EV Charging in the USA

Introduction

How has EV charger availability changed in the USA in the ten years to 2025? The Alternative Fuels Data Center has data to help answer this question. This center is part of the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation.

Chargers in public and private workplace locations

I downloaded data sets from the Alternative Fuels Data Center containing active, non-residential EV charging stations in the USA at the end of the years 2016-2025. The data set includes public and non-residential private stations and chargers. The combined data set has one row per EV charging station. Stations typically have more than one charger and may be part of an EV network or (if privately-owned) be “non-networked”. Details are in 6  Notes.

Private chargers

The data sets referenced above do not include EV chargers installed at private residences, which is a big omission if you want a full picture, since a large majority of chargers are installed in single family homes¹ see also Figure 5.3. I assume renters and owners that park on the street are more likely to use public chargers or private chargers at their workplaces.

The US government does not track residential chargers. So to get a view of private, residential chargers, we must turn to a a study published in Wood (2023) and summarized in 5  Residential EV charging. Also of interest is the 2021 study Ge (2021) that projects private chargers in 2030 under various scenarios of vehicle electrification. Private chargers include single family homes, multi-family homes, and workplaces with private chargers. See Trends in home charging.

The two data sources intersect in private workplace chargers:

Coverage of the two primary data sources.

	Public	Private: workspace	Private: Single- and multi-family housing
Charger types:	(L2 or DC)	(any type)	(L1 or L2)
AFDC year-end data:	√	√
Wood et al. 2023:		√	√

Terminology and abbreviations

In this report (and more generally) the following abbreviations are commonly used:

• Station: location of one or more chargers
• Charger: a port supplying electrical energy to an EV. Sometimes called a chargepoint.
• EV: Electric vehicle
• BEV: Battery electric vehicle
• PEH: Pluggable electric vehicle
• PHEV: Pluggable hybrid electric vehicle
• LDV: Light duty vehicle (cars, vans, SUVs, etc.)
• MDV/HDV: Medium duty / heavy duty vehicle: commercial trucks and other vehicles

The definitions of charging types below are from the US Department of Transportation²

• L1 charging: charging through a common residential 120-volt (120V) AC outlet. Level 1 chargers can take 40-50+ hours to charge a BEV to 80 percent from empty and 5-6 hours for a PHEV.
• L2 charging: higher-rate AC charging through 240V (in residential applications) or 208V (in commercial applications) electrical service, and is common for home, workplace, and public charging. Level 2 chargers can charge a BEV to 80 percent from empty in 4-10 hours and a PHEV in 1-2 hours.
• DC charging (also called direct current fast charging (DCFC): rapid charging along heavy-traffic corridors at installed stations. DCFC equipment can charge a BEV to 80 percent in just 20 minutes to 1 hour. Most PHEVs currently on the market do not work with fast chargers.

License

This report is licensed CC-BY 4.0. The source code is available under the MIT license at https://dmoul.github.io/ev-charging/ .

Ge, et al. 2021. “There’s No Place Like Home: Residential Parking, Electrical Access, and Implications for the Future of Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure.” https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy22osti/81065.pdf.

Wood, et al. 2023. “The 2030 National Charging Network: Estimating u.s. Light-Duty Demand for Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure.” https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy23osti/85654.pdf.

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1. https://www.esfi.org/electric-vehicle-charging-survey/ and https://www.esfi.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/ESFI-Electric-Vehicle-Charging-Survey-Infographic.pdf

2. https://www.transportation.gov/rural/ev/toolkit/ev-basics/charging-speeds