California likely to miss goal of building 1 million electric vehicle charging stations

California officials assume there will be millions of electric vehicles on California roads in the 2030sThe State must therefore pull itself together when it comes to building chargers. However, Calm is the order of the day Reports indicate that California’s ambitious electric vehicle charging goals appear to have no basis in reality.

According to state projections, California will have 1 million public charging stations by the end of 2030, nearly 10 times the number of charging stations available to motorists in December. To reach that goal, 129,000 new stations, more than seven times the current rate, must be built each year for the next seven years. The pace would then need to accelerate again to reach the goal of 2.1 million stations by 2035.

A robust network of public charging stations, comparable to the state’s more than 8,000 gas stations, is essential to ensuring drivers have the confidence to purchase electric vehicles in the years to come.

Experts now say the state’s electric vehicle mandate, a key part of Governor Newsom’s climate plan, is not feasible, Stanford professor Bruce Cain tells Calmatters.

“It is highly unlikely that we will achieve our goals, and to be quite frank, the electric vehicle targets are a noble aspiration, but unrealistic. This is a wake-up call that we need to address potential institutional and policy barriers more seriously before we commit blindly.”

There are major obstacles to expanding electric vehicle charging stations in the state. The biggest obstacle is money. Billions of dollars will need to come from local, state, federal and private funds to build them. The electric grid also needs to be modernized and the red tape associated with city and county permitting processes needs to be streamlined.

Private investment is also important, especially as private companies are being asked to expand access to charging in low-income areas. However, these companies do not seem interested in investing in electric vehicle chargers. They are expensive to install and their return on investment is minimal. Charging reliability also needs to be improved. A recent report by NBC Los Angeles Electric vehicle drivers in Southern California have encountered a number of charging issues across Southern California, from long lines to broken chargers.

Everything that happens in the next six years will be crucial to the success of electric vehicles in the Golden State. If things don’t go as planned, state officials will look foolish, as Rep. Jesse Gabriel told Calmatters. “We’re going to look really foolish if we tell people they can only buy electric vehicles, and we don’t have the charging infrastructure to support that,” he said. Calm is the order of the day to read the rest of the mess that expands access to electric vehicle charging.