California now has more EV charging ports than gas nozzles
97 comments
·April 5, 2025docdeek
thrtythreeforty
The equivalent wattage of a gas pump is something like 1-2 megawatts, based on energy transfer per time. (Internalizing this fact is important for understanding why gasoline is hard to displace!)
wopwops
"EVs convert over 77% of the electrical energy from the grid to power at the wheels. Conventional gasoline vehicles only convert about 12%–30% of the energy stored in gasoline to power at the wheels."
https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/evtech.shtml
EV charging doesn't need to deliver anywhere near the amount of energy contained in gas to displace gas.
coderenegade
The ~2MW value is after taking that into account.
cudgy
Does this calculation account for the 10-20% electrical energy loss during transmission across the grid?
Y-bar
On the other hand, a significant number of trips will begin their trip with a full "tank" (battery) and will therefore not even need to stop to refill.
The median distance travelled on long-distance trips is less than 200 miles in the US, which is clearly within the limit of a normal BEV battery.
https://www.bts.gov/statistical-products/surveys/national-ho...
dingnuts
The GP's point about the energy density of gasoline and how quickly it can be transferred is not refuted by this irrelevant statistic; indeed, reading the same statistic with a pessimistic interpretation makes my point: if the median trip distance is 200 miles, about half of trips are longer than an EV battery charge, requiring a long refuel stop.
Half is a lot of trips to give up by switching to an EV!
out_of_protocol
> BYD will soon start deploying its 1000 kW ultrafast charging stations in China. The first batch of 500 chargers will begin operating in early April
> ZEEKR unveiled a 1.2 Megawatt EV charger
So it's possible. Hard to do though, 1-10MW of available capacity is hard to come by, infrastructure is not ready. Well, gas station infrastructure was built over more than a century of gas domination
abetusk
To further expand on this with some back-of-the-envelope calculation, I've heard EVs are on the order of 30-40 kWh. Say the power storage of the gas tank in an ICE car and the battery storage of an EV are commensurate. Conservatively, say refueling your ICE car takes about 1 min, so 30,000 Wh / ((1/60)h) ~ 1.8 MW.
vel0city
40kWh is a pretty small EV battery. Many are more like 70-90kWh.
Calwestjobs
for home charging, figures are exact opposite - when i come home it "costs me" 3 seconds to plug it in, then i do literally literally nothing ( or something else rather), then it "costs me" another 3 seconds to unplug it in morning,
so for 100kwh it is essentially 6 seconds. so electric car wastes 1/10 of my time compared to gasoline one.
im good mathematician, but i like engineering more, because it has to take into account external factors, not "just" numbers.
(intentionally not calculating travel time to and from gas station, queue, noise, smell of a gas station etc )
rafram
I just don’t buy this argument as a reason people don’t want EVs. The primary benefit of an EV is that you ~never need to stop and “refuel” it unless you’re making a long road trip. You can install a charger at home, even a very slow one that doesn’t need a special circuit, and always have a full battery in the morning. When you do need to stop on a road trip, you can use fast charging, which is ~250 kW, so somewhere around a quarter of the gas pump’s “wattage.” You’ll probably want to use the bathroom/buy a drink anyway, so charging taking four-ish times as long as pumping isn’t really a big deal.
Uvix
> You’ll probably want to use the bathroom/buy a drink anyway, so charging taking four-ish times as long as pumping isn’t really a big deal.
That doesn't take nearly as long as charging, nor do I need to do it as frequently as I would need to charge. And even if it did, the places where you can do that, and the places with chargers, aren't the same.
Maybe the US will get there in a decade (or two at current rates), but for now a PHEV seems like the best of both worlds.
marcusb
> The primary benefit of an EV is that you ~never need to stop and “refuel” it unless you’re making a long road trip.
Maybe for some people. I bought an electric car in 2018 because I think over the long haul that, first, they'll be better for the environment and second, disentangle my country from foreign energy producers. Note: I'm not saying EVs or current battery tech are perfect in these ways now, just that I think they have better long-term potential, which will only be realized if people buy imperfect EVs today to justify investment in making them better tomorrow.
All that said, while my family has never had a problem with charging on long-ish road trips (we like to take a break and get out and walk around,) I don't expect everyone to have the same attitude. Some people really don't like the idea of a 20-minute "fill up".
