Is there enough infrastructure to support the EV revolution? Should I really buy an electric car when there fewer charging stations than gas stations? Lets do a fact check on these two questions and see what the infrastructure situation is really like. As always, the state of infrastructure depends on where you live. For me that is Ontario Canada, so lets analyze the situation in Ontario. We find that if you take into account the number of cars on the roads that need charging, you will find that charging infrastructure is largely keeping up with the growing number of EVs on the road in Ontario.
At the time of this writing in November of 2021, there are 1580 public EV charging stations in Ontario (source) of which 311 are L3 fast chargers. This compares with 3549 gas stations in Ontario ( source). So for every EV charging station there are about 2-3 gas stations, not bad given that for every EV sold, 50 gas are sold in Ontario (source). Not so fast you may say, as not every one of these 1580 public EV charging stations will fast charge my Nissan Leaf. True, but were still talking about 226 Chademo capable L3 fast charging stations in Ontario, so that still gets you about 11 gas stations for each Chademo capable DC fast charging station, again beating the 50:1 new gas car’s sold to EV ratio.
Granted, there are all sorts of nuances here. One could argue that the EV driver will need to stop for longer than the gas car driver. There is truth in that, a fast charging session can take 30 minutes, while a gas tank can be filled in 3-4 minutes. But then again, you really should stop for at least 15 minutes to give yourself a break on a road trip, and truthfully, how many of us are nice enough to move our gas cars away from the pump when we have filled the tank?
Much of course depends on where you live. Toronto, Canada where I live, certainly has plenty of EV charging stations. There are also plenty of stations located on major highways near the city. Further a field, things do vary. Quebec has 438 fast charging stations, more than Ontario, while in Northern Ontario along Hwy 101 there are no fast charging stations between Timmins and Wawa a distance of 330 km (see my earlier post here). But there are motels and campgrounds, both of which can charge your electric car just fine. Something does tell me that there are more electrical outlets in Ontario than there are gas stations by some margin.
All of this will change as more EV’s hit the road. In some ways, Ontario is far behind Quebec and British Columbia here, as both of these provinces sell more EVs than Ontario does by some margin (source), despite