Last week, Tesla laid off most of it its electric car charging teamcasting doubt on the feasibility of the Biden administration's ambitious EV expansion plans.
While Tesla accounts for more than half of the fast EV chargers currently installed in the United States, and while it has continued to build them faster and cheaper than anyone else, the EV charging market may no longer need Tesla to to provide leadership.
In fact, experts I spoke with believe the EV charging industry will grow rapidly in the coming years. Let me explain why.
At first, Tesla's move seemed like a blow to a sector that seems to be struggling to grow despite the crisis Investment of $7.5 billion of the bipartisan infrastructure bill that President Biden passed in 2021. The government's goal is to build a network of half a million fast and slow chargers in the country by 2030, more than double what the US has now. But roughly two and a half years after the bill's passage, only eight federally funded charging stations have opened in six states, according to government data.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has not explained why he decided to cut back on charger construction, but he did cut back on some analysts interviewed by my colleagues Jack Ewing and Ivan Penn said he likely concluded that it would become harder to make money charging fees as more companies enter the market.
As Ewing and Penn wrote: Last year, all major automakers selling cars in North America agreed to use the Tesla-developed charging plug, which has a reputation for being reliable and easy to use.
I still have the question I wanted to answer. What's holding back the expansion of America's electric charging infrastructure? Spoiler alert: the picture is not nearly as grim as it seems.
“We don't see any slowdown in the process or progress,” Ellen Kennedy, a transportation expert at RMI, a clean energy think tank, told me. “I think people have a vague idea of this without actually considering that what happened is amazing.”
Jumping through hoops
You might think Kennedy is being overly optimistic, but she's not the only one who thinks the US is turning the corner on EV chargers.
My colleague Ewing, who has followed automakers for decades, told me he heard much of the same from experts. “A lot of people told me that charging infrastructure has its own momentum,” he said. “Things are moving pretty quickly.”
Including the federally funded program, the U.S. has added an average of about 2,800 fast- and slow-charging ports per month over the past year. according to government data. (A charging station can have multiple ports.) Many companies are excited, Ewing says, about the prospect of building out EV stations that can provide entertainment, dining and shopping options for drivers. That is is already happening in Norway.
The goal of the federal government's program is not simply to add more chargers to the network, but rather to ensure there is fair distribution across the country and to match charging infrastructure to demand.
“The charging networks are just not building these charging stations in places where there is very little EV traffic,” Loren McDonald, the CEO of EVAdoption, an industry data and analytics company, told me. “But it's a chicken and egg issue, and that's what this program is trying to solve.”
In a statement, the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, which is responsible for the federal charging program, said: “We want to ensure we have a charging network that makes it easier for Americans to find a charging station than to fill up. on gas.”
The obstacles that remain
Still, coordination between the federal government, states and utilities may take some time. Most of the money for EV chargers is federal, but it's the states that have to spend it. And then utilities must connect charging stations to the electricity grid.
Utilities often delay projects. After a station is built, it can take months for the local utility to connect it to the grid. A shortage of transformers and switchgear can cause even more delays.
The good news is that each state, as well as Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., have presented plans for how they will spend federal funds. But staffing can be a problem. States with high EV adoption, such as New York, have more experienced staff dedicated to charger expansion than states where fewer people own EVs, such as South Carolina.
The layoffs at Tesla won't help make this all happen faster. But according to EVAdoption, the company has only won 14 percent of contracts from the federal charger program so far. Dozens of competitors, such as Francis Energy and Love's Travel Stop, are working to build out the rest.
Overcoming these obstacles takes time. But all the experts I spoke to expect this to change soon.
Currently, federally funded new stations open about one per month. McDonald said he expects them to open once a week or once a day by the end of the year.
McDonald also pointed out that public chargers, some of which can charge a battery in less than half an hour, are not where most EV charging takes place. Most charging happens at home, at work or where people park, using slower chargers that take several hours to charge a car, but the job gets done.
The Biden administration's “messaging may be overly focused on the fast charging aspect of it,” McDonald said. “The biggest kind of challenge is, well, just education.”
For people considering buying an electric car, seeing charging stations everywhere can ease some of their concerns. “We have a saying in the industry that fear of the charger has replaced fear of range,” McDonald said.
Yet when it comes down to it the Biden administration's expansion plans, McDonald said “it's actually fair to say that overall the program is on track.”
Today in The Daily: Our warming oceans
Ocean temperatures have been reaching record highs for more than a year, baffling scientists and raising the prospect of cataclysmic changes to life on Earth.
On Tuesday's episode of The DailyDavid Gelles and Raymond Zhong explain why the oceans are so hot, how the heat is already upending marine life and weather patterns, and what even bigger changes await us.
Climate change has been causing the oceans to warm for decades. But starting in March last year, scientists noticed a sharp increase in sea surface temperatures. The oceans have absorbed much of the excess heat produced by global warming, but that alone does not explain the spike recorded over the past year.
Another factor was likely the current El Niño cycle, which tends to have an overall warming effect on the world's oceans. Yet another likely cause is recent changes in shipping regulations that have led to reduced air pollution over the North Atlantic, counterintuitively allowing more solar energy to reach the ocean, warming it. But even if you take all that dynamics into account, scientists are still baffled by the record heat.
All that extra heat is already having an effect. As Catrin Einhorn has reported, so are coral reefs around the world experiencing a mass bleaching event. Corals are critical to marine ecosystems and are responsible for approximately $2.7 trillion in economic activity. Their disappearance is a problem for both the oceans and humans.
The warm oceans are also expected to contribute to an active hurricane season. As Judson Jones reported last month: a key area in the Atlantic Ocean where hurricanes form is abnormally warmcircumstances that one leading scientist called “unprecedented,” “alarming” and an “out of bounds” anomaly.
Even bigger changes could be coming. An important current that moves warm water from the equatorial region to the North Atlantic Ocean is shows early signs of collapse. The last time that happened, more than 12,000 years ago, Europe was plunged into an ice age.