What I'd really like to see - what I hope gets developed long term - is a fast-battery-pack swapping system. Bonus points for a standardized form factor from SAE or some similar standards body. This could solve a few problems:
* Faster recharges on trips - potentially faster than filling up a gasoline or diesel vehicle.
* Optimized energy use, at least to a certain extent. Battery packs could be charged off-hours to reduce load on the grid.
* As part of the cost of swapping the pack, the charging station could take on responsibility for repairing the battery packs.
Battery packs are the most expensive single component in most EVs, and I think some people do have anxiety on getting stuck with a five-figure repair bill if their battery pack goes bad.
Obviously there's a lot to work out, both technologically, and vis-a-vis the business model of a battery swapping network.
loloquwowndueo
I don’t want an EV because it’s too freaking expensive. That’s basically the only reason at this point.
jjav
> I just don’t buy this argument as a reason people don’t want EVs.
These descriptions are unrealistic to our experience. We're on our third EV, so plenty of experience with this. It's always a pain to go anywhere outside a small area. Just this week my partner needed to go to a nearby city 2hrs away. Round trip too long for the EV. Luckily my office is halway there and has chargers, so stopped by for 2.5hrs to top up the batteries. That's a longer refueling stop than the whole trip. Faster chargers exist but they are few and far between, usually broken or taken, so finding one is an exercise in frustration.
> You can install a charger at home, even a very slow one that doesn’t need a special circuit, and always have a full battery in the morning.
It takes us three days to fill up the car at home if it gets really low, not having a special circuit. So if the car was used yesterday it won't be full this morning.
The only way this works at all is because my partner normally only needs to commute about 30 minutes and only twice a week.
ta20240528
'The primary benefit of an EV is that you ~never need to stop and “refuel”'
I beg to differ: The primary benefit of an EV is that I am not handing over my hard-earned post-tax income for oil to countries that loath my way of life and my values.
Some decisions in life should transcend economics.
Ntrails
> You can install a charger at home, even a very slow one that doesn’t need a special circuit, and always have a full battery in the morning
I am fortunate enough to own 2 homes, and neither can do what you suggest since they don't have off street parking.
I won't bother arguing the rest.
pseudocomposer
I just got a RAV4 Prime (a “plugin hybrid” or PHEV).
In EV mode, it has 40 or so miles of range. That’s high enough that I never need to use gas during the week, unless I go to the next city over. It’s also low enough that it can always fully charge overnight without a special circuit.
If I need to go further, it just becomes a RAV4 Hybrid (with better performance - aka HV mode). No long waits or searching for chargers needed.
Generally I put in maybe a half tank of gas ($15) once a month. Especially in the US, I really think PHEVs make much more sense than EVs. BYD seems to make some really nice ones, but we’re sadly hostile to them.
hartator
> unless you’re making a long road trip
Yes, but that’s enough to really make road tripping on an EV a chore.
faitswulff
It’s wild that Chinese automakers are getting to equivalent charging rates.
sbelskie
By this do you mean that Chinese automakers are getting close to a charging rate that would be equivalent to the time it takes to pump gasoline for the equivalent energy? If so, do you have any sources on that?
null
occz
Does that figure account for the wildly inefficient nature of internal combustion engines?
goalieca
It seems to be 10x for 80% and 20x for 100% while 100% gives 50% of the range of a gas vehicle for a full-speed level 3 charger. Level 2 chargers are another order of magnitude slower (say 8 hours). I I would like to see the wattage over time for gas to compare with.
The article
>The commission estimates that more than 162,000 chargers are Level 2, which can provide roughly 14 to 35 miles of range per hour of charging, and nearly 17,000 are considered fast chargers
vel0city
But I need to stop and use a gas nozzle every other week or so, meanwhile I use a public charger maybe once a quarter if even that.
I spend way more time waiting on a gas pump than I do waiting on a public EV charger, and I do way more miles on my EV.
Calwestjobs
Exactly!
I am always confused when i see electric car review and reviewer says "you have nice big front trunk to store your charging cables." My cables are hanging on wall of my garage darling! Why the heck do i need to transport them ? XD
cudgy
So you don’t have to buy a new set of cables when you forget to bring them on a long trip?
