It’s a pitfall the Biden administration will need to avoid now that it’s trying to build out a national charging network. This disparity is probably the result of the state not being as thoughtful at the onset about how it designed its programs for funding charging stations, Hsu says. “The part that really surprised me learning that the public funded infrastructure somehow is distributed in a less equitable way” than privately funded charging stations, says Chih-Wei Hsu, who led the study as a researcher at Humboldt State University. The same was true for neighborhoods with incomes lower than the median for the state. Census blocks in the state with majority Black and Hispanic residents were “significantly less” likely to have access to a charging station in their area compared to the rest of the state in 2019, according to research published this year. In California, which leads the nation in EV adoption, there’s been an uneven rollout of charging stations based on race and income. The country will need more than 100,000 fast charging stations The country will need more than 100,000 fast charging stations by the end of the decade, according to one analysis. There are only around 46,000 public charging stations across the country, and very few of them are fast charging stations that can juice up cars in under an hour. Today, many EV owners choose to charge up at home in a garage or driveway, but as EV adoption expands beyond individual homeowners to those who rent or live in apartment buildings, public charging infrastructure will become more important. After EV costs come down, access to charging will be the next biggest hurdle when it comes to replacing gas-powered cars. With the price tag for an EV expected to become comparable with gas-powered cars this decade, that could soon change. The profile of an average EV driver, Travis says, is still a white guy who lives in the suburbs. “There’s probably not a city that you could look at and say that there is a proliferation of charging infrastructure in these underrepresented communities because the strategy was: let’s place charging infrastructure where EV vehicle registration is,” says Terry Travis, managing partner and co-founder of EVNoire, a consulting group that works toward more diversity and equity in the industry. Otherwise, existing disparities could get worse as policymakers hasten efforts to transition to electric vehicles. That’s something the Biden administration could go a long way toward remedying, experts say, as long as it heeds advice that comes directly from those communities. Across the country, the places with the most access to chargers tend to be wealthier and whiter. The way charging stations are spread out now is neither equitable nor convenient for many low-income communities and neighborhoods of color, experts tell The Verge. The way charging stations are spread out now is neither equitable nor convenient
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