This analysis evaluates the total need for electric vehicle charging infrastructure—including private chargers at vehicle owners’ homes and publicly accessible chargers— to accommodate plug-in electric vehicles (PEV)1 in the twelve largest utility service territories in the states of California, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. These states were chosen to be fairly representative of needs across the U.S. and to identify regional differences. These twelve utilities serve 60 percent of the residential customers in these seven states— 41.8 million customers, with nearly 80 million vehicles.
The analysis includes the estimated purchase and installation cost of all chargers required to make PEVs a practical option for most vehicle owners. While there is general agreement that most electric vehicles will be charged primarily at home, publicly accessible chargers will also be required to allow PEV owners to charge at various locations throughout their daily travel. Such “public” chargers will be most useful at locations where PEV owners already park for 15+ minutes on a regular basis as part of their normal routine—most importantly at their workplace, but also potentially at shopping malls, restaurants, movie theatres and other commercial locations. In order to accommodate long-distance travel in battery electric vehicles, a network of higher power chargers—likely located near highway exits—will also be required.