Retric
At home charging complicates the issue, and you don’t need a level 2 charger at home here. ~10 hours per day from a wall outlet and 3miles/kWh ~= 15k miles per year which is all most people drive.
yencabulator
Also, nobody is crazy enough to argue that office parking buildings should have gas stations in them, and a charger is not an environmental hazard needing to have the whole lot excavated later, with the dirt taken out somewhere out of sight.
bryanlarsen
They're only counting "publicly accessible" EV charging stations. There are probably 10X as many EV charging stations that aren't publicly accessible, aka in somebody's garage. Or millions of times more EV charging stations if you consider that a standard 120V outlet is capable of charging a car.
tonyedgecombe
I’d be pleased if I could refuel in a minute or two. It feels more like ten to fifteen by the time I queue for the pump and queue to pay.
mystifyingpoi
Probably depends a lot on the time of day and location. 19 out of 20 times when I refuel on my way to work, there is a free station and a empty queue to pay in cash, as I always do. Takes 3 minutes total.
vel0city
No way it takes three minutes total. It takes about that much time just to pump 15gal of gas in an average flow pump. You also need to park, walk into the store, talk to the person, walk out of the store, etc.
Five minutes would be really fast.
You should actually time it. I pay at the pump with tap to pay which doesn't even require me to enter my zip or a pin, and I'm still almost 10 minutes overall for a stop to get gas. And I didn't even walk into the shop!
You'll need to add a bit of time to include pulling out of traffic as well, as chances are in the EV you wouldn't have even needed to make the stop in the first place.
Calwestjobs
yeah and most electric cars can pay for you automatically, without you doing anything, so no need to worry that someone sneezes on your back while in queue.
occz
Most EV charging happens at home, not at charging stations. Charging stations are the exceptions when recharging EVs.
threetonesun
I'd be curious to see numbers on this. Currently I believe you, although as EV adoption expands and EVs get cheaper I'd expect to see more people who can't charge at home buy them and charge at work/stores.
Also I don't have an EV, but if I did charge it equivalently to how I use my gas powered car, 1 trip to where I needed to recharge outside of the house would likely be equivalent to about 80 days of home charging.
seb1204
I think this is currently right but a view heavily based on freestanding houses with garage or carport that can charge there. The whole apartment or city charging is still developing. At least in Australia.
jader201
> In 2024, California boasted 178,500 total EV ports compared to around 120,000 estimated gas nozzles
If 2024 was when they crossed that threshold, that feels like a huge jump in EV chargers (almost 50%) in a single year.
I feel like they maybe crossed that threshold prior to 2024?
EDIT: it addresses this:
> Part of the dramatic increase in the statewide tally is due to new data sources that track operational chargers, though there has also been a large increase in new chargers installed, the agency said. Roughly 73,500 chargers were incorporated into the state’s data in 2024, but only approximately 38,000 of those were newly installed chargers.
So it did, indeed, cross the threshold prior to 2024, they just didn’t have the data.
huijzer
> If 2024 was when they crossed that threshold, that feels like a huge jump in EV chargers (almost 50%) in a single year.
EnbW last year increased their fast chargers by 66% in Germany. They are the biggest fast charger operator now in Germany and operate 6000 fast chargers [1]. I often charge there and can confirm that you can find their chargers everywhere and also that they actually work. According to the annual report, they plan to keep this growth up till 2030.
So yes 50% in California seems plausible.
[1]: https://evboosters.com/ev-charging-news/overall-ranking-germ...
sbelskie
You are likely correct.
> Of the 73,537 chargers added to the data set in 2024, 37,983 new chargers were installed in 2024. The remaining 35,554 chargers were installed before 2024 and identified through new data sources.
Calwestjobs
i like enthusiasm but,
every electric outlet which can provide 2500watts ( 110v x 25A ) is capable to charge electric car to 70 miles of range while you sleep. while you sleep means you do not wait, you do not miss anything, you do nothing, you do not think about it, you are sleeping while you charge, like your freaking mobile phone.
so yes gas pumps vs electric charging spots, is interesting milestone, but forgot to add or mention millions of outlets in every US state which can be use to top up AND are already installed by millions for decades already ? Hmm.... I wonder if person writing about electric cars does even own one.
Charging from solar? Doable. Making 80+% of your yearly hot water just from solar PV is doable. So please do.
tw04
Sure, but when you’re on a road trip and need to charge, “at home” means nothing. Just last month I ended up waiting almost 35 minutes to charge for 10 minutes because my wife had run the car low enough that we couldn’t get home without charging. We charge at home 99.999% of the time but when I need to charge on the go, waiting 30 minutes isn’t really an acceptable solution.
