Most of Americas107,000 gas stationscan fill several cars every five or 10 minutes at multiple pumps.
Not so for electric vehicle chargers at least not yet.
Today the U.S. has around 43,000 public EV charging stations, withabout 106,000 outlets.
The existing connection isacceptable for many purposes.
But chargers are very unevenly distributed; almost a third of all outlets are in California.
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Without it, your average gas-powered sedan wouldnt make it from Reno to Salt Lake City either.
Fossil fuel combustion in the transport sector is nowAmericas largest single sourceof the greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change.
Converting to electric vehicles could reduce those emissions quite a bit.
Those emissions will fall even further as more electricity comes from renewable sources.
An EV owner can expect to saveUS$6,000-$10,000over the cars lifetime versus a comparable conventional car.
(Nuclear is also low-carbon, but expensive and politically problematic.)
The infrastructure bill now being debated in Congress was originally designed to get partway to that goal.
It initially included $157 billion for EVs and $82 billion for power grid upgrades.
Like an electric car, that commitment will seem expensive upfront.
