What EV charging stations could mean to communities
I never imagined I’d have a coffee table book about gas stations. But such a book now sits on my desk. Beautifully photographed, it strikes me as a kind of parting bow to a business model that will disappear as we transition to electric vehicles.
“Thank You Please Come Again: How Gas Stations Feed and Fuel the American South,” documents Kate Medley’s trip to 150 gas stations across 11 southern states. She wanted to explore local culture and chose gas stations because “our politics may be polarized, our economics stratified, our neighborhoods segregated and our rhetoric strained, but still everyone regularly passes through these commercial spaces.”
I wouldn’t have understood such reverence for gas stations had I not lived in a small southern town for five years. Before that, to me, a New England native, gas stations were fume-ridden places that you escaped as fast as possible. But in Esmont, Virginia (population 733) the one gas station was the equivalent to Boston’s Cheers, a place where everybody knows your name. People lingered and gossiped after fueling their cars, as the owners — a local family — served up extraordinary fried chicken, cornbread and banana pudding.
Will EV charging stations evolve into cultural icons worthy of a book someday? Hard to say. But EVs inherent disadvantage – the time it takes to charge — makes them naturally suited to places where people are happy to stay awhile.
Identifying where we congregate
So not surprisingly, EV charging companies are trying to identify those places.
“Customers want to be able to charge while they’re going about their lives, and they think it offers convenience for them,” said Badar Khan, CEO of EVgo, which installs fast chargers across the US.
EVgo, like other EV charging companies, focuses on grocery stores and similar retail locations.
The company underwrites the installations and carefully chooses its sites. It won’t invest without the potential of double-digit returns. Yet, it’s finding plenty of opportunity. About 13,000 stores meet EVgo’s criteria, Khan said, speaking this week at Cpower’s “GridFuture” conference in Maryland.
Of course, the primary reason for an EV charging station is to charge an EV. But EVgo finds that the installations offer ancillary benefits. A 2020 survey by the company indicated that the presence of charging stations makes its customers more likely to frequent a store.
Where will we go? What will we do?
Given that they will likely be focal points, EV charging stations may influence how we spend time, gather, and maybe even where we live. Hints are emerging as the Biden administration rolls out $7.5 billion to build 500,000 publicly available chargers by 2030.
Earlier this month, the Federal Highway Administration awarded $311 million to 36 community-focused EV charging and hydrogen fueling projects. Grants went to “convenient and high-use locations like schools, parks, libraries, multi-family housing,” according to a Department of Transportation news release.
“From my time working at the local level, I know that finding electric vehicle charging in a community is different from finding charging along highways,” said Department of Transportation Secretary Polly Trottenberg.
The highway funds were part of a pool of $623 million in EV charging grants that the Biden administration awarded on January 11 for 47 locations in 22 states.
Several of the charging projects are centered around public gathering places, among them:
- Awarded $1.9 million, the City of Eureka, California, plans to focus on “strategic community hub locations,” including parks and trailheads for 21 Level-2 and 2 Level-3 charges. The project will expand EV charging into disadvantaged communities.
- California’s Contra Costa County California won $14.9 million to install 52 DC fast chargers and 60 Level-2 chargers at 15 public-access sites, including local public libraries.
- Connecticut will use part of its $14.6 million grant for EV chargers in neighborhood revitalization projects.
- In Georgia, the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) will apply its $6.1 million grant to install 300-400 charging ports in retail centers and communities that might otherwise get left behind. The commission plans to work with private companies that will install and maintain the charging stations.
“Charging infrastructure right now is clustered in more affluent and more densely developed areas of our region,” said John Orr, ARC’s managing director of transportation planning at ARC. “These funds provide an opportunity to not only expand the total number of available high-quality charging stations but also fill in some of these gaps that present a barrier to EV adoption.”
What’s clear from all of this is that EV stations, like the southern gas stations in Medley’s book, will play a role in society beyond providing fuel or, in this case, electrons. We still have a long way to go before EV charging stations are ubiquitous. This nascent stage creates opportunities for imaginative entrepreneurs and forward-thinking planners to consider the possibilities. It’s about a few minutes of extra time waiting for a charge and what we’ll do with it.
