Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Electric Vehicles

The Low-Tech Way To Make EV Charging Better

Biden’s fast-charging rollout is way behind. But slow-charging is still an option.

A snail and a charger.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

We’ve got a high-speed charging problem.

Without readily available high-speed charging, people will never let go of their range anxiety fears and buy electric; but unless you have people in EVs willing to pay to charge their cars, there’s no reason to build the chargers. The Biden administration thought it could solve the problem with money — that is, a big, federally funded build-out of chargers that can fill an EV’s battery in 20 to 30 minutes. But even breaking ground has been a slog. Years after Congress first approved giving billions of dollars to states so they could fill out America’s EV-charging corridors, few projects have made it all the way through the bureaucratic process to the point of construction.

The grant money from Biden’s laws is still flowing, and more high-speed chargers are in the pipeline. But federal dollars are likely to dry up in a Trump presidency that promises to attack climate achievements like the Inflation Reduction Act.

Things aren’t that much rosier in private industry. Trump’s ally Elon Musk built out the best EV charging network at Tesla and then opened it to other automakers. This year, though, he fired the Supercharger team amid mass layoffs. Now, at the moment Musk has Trump’s ear, EV charging simply doesn’t seem that important to him. And while groups of other car manufacturers have come together to promise more fast-charging stations of their own, those plans may be reconsidered in a more hostile climate for EVs.

If you’re feeling like charging gloom is a death knell for the EV revolution, I would ask you to remember one thing: This isn’t the way most people charge their cars.

Yes, you need DC fast chargers to take a road trip down the highway. And for those who can’t charge at home or at work, public high-speed charging becomes the default option — you’re not going to park at Whole Foods long enough to put on 200 miles. But a future with high levels of American EV adoption will be one in which most charging happens slowly, at Level 2 chargers in people’s garages, in parking lots, and on the sides of public streets. Expanding our focus to low-tech EV charging, then, is one way to make Americans more confident about ditching gas, even during the coming Trump era redux.

For one thing, lower-tech solutions are more affordable. As the Society of Automotive Engineers notes, slower AC chargers are much cheaper for cities or businesses to install compared to the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for DC fast chargers. Appropriate electrical infrastructure already exists in many places — street lights, for example, use a 277-volt standard that could be repurposed for slow EV charging. All you need to do is run wires down to street level so cars can plug in.

You probably won’t fill up your car’s battery on streetside slow chargers. On my Tesla Model 3, this charging speed adds, at most, about 30 miles of driving range per hour. (That’s why home and office charging is so appealing: the eight hours you spend sleeping or working is about enough to fill up the battery.) Yet a world of ubiquitous Level 2 plugs would add peace of mind. Think of it like plugging in your phone at a bar or at the airport. Sometimes, a little extra juice is just what you need to get by.

Seeing these plugs everywhere would help drivers feel like it’s not an emergency every time the car gets a little low, and the big charging depot (where there might be a line of cars, anyway) is miles away. Slow chargers also put less pressure on our already-creaking electrical grid compared to DC fast-chargers, which unleash upwards of 350 kilowatts at once. They’re also considered to be better for the long-term health of a battery because fast-charging leads to faster degradation, though by how much is not clear.

“Slow plugs everywhere” isn’t a perfect solution. A few streetside plugs exist in my part of Los Angeles, but you’d need a lot to make a difference; it’s not until such plugs are the norm rather than the exception that you’d have a good chance of grabbing a spot when you need it. Plus, infrastructure left out on the street is susceptible to vandalism as well as normal wear and tear. That’s why some places in Europe have embraced the “bring your own cable” approach to such chargers so cords are not left on the sidewalk, sitting in the rain and getting in the way.

Despite the challenges, slow charging offers states and cities miffed by Trump’s election a low-tech way to make themselves more EV-friendly. They could also use the power of the legislative pen to mandate that apartment buildings and condominium developments install plugs in their parking lots, for example. Then, blue state residents and urban dwellers — the very people most likely to want EVs to fight climate change, but least likely to have the ability to put in their own home plugs – can buy an EV without also buying a lifestyle of inconvenience.

Fast-charging still matters a lot. The rapid growth of DC stations over the past decade has created a country where nearly all the major interstate highways have enough plugs for EV drivers to get by. Many more are needed in cities, along state highways, and near far-flung destinations like the National Parks before most people will be confident an electric vehicle can take them anywhere they want to go.

As the refrain goes, though, most people do the vast majority of their driving within a few miles of their homes. If a rollout of slow plugs makes it possible for them to steal a few electrons while they go about their lives, American confidence in EVs will rise.

Green

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Politics

AM Briefing: Climate Grants Terminated

On Lee Zeldin’s announcement, coal’s decline, and Trump’s Tesla promo

The EPA’s $20 Billion Climate Grants Have Been Terminated
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Alaska just had its third-warmest winter on record • Spain’s four-year drought is nearing an end • Another atmospheric river is bearing down on the West Coast, triggering evacuation warnings around Los Angeles’ burn scars.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Zeldin terminates $20 billion in climate grants

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said yesterday he had terminated $20 billion in congressionally-approved climate change and clean energy grants “following a comprehensive review and consistent with multiple ongoing independent federal investigations into programmatic fraud, waste, abuse and conflicts of interest.”

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Climate

What the NOAA Layoffs Are Doing to Climate Science

And how ordinary Americans will pay the price.

A hand in the NOAA logo.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

No one seems to know exactly how many employees have been laid off from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — or, for that matter, what offices those employees worked at, what jobs they held, or what regions of the country will be impacted by their absence. We do know that it was a lot of people; about 10% of the roughly 13,000 people who worked at the agency have left since Donald Trump took office, either because they were among the 800 or so probationary employees to be fired late last month or because they resigned.

“I don’t have the specifics as to which offices, or how many people from specific geographic areas, but I will reiterate that every one of the six [NOAA] line offices and 11 of the staff offices — think of the General Counsel’s Office or the Legislative Affairs Office — all 11 of those staff offices have suffered terminations,” Rick Spinrad, who served as the NOAA administrator under President Joe Biden, told reporters in a late February press call. (At least a few of the NOAA employees who were laid off have since been brought back.)

Keep reading...Show less
Blue
Podcast

How Trump Has All But Halted Offshore Wind

Rob and Jesse talk with Heatmap senior reporter Jael Holzman.

Offshore wind turbines.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Donald Trump’s second term has now entered its second month. His administration is doing much to slow down renewables, and everything it can to slow down offshore wind. Jael Holzman is a senior reporter at Heatmap and the author of our newsletter, “The Fight,” about local battles over renewable permitting around the country.

On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob and Jesse talk to Jael about the bleak outlook for offshore wind, the use of presidential authority to impede energy development, and why solar has been spared — so far. Shift Key is hosted by Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University, and Robinson Meyer, Heatmap’s executive editor.

Keep reading...Show less
Blue