Will The Charging Infrastructure Keep Pace?

I think there are two issues, both won’t keep up. There’s the public chargers themselves, not going to be enough of them especially for renters and those with no home to install. I assume Gas stations will become parking lots of superchargers combined with a Starbucks, 1/3 of the chargers not working but not before someone wastes 10 min trying to get it to work. There’s also the issue of 2 hour free public chargers where I’ve seen a couple tesla and like every leaf driver making it a permanent residence.

The second issue is the electric grid itself. Most people who speak very positively of green energy and EVs seem to have a job(not leaf drivers), they don’t seem to realize they charge their EVs at night when the sun isn’t shining. This compounded with already existing grid issues in places like California make me wonder how it’s all going to work.

we have solar and a house battery im very careful about when we charge my wife’s car, but her commute is only 16 miles round trip so we make it work.I’m counting on charging the Silverado during the day and the large battery to buffer my weeks commuting.

should be fun and painful for some, I joke about the leaf drivers some of them do have a job but they seem to live in their cars.

I don't think we'll see 100% EV adoption in the coming decades, but I do see the USA being on track with this chart from Recurrent Auto:



Since we're only in the early part of the adoption phase, EV charging is going to feel inadequate when compared to the 100+ year old gasoline station network. But all those bullet points you listed are means of growth as adoption continues is upward trend.

The beauty of EV charging is it's not beholden to specific future superfund sites that will store (and in the future leak) petroleum into the ground. So yeah, allowing drivers to charge at home, at work, at errands, and at wherever gives much more flexibility than gas stations ever could. But those who love gasoline seem to love creating pollution and hazmat sites, so they'll probably look down on EV charging today.

I think the element you're missing on your bullet list is there will be a time that EVs themselves aren't considered just energy takers from the grid. Today, there are basically zero EVs that can do vehicle to grid (V2G), and only a handful that can do vehicle to home (V2H). So EVs are considered just like a normal petrol auto. It takes energy and sits on it. So today's EVs are just energy takers.

I think as the EV network evolves, this network will become more than a "charging" network. It will also become a load balancing and grid resiliency network. If 50% of cars in a work parking lot were charging in the daytime from solar; then those EVs go home and plug in... they can actually then provide energy back to the grid at night.

But today, many people (even here in California) just look at EVs as grid parasites that are difficult to use and a burden on society. Many people are blaming EVs for this grid instability we're having during this heat wave. But as EV adoption grows and your bullet list gets addressed, we'll wonder why it took so long for us to simply fuel up when parked. In the future, people will wonder why so many folks in the 1900s and early 2000s actually liked driving to a hazmat site to fuel up and complain about the high gas prices. And in the future people will wonder why there were so many batteries sitting around in garages that weren't being used to power homes at night.

tsuintx said:

LOL! I wasn't referring to government trying to ram-rod stuff on us, but okay. My comment was about infrastructure as a whole pretty much always lagging behind and crumbling: roads, bridges etc. At least in Texas it is and I don't think Texas is the only place.

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Yeah WXMan is spouting his Fox News sound bites again. Germany's grid is 50% renewables. They saw a small dip in renewables during 2021 due to lower wind production than expected, but the "horrendous regression" is hyperbole. People that hate progress like to point at small missteps and hiccups along the way as proof something doesn't work. This lets them feel better about avoiding progress because then they don't have to worry about any mistakes.

But EVs and clean energy are things that take decades. Let's look at the positive shifts in the infrastructures and focus on where we could all end up. It's not very useful to get stuck in feeling like today isn't perfect.

Even Texas has shown increases in renewables in spite of everything their policymakers try to do to stop renewables progress. I know some people think Coal and oil are the future, but it's good to see that even in Texas people are making a slow impact to change where Texans get their energy.



While I agree any public good / infrastructure will always be lagging, the USA as a whole has demonstrated pretty good resiliency to make investments over time. Do they make 100% of all investment we wish they could make? Hardly. But so far things have been moving in a pretty good direction. Most homes that make the jump into EVs will likely have an EV and ICE in their household in the foreseeable future. But that is still better than zero EVs.

Could things be better for EV charging? Sure. So let's keep trying to make things better where we encourage adoption and investment to develop the charging infrastructure.

Could things be better for our energy grid? Sure. so let's keep investing in sources that don't kill the planet (solar/wind) while also investing in distributed energy resources (DER) that can allow stored energy to power loads at the end-point. Compared to the status quo of relying on huge centralized energy production facilities with mega transmission and distribution costs.

Could things be better for our roadways? Sure. So let's keep investing in our transportation network and freight/logistics. So Americans can do what they want to make a living and live their life. I don't understand how EVs hurt American Freedoms, but there are many out there that think EVs are bad.