles of charge for a typical vehicle. So if you're driving along this route and you have a 150 mile range, every 150 miles you have to stop for a couple hours. This is from the Wall Street Journal and the article is that charging stations are lagging. And now, granted, the government's trying to put money in, but some places haven't even used their

funding. Why not? Well, it's more than just money to create a charging station. You have to have the facility, the location. You have to get permits, approvals, and you have to have the electrical capacity. You have to have enough power from the grid to be able to supply that charging station. In fact, even some of the money is being used for other things. Some states say they plan to use the money for other projects such as bus fleets and something other than charging stations. Many states have yet to distribute funds.

This map kind of says all there needs to say about electric vehicles. If people are looking to buy a plug-in hybrid or pure electric vehicle, just like before you buy your cell phone, you're going to look at your coverage map to see where you'll be able to recharge that vehicle before you rely on it. It's kind of like if you bought a gasoline vehicle and there were no gas stations — how are you going to fill it up? So until not only the perception of the general public but also the reality of ubiquitous charging stations happens,

there may be some difficulty in getting larger scale adoption of plug-in electric vehicles. Tell us what your thoughts are about the coverage of charging stations. Is there enough? Is there going to be enough? And what is it going to take to have this map be more colored in? So when you're driving, even though you're driving across Texas or New Mexico or Arizona, there's a lot of white there. Mississippi, Alabama — there's nothing. Look up, you know, there's some dots in some of these states, even in California.

Along the coast and Los Angeles, San Francisco, there's some coverage. But you get north of that or east of that and you're out of luck. Are there charging stations? Sure, there are. You may not see some of these dots but it's not everywhere you need to go. You may have to carefully plan out. If you're driving your car — that's a gasoline car — almost anywhere in the country and you're on a paved road and you need gas, it's unlikely for you to not be able to find the gas station in about 10 minutes. Most places, there's some deserted roads

and some remote highways where, yeah, your gas station might be farther away. But most parts of the country, you're within 10 to 15 minutes of a gas station. You're within maybe a gallon if you get down where your light is on. You might have 20 or 30 miles left in your tank, you're gonna get to a gas station in that period of time. Electric vehicles, you may have to plan hours in advance to get gas, so to speak, in your electric vehicle to get recharged. And if that vehicle does go to zero, it's not as simple as calling AAA to come

pour some gas in your tank. It has to be towed to a charging station that can fill up your battery again, so it's a different process as well. Let us know what you think and we'll see on the next video.