This is the reality for drivers of electric vehicles in search of a charger. Nearly 40 percent of U.S. counties do not include a single public charger, according to new research by CivicPulse, a non-partisan, nonprofit research organization. These deserts include an absence of both Level 2 and high-speed Level 3 chargers. Its report is The Worsening Urban-Rural Divide: The Role of Local Government in EV Charging Infrastructure.
Many of the 1,219 U.S. counties with no public charging infrastructure are largely rural, with fewer than 25,000 residents. However, 14 percent of counties with a population above 25,000 — the median population for the more than 3,100 U.S. counties — did not have a public charger as of June 2024, according to the report, which came out in July.
This includes places like Woodford County, Ill., with a population of 38,400 residents, or Cooke County, Texas, with a population of nearly 41,700.
The development of public charging infrastructure is on the rise. It is being driven by public investments like the $7.5 billion allocated by the federal infrastructure building initiative, and by private investment. As of March 2023, the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) estimated investments totaling $23.7 billion had been announced by the private sector for EV charging through the end of the decade, according to its own research.
The existence of chargers, CivicPulse researchers said, not only gives residents confidence by knowing public charging is available — but it can serve as a notable visual cue to encourage the purchase of electric vehicles.
Part of the message behind the CivicPulse report, said Victoria Starbuck, research and communications associate at CivicPulse, is to encourage rural counties to take steps toward developing EV infrastructure. Often, she added, an initial charging port development makes subsequent infrastructure projects more likely.
“We’d like to see local governments in more rural and conservative areas increasing their EV charging deployment projects moving forward, as past action increases likelihood of future action,” Starbuck said via email. “This could potentially lead to increased demand as well as supply from the private sector, and state and federal funders.”
Starbuck’s comment hints at another finding by CivicPulse. The shortage of chargers in rural counties tends to follow similar trends in national politics, where red counties in red states have not turned out to be big adopters of EVs or the charging infrastructure they require. Local governments in some of the more liberal counties — as measured by the 2020 presidential elections — were “five times more likely to have applied for funding for EV charging stations than those from the most conservative” counties, the report found.
Researchers are careful to note that a lack of charging infrastructure in conservative-leaning locations may not be just a representation of politics at play, but could reflect a lack of technical knowledge around what’s needed for EV charging infrastructure, as well as grant-writing expertise and resources.
Biden administration officials have also pointed out the strong investment the federal government has been making in rural and, often, conservative-leaning states.
“We live in a politically polarized age. No secret about that,” Polly Trottenberg, deputy secretary for the U.S. Department of Transportation, said at the CoMotion Miami conference in May.
“The states that are doing this building out of the highway [charging] network, it does not break down, red versus blue. In fact, some of the leading, most innovative, most forward-leaning states — Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee — states where they’re all in on energy. They have a lot of great technology going. They’ve often got a lot of private-sector interest,” Trottenberg said.
“And some of the bluer states, despite the rhetoric and what you might think, have not been moving as quickly as you might think,” she added. “When you get past the rhetoric, I think in reality, this doesn’t break down as neatly as it sounds.”
Regardless of population numbers or political trends, data suggests the demand for charging ports will only increase. To date, there are about 132,000 public charging ports spread across the United States, to serve a growing EV market, according to NREL research, in The 2030 National Charging Network: Estimating U.S. Light-Duty Demand for Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure. About 7 percent to 10 percent of new-car sales in the U.S. are plug-in electric vehicles, according to the report. Electric vehicles are expected to reach 48 percent to 61 percent of the light-duty vehicle market by 2030, requiring some 26 million to 35 million charging ports, the NREL research found.
Distributing that charging equitably across rural and urban areas — and across politically liberal and conservative areas — may require extra initiative by policymakers, said Starbuck, who noted that some $1.3 billion is now available for the second round of the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Grant Program.
“Repeating the same distribution patterns as Round One will only compound the urban-rural and liberal-conservative divides in access to public EV chargers,” she said. “Federal and state grant makers and distributors need to think critically about the most underserved areas, not just the loudest.”