Kudos to California, here’s hoping other states follow suit. I’d estimate we need about double the fast chargers as gas station nozzles to provide acceptable wait times once there’s mass EV adoption (assuming no dramatic increase in charging speeds).
Calwestjobs
Of course, but most people overestimate how much of super speed chargers we need, just provide 20kw chargers inside every parking garage and need for super speed charging will be lowered significantly. also just having 10 kw in my favorite restaurant is enough for 1.5 hour i spend there. everyone gravitates to most expensive gadgets, but simple small is many time better value. of course im not saying do not build super chargers, but we kinda say we need them, even when we dont.
Maybe solution can be new app, connect bluetooth dongle to cars OBD port and provide more accurate range estimation than car infotainment does, after a while start providing said service to car manufacturers...?
jjav
> every electric outlet which can provide 2500watts ( 110v x 25A )
110v outlets are usually 15amp
bearjaws
California EV ownership seems way less worthwhile than other areas.
I've seen so many posts of $.30 per kwh or even more, as high as $.36.
That is 2.5x higher than my bill here in Florida, and essentially takes the car from ~80mpg (equivalent) to ~25...
martinky24
Are you familiar with California gas prices?
csa
> I've seen so many posts of $.30 per kwh or even more, as high as $.36.
Iirc, my “off-peak ev rate” is $0.31 with PG&E. Chargers are at $0.35 for cheap ones, and $0.45-$0.55 is fairly typical.
Note that when I got my car in 2021, off-peak rate was $0.16 or $0.18 (which is still expensive, imho).
The power companies were put in an odd spot when every new house in CA was required to have solar. The utilities are essentially guaranteed profits, so the cost of the network is essentially being distributed over fewer customers (the non-solar ones), so prices have gone up a lot.
I will add, gas is about $2 a gallon more (or more) than most other states.
jjav
> I've seen so many posts of $.30 per kwh or even more, as high as $.36.
It is way more than that! Here are my PG&E prices from a recent bill (numbers are transmission + generation):
peak: 53.0 + 18.3 = 71.3 c/kWh
partpeak: 51.3 + 11.1 = 62.4 c/kWh
offpeak: 34.4 + 09.8 = 44.2 c/kWh
pacomerh
Isn't the goal to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, and contribute to a cleaner environment?
Electrcition234
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Calwestjobs
fun fact about florida is that thay are considered "red state" but they have more heatpumps per person and more percentage of fully electric homes then "eco" california. For obvious reasons but it is kinda funny...
johnea
To jump onto the "comment having nothing to do with the article" pile:
1) I wonder how many of those chargers are tesla? (not the elon windmill tilting argument, but) These chargers are not compatible with many EVs. In my opinion, the well integrated charging network is the single biggest tesla technical advantage, but not much help to many other types of cars.
2) Also, the need to "run the app" for each specific charger vendor, and often a requirement to keep a cash balance on that app account, is a major impediment to easy "public" charger usage. I've never _ever_ seen a gas station that required me to "be a member" to pump gas 8-/ California, at least, should outlaw this restriction. A person should be able to plug in the CC and charge.
3) WRT charger compatibility with a car: I also don't see why "public" chargers don't offer a standard 240v outlet. Then any car's portable charger brick could be plugged in regardless of fast charge compatibility with that charger. This wouldn't provide fast charging, but it would allow pretty much any car to be plugged into pretty much any charger.
4) Almost this entire comments page is dedicated to the "road trip" scenario. My guess would be that for most people this amounts to less than 1% of total miles driven in any given year. For appt dwellers, access to "public" charging is a daily requirement, but for anyone living in a house, it's not. I've owned my used EV for ~9 months, and I've never charged anywhere except my house. I have a gas car I use for long trips, which I hope to replace with a plug-in hybrid eventually. And quite frankly, an EV with a 300+ mile range is enough for a typical vacationer to drive for a full day, and then stay in a charging friendly location.
The idea that people leave their house and need to drive 500 miles, for their commute, is a super minuscule portion of the population. Fixating on that produces invalid conclusions.
null
Even if EVs are a smaller proportion of the vehciles on CA roads, this makes sense to me. A gas nozzle is used for a minute or two before a vehicle is refuled, while a charging station is likely at least 10 times longer per vehicle. If cars are spending longer to top up their batteries, you’ll need far more stations than gas pumps.