The Low-Tech Way To Make EV Charging Better

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.