Charging 35 Millions EVs!

A study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) projects that by 2030 there will be 35 million EVs on the road in the U.S.A. and that for every 1,000 EVs we will require a charging infrastructure of 3.4 Level 3, and 40 Level 2 charging ports. Those statistics were cited in an early 2021 Forbes article by Nives Dolsak and Aseem Prakash entitled “The Lack of EV Charging Stations Could Limit EV Growth”; https://www.forbes.com/sites/prakashdolsak/2021/05/05/the-lack-of-ev-charging-stations-could-limit-ev-growth/?sh=2473d3f76a13

‍To bring home the point the article states “that 380 EV charging ports will need to be installed each day over the next nine years!”. At what cost one might ask?

The authors estimate that “hardware and installation could cost as much as $4,500 per level 1 port, $20,000 per Level 2 port, and $90,000 per DCFC [Level 3]”. However, on a Q2 earnings call by EVGo (NASDAQ: EVGO), I heard that their cost of building a DCFC station (with 4 to 6 stalls, which I assumed were ports) was between $400K to $700K and the process could take 9 to 24 months from start to finish! EVGo also disclosed that they had 1,548 stalls in operation as of June 30, 2021 and added 104 operational stalls in the quarter.

The NREL statistic implies that we need 119,000 DCFC ports to be installed between now and 2030. At the EVGo installation rate of 104 stalls (ports) per quarter, that would take 286 years. So obviously we need more than just EVGo to install the required number of EV charging ports. Also, based on EVGo’s cost figures that should require a capital outlay of over $11 billion, for the low end cost of $400K per station with 4 stalls. The Biden Infrastructure bill only budgeted $5 billion and that’s going to the states and cities.

As for Level 2 ports, the Alternative Fuels Data Center (AFDC) of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), states that the U.S. as of December 15, 2021 has 47,127 public stations with 103,476 ports. NREL’s projected Level 2 requirements above for 2030 is 875,000 ports. Using Dolsak’s and Prakash’s estimates, that hardware and installation cost per Level 2 port is $20,000, that’s a cost of $17.5 billion.

How do we get to 2030? That’s where Power Hero comes in and we don’t think it’s all just about installing chargers. Stay tuned!