Electric car chargers proliferate even without Tesla and may soon rival gas stations
When Elon Musk essentially fired the whole Supercharger team back in the spring, he must have seen the share of Tesla in the US charging infrastructure investment for Q1.
In that quarter, the US witnessed more than 700 new EV charging stations being put into operation with more than $6 billion invested, and only a fraction of those were built by Tesla.
“Tesla will spend well over $500M expanding our Supercharger network to create thousands of NEW chargers this year,” argued Musk about his decision at the time. “That’s just on new sites and expansions, not counting operations costs, which are much higher,” he explained.
A number of private companies and publicly funded operators have managed to flip the switch on 704 charging stations across the US in three months, up 9% compared to the previous quarter. This pace is only expected to accelerate, but even if it continues like that, electric vehicle charging stations are expected to exceed the number of gas stations in 8 years.
Currently, there is an EV charging station for each 15 gas stations, but the ratio is quickly shrinking, and even big petrol companies are now installing chargers, with Shell alone adding 30 new stations during the quarter.
If Elon Musk was expecting other companies to pick the Supercharger network buildout slack, he might have had a point, judging from the latest installation numbers.
The other interesting new phenomenon is that EV charging companies are increasingly entering the so-called Charger Desert areas, which have so far been disadvantaged. In fact, the fastest EVgo network growth is now witnessed in Florida, Texas, Arizona and Michigan.
The rapid expansion of the nationwide EV charging network is riding high on government money, too. The more than $5 billion earmarked for the creation of such a network in Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act are now being deployed in earnest by companies and states, after two years spend in planning and applications for funding.
Wooed by tech since the industrial espionage of Apple computers and the times of pixelized Nintendos, Daniel went and opened a gaming club when personal computers and consoles were still an expensive rarity. Nowadays, fascination is not with specs and speed but rather the lifestyle that computers in our pocket, house, and car have shoehorned us in, from the infinite scroll and the privacy hazards to authenticating every bit and move of our existence.
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