For the past few years, electric vehicles have flooded onto America’s roads: Tesla Model 3s, Hyundai Ioniq 5s, even the occasional electric Hummer. In 2023, automakers sold almost 1.2 million all-electric cars to U.S. consumers, accounting for over 7 percent of total new car sales and a new national record.
But all those cars also need a place to plug in. And while the country is also expanding public charging, data show that EV sales are far outpacing growth in the U.S. charging network— endangering the transition to electric cars just as it’s starting to take off.
Between 2016 and 2023, EV registrations in the United States grew almost three times faster than the United States’ public charging infrastructure. In 2016, there wereseven electric cars for each public charging point; today, there’s more than 20 electric cars per charger.
“You often hear about the chicken and the egg question between chargers and electric vehicles,” said Corey Cantor, senior associate for electric vehicles at BloombergNEF, an energy research organization. “But overall the U.S. needs more public charging.”
