Hey team, and welcome back to one5c! Anytime we ask someone who’s EV-curious or EV-hesitant about their biggest hang-up, the answer almost always comes back to charging: Where will I do it? Is there enough infrastructure? What will I do in a pinch? In an ideal EV world, the answer is that you charge wherever you linger—not only where you live and work, but also where you eat, shop, and spend time with your people. That’s why we were so intrigued when one5c contributor Olivia Gieger surfaced a buncha ways we can help make that a reality. —Corinne
HOW YOU CAN HELP THE EV CHARGER BUILD-OUT
By Olivia Gieger
If there’s one thing a new EV driver worries about more than anything, it’s charging. The cost of switching has dropped significantly over time, inching ever closer to parity with combustion cars.
Even as the current administration chips away at the subsidies and policies that help make EVs more affordable, charging is actually one place where towns, businesses, and individuals can still flex more control. “It is one of the biggest areas that we have to accelerate EV adoption,” says Alexia Melendez Martineau, a senior policy manager for EV education and advocacy nonprofit Plug In America.
As of February 2024, the United States had more than 61,000 publicly accessible charging stations, according to an analysis from Pew Research Center. Yet gaps exist: Only 17% of Americans in rural communities live within a mile of a public charger, compared with 60% of city dwellers and 41% of suburbanites.
The answer here isn’t simply for everyone to install a charger at home, because that not only excludes apartment dwellers but also leaves people without way stations during the day. Ryan Hanna, an engineer at UC San Diego’s Deep Decarbonization Initiative and an author of a recent paper on worker charging preferences, expects workplace charging to “triple or quadruple in the coming decade.”
Building out a network requires power-up points at what are called “long-dwell” locations, which includes offices, but also malls, parks, libraries, and, yes, apartment buildings. “We don’t want to make charging an extra task. We are thinking about how to site charging in a way that builds it into people’s daily routines,” Melendez Martineau says.
Charging throughout the day, instead of everyone powering up while they get their Zzz’s, could bring other benefits. It can reduce the costs of expanding the grid, says Hanna, which can also pull down electricity prices. This is even more important as the grid relies more and more on renewable sources like the sun and wind, which can fluctuate across the day and night. “If we’re truly trying to head to a zero carbon future, then we need people to charge when renewable energy is providing electricity to the grid,” Hanna adds. “There’s an impetus for getting people to charge at specific times of the day, beyond just getting them into the electric vehicles in the first place.”
How to advocate for more ‘long-dwell’ charging
If you’re looking to, uh, plug in to the EV charging movement, starting locally is the right place to look, regardless of whatever shadows of uncertainty the federal government casts. “States and cities and other types of regional leadership have been really leading the way for quite a few years now. States and cities have a lot more flexibility,” Melendez Martineau says. That’s certainly cause enough to keep a spark of optimism alive—and there are ways to get started.
Advocate for building codes to include EV-ready charging. This might not be the most glamorous work, but it can help “solve a future problem when it comes to EV charging,” Melendez Martineau says. Essentially, your town or HOA can clear barriers for the construction of panels, breakers, conduit, wiring, sockets, and plugs that enable buildings to accommodate current and potential EV drivers. Plug In America created a template of model building codes for municipalities to follow. Each town and community board has its own set of rules and processes, so you’ll want to keep an eye out for public comment periods or meeting minute notes and agendas for your local government, so you can speak up if these bodies are already weighing charging-related questions.
Get on board with Right-to-Charge laws. These laws, which already exist in 15+ states, make way for EV infrastructure at a more structural level—striving to remove any undue burdens on residents’ ability to access charging. Of the laws that do exist, though, many still do not clear obstacles for renters and homeowners equally. Plug In America often shares actions and simple engagement opportunities through their newsletter, but they are not alone: The Charge Ahead Partnership closely tracks EV legislation across states, and sends out action alerts for different tiers of advocacy engagement.
Join a study. Research like Hanna’s helps underpin the changes workplaces can make to help employees power up. The data, for instance, feeds into an algorithm engineers and planners can use to align drivers’ preferences with designs for charging infrastructure. But this wouldn’t be possible without volunteers. Usually, these programs are run through universities or by their sustainability offices or research staff. Some utilities may run similar pilots, which should be advertised on your utility’s website. Joining up with a local EV Club can help you stay in the loop with the research happenings in your community.
Let your management at work know how important EVs are to you. Try to get a seat at the table when building or office managers are exploring the possibility of adding EV chargers. You can also start an electric vehicle club at work or in your building, which at the very least can create a community around etiquette and rules for charger use. And, at its best, a group like this can help facilitate more collaborative, bottom-up solutions when it comes time to expand charging. “If everyone goes alone, we have a system that is sort of balkanized, private, inequitable that separates the wealthy from the less well-off even more and is overall more costly than a system in which we all cooperate,” Hanna says.
Olivia Gieger covers all things climate, with a special passion for trees, land, and conservation. She earned her master’s in science, health, and environmental reporting at New York University. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, Inside Climate News, and In The Times, among others.
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