More fast, public EV charging is on the way — but Pa. is ‘playing catch-up’

For Pennsylvania drivers and travelers throughout the state, the balance between EVs and available chargers may be tipping.

In October, the Keystone State announced 56 National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program projects along Pennsylvania highway interchanges, including several along the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The goal, funded with $171.5 million through the federal Inflation Reduction Act signed in August 2022, is to have chargers every 50 miles along major highways.

“During the transition to EVs, we are dealing with the chicken-and-the-egg problem where the chargers have to keep up with vehicles, and the vehicles have to keep up with the chargers,” said Sam Fiorani, vice president of global vehicle forecasting with AutoForecast Solutions in Chester Springs. “There’s no point in having a charger if there’s no one there to charge them, and who’s going to buy an electric vehicle if you can’t find a charging spot?”

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Alternative Fuels Data Center shows Pennsylvania has 1,594 chargers with 3,973 ports. This number counts Level 2 and DC fast stations. The first adds about 30 miles of charge in an hour to most vehicles, while the latter high-speed chargers can get vehicles full or close to it in as little as 20 minutes, depending on the vehicle’s charging system.

Pennsylvania is one of just eight states that have released funding through NEVI, according to the nonprofit Washington-based Electrification Coalition, and was among the first four to do so.

EV sales surpassed 1 million vehicles this fall, according to the research firm Atlas EV Hub, and 2023′s number may constitute a fivefold increase from 250,000 EVs sold just three years ago, according to Kelley Blue Book data. Total U.S. EV sales are expected to be about 8% of overall auto sales in 2023, according to Reuters, of 15.5 million total units sold. Automakers including Jaguar, Alfa Romeo, and Chrysler aim to go all electric before 2030, while many more are aiming for 2030 to 2035.

Pennsylvania EV registrations are up 35.7% from March through October, to 59,332 EVs, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. And that number doesn’t include hybrids and plug-in hybrids.

All those vehicles will need a place to plug in. But in the short run, Pennsylvania’s highways are in great need.

EV charging is more complicated than fueling combustion-engine vehicles. EV owners can do the bulk of their charging at home or at work, where an eight-hour connection to a Level 2 charger can give them 200 to 250 miles. Level 2s are also appropriate for shopping centers and downtowns, where a two-hour stop can probably restore most of the day’s miles to get most people there and back.

That’s why not all chargers need to be harder-to-install, wiring-intensive DC fast chargers, which can charge many of the latest EVs in 20 to 45 minutes.

For EV owners, who rely on apps that map out charger locations for making trips, a map of Pennsylvania can overlay fairly in sync with a map of political leanings. But Matthew Stephens-Rich, director of technical services with the Washington-based Electrification Coalition, points to EV charger grant applications from around the state to dismiss claims that there’s been an urban-rural divide in seeking out chargers.

“For even small towns and rural parts of America, they, too, have charging on their mind as a nice economic driver; it’s a good draw to their downtown,” he said. “Adding a fast charger helps people stop off at the coffee shop a little bit more or come out for the community festival that they otherwise wouldn’t be coming to.”

Stephens-Rich works out of Columbus, Ohio, covering Ohio and Pennsylvania, and he reports that the redder Buckeye State is perhaps even slightly ahead of the Keystone State in building out charging infrastructure.

Even before NEVI, public charging has been building, slowly and steadily. The October AFDC report looking at the second quarter of 2023 showed a 4.1% increase in public changer stations in the United States, up slightly from the 4% the quarter prior. There are now close to 60,000 public charging stations in the U.S..

And other charging grant money is available. A second round of NEVI grants totaling $2.5 billion in the U.S. opened for submission in early December, Stephens-Rich said.

Pennsylvania’s new charging stations, built with the NEVI funding, will be within one mile of interchanges of interstate highways, at Pennsylvania Turnpike rest stops, and along Routes 30, 15, 1, and 422 — but they may not be up and running until late 2024 or mid-2025. The second round of grants is focusing on filling in many of the highways’ gaps, with high priorities given to Routes 30 and 1, the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and the I-79/I-80 junction in Western Pennsylvania.

“There are a lot of steps to get one of these sites operational, including permitting, design, and environmental clearances. Currently, the longest lead times can be the electric utility connection and receiving the charging equipment,” said Colton Brown, PennDot’s alternative fuels infrastructure coordinator.

Another impediment to getting EV chargers where they’re needed can be vendor requirements.

As a board member for the Boyertown Museum of Historic Vehicles, Fiorani knows about these kinds of struggles firsthand. The museum wanted to upgrade the four older Tesla chargers in its parking lot, “but Tesla requires 12 new Superchargers to be installed at minimum. They were offered at such a low price, but we don’t have the room,” Fiorani said.

Locations deeper in the state really have their work cut out for them.

Take Tamaqua, a Schuylkill County borough of just under 7,000 residents, 10 miles from the closest interstate highway.

The Tamaqua Community Development Partnership has been trying to get chargers put into three locations in town. The town is currently served by four Level 2 ports at a restaurant about three miles south.

Micah Gursky, director of the Tamaqua Area Community Partnership, who said he couldn’t “even get EV station vendors to call me back about Tamaqua locations,” began working with the Eastern Pennsylvania Alliance for Clean Transportation, a Department of Energy-backed nonprofit that promotes alternative fuels in the eastern half of the state.

The group has been working to secure grant funding for Allentown, Hazleton, Easton, Scranton, and Williamsport, said Tony Bandiero, executive director of the alliance. A significant portion of funding is targeted for disadvantaged communities, he said.

But demand — and the federal funding — has left vendors swamped.

“It used to be you get one in two weeks; now it can take up to six months to get a charging station,” Bandiero said.

But many automakers — including BMW, Ford, Genesis, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes, Nissan, Toyota, Volkswagen, and Volvo — have announced an agreement to make vehicles with Tesla’s proprietary NACS charging ports, making charging an easier prospect for EV buyers in the future. The charging company ChargePoint will also offer the ports at its recharging points as well.

That means the EV charging landscape should look drastically different in three years than it does today. If EV sales continue the trend of the last three years, they would make up 4 million vehicles sold or more than 30% of the market.

Still, Stephens-Rich pointed to the National Renewal Energy Laboratory’s 2030 National Charging Network study as to where the state of charging in the U.S. is now.

“We are behind,” Stephens-Rich said. “It’s all about playing catch-up.”