This State Leads the Nation in Chargers Per EV—No, It’s Not California

• In 2023, almost 1.2 million light-duty EVs were registered and on the road in California—almost a million more than second-place Florida or third-place Texas.

• That said, Wyoming actually leads the nation in terms of charging stations per EV, with 22.12 chargers for every 100 registered EVs in the state.

• While installation rates are speeding up, some believe the US won’t meet the public charging infrastructure needed to meet growing EV demand.
  

Should Wyoming get a medal? The thinly populated state leads the nation in terms of charging stations per battery-electric vehicle—there are 22.12 chargers for every 100 registered EVs in the state, according to a new 2024 Zutobi report.

But that’s because Wyoming has so few EVs on the road—just 1,139 at the time of the report, serviced by 252 charging ports, many along major highways, and some supported by federal funds.

Low EV adoption in states such as South Dakota (1,675 EVs in their count), North Dakota (959 EVs), and Mississippi (3,590) includes “not enough contribution from local authorities and businesses in supporting EVs there,” Anna Mischenko, a spokesperson for Zutobi, the Sweden-based online drivers’ education company with operations in the US, tells Autoweek.

“Other states, including Connecticut and Michigan, make a big effort and have seen a lot of EV growth,” Mischenko says.

America’s embrace of EVs is impressive but pretty lopsided. The number of EVs on the road keeps rising, reaching about 3.3 million this year, and plug-in electric vehicles had an 8.9% market share in the third quarter of 2024, a new high, reports CarEdge.

By the end of 2024, one in nine cars sold in the US are projected to be EVs, says Consumer Affairs. Only 100,000 EVs were sold here in 2012; in 2023, it was 1.2 million, says Kelley Blue Book.

And the final 2024 picture is good, too. “In 2024, electric car sales in the United States are projected to rise by 20% compared to the previous year,” says the International Energy Agency, “translating to almost half a million more sales, relative to 2023.”

But the cars are hardly spread evenly across the states. Last year, almost 1.2 million light-duty EVs were registered and on the road in California, and that’s nearly a million more than second-place Florida or third-place Texas.

So, EV sales are showing life (albeit mostly in a few parts of the country). But according to the Zutobi report, “the growth in public charging outlets hasn’t quite kept pace, rising by 25%, from 143,771 to 180,000 between 2023 and 2024.”

That doesn’t hurt Wyoming and North Dakota all that much, but the report says things aren’t so copacetic in New Jersey, the state with the fewest stations per EV: 134,753 registered vehicles and 3,723 charging points. That translates to EVs lined up at stations, with 2.76 of them per 100 electric vehicles.

“At current installation rates, the US won’t meet the public charging infrastructure needed to meet growing EV demand,” says Om Shankar, vice president and general manager at Konect, which offers “an EV charging infrastructure ecosystem” coordinating fueling, payment, and service.

Shankar adds, “As EV technology improves, costs go down and range goes up—so more people will make the switch. We must match this progress with the right amount of readily available public charging. We need some logical thinking on the placement of new charge points—ideally, locations that are already familiar and convenient for car drivers.”

Hawaii—where gasoline is expensive and both wind and solar power prevalent—still hasn’t built a really robust EV network. It has 25,565 vehicles and is fifth place in overall EV adoption, says JD Power, but has only 860 charging points (or 3.36 per 100 EVs). The state is in second place in Zutobi’s fewest-stations-per-EV listings.

EV adoption is lagging in the heartland compared to the coasts, but Illinois has a respectable 99,573 EVs registered. Unfortunately, its 3,510 charging points means there are only 3.52 stations per 100 EVs.

Other states are doing better. California, as stated, has a lot of EVs (1,256,646, according to Zutobi) but also plenty of chargers—100,000 public or shared private electric vehicle chargers, plus more than 500,000 at-home chargers.

That’s according to Governor Gavin Newsom’s office earlier this year. The office adds, “This comes just weeks after the approval of a $1.9 billion plan to build a bigger, better charging network.”

New York, also a big EV state, is considerably in California’s shadow—it has more than 200,000 EVs registered, and 4,581 public charging stations. At the 2024 New York International Auto Show, Governor Kathy Hochul said 100 new fast chargers would be installed in New York City, where congestion and expensive real estate make public charging difficult.

When it comes to adding charging stations, Connecticut is in the forefront, with charging points going from 1,638 in 2023 to 2,547 in 2024 (in 1,208 actual stations), a 55.49% increase. “The state’s focus on expanding infrastructure has helped make EV ownership more accessible, and is setting a positive example for other states aiming to build a robust charging network,” Zutobi says.

Ronak Amin, global product marketing manager at HERE Technologies, says the “ideal ratio would be 10 to 20 EVs per charge point.” HERE, a location data and technology company, publishes with SBD Automotive an annual EV Index that measures market maturity.

The report finds “stark regional disparities” in the availability of US chargers. HERE’s report honors Delaware as its top overall state, based on four metrics, and cites its “drastically increasing EV numbers and improving charging infrastructure.” Also doing well in that report are Massachusetts, Nevada, Connecticut, and Washington DC.

The commercial side is also an issue.

“It’s widely recognized that the industry lacks sufficient public infrastructure to support the growing fleet of medium- and heavy-duty electric commercial trucks,” says Patrick MacDonald-King, CEO of Greenlane, a joint venture between Daimler Truck North America, NextEra Energy Resources, and BlackRock aimed at creating a robust fast public charging and hydrogen refueling network.

“We feel the demand will persist, and signals for this include a report from the International Council on Clean Transportation showing that nearly 700,000 chargers will be needed nationwide to accommodate a million Class 4 to 8 medium- and heavy-duty electric trucks anticipated to be deployed by 2030,” MacDonald-King says.

The Biden-Harris Administration put serious money into public EV chargers, though some of it has been slow to translate into on-the-ground installations. Last August, the administration announced $521 million for charging and alternative-fuel infrastructure for 29 states, supporting “more than 9,200 EV charging ports.”

Since the team took over in 2021, “the number of publicly available EV chargers has doubled,” a release says. “Now, there are over 192,000 publicly available charging ports with approximately 1,000 new public chargers being added each week.”

President-Elect Donald Trump has been much less enthusiastic about EVs, but the huge support he got from Tesla’s Elon Musk during the election season could influence his thinking starting next year.

It is estimated that 80% to 85% of EV charging going forward will be at home, so California’s 500,000 home chargers are impressive. But public charging networks are still necessary to convince wavering consumers to go electric, and in some states the infrastructure is clearly lagging behind the rate of EV adoption.

The good news is that the US has, overall, been adding a lot of EV charging stations, and now has 77,082, according to the federal Alternative Fuels Data Center.

The bad news is that, a 2024 Lectron report says, “most of that growth is limited to a few states, with five states—California, Texas, Florida, New York, and Washington—accounting for 46.4% of all EV charging stations.”

What state do you call home, and how is the EV charging infrastructure shaping up? Please comment below.