Abstract:

This paper analyzes the capital costs of the electric vehicle charging infrastructure needed for public, workplace, and home charging for the most populous 100 metropolitan areas in the United States from 2019 through 2025. The author reviews charging equipment cost data, including installation and hardware, for chargers of various charging types and locations. These equipment costs are then applied to our recent estimation of public and workplace charging needs, along with home charging needs that are newly assessed here. In this analysis, the author evaluate the capital costs, including installation and hardware, for a scenario with 2.6 million new electric vehicle sales in the top 100 U.S. metropolitan areas over the 2019–2025 period. The home and public charging costs analyzed here exclude several major aspects of a comprehensive charging ecosystem. However, this analysis of charging indicates there remains a need for charging infrastructure funding to support electric vehicle growth trends in the United States through 2025. The conclusions derived regarding the analysis of electric vehicle charging infrastructure costs in the 100 most populous U.S. metropolitan areas are: (1) Substantial charging infrastructure investments are needed to fill the charging gap. (2) Infrastructure costs are relatively modest—and steadily decrease—on a per-electric-vehicle basis. (3) Investing in home charging will remain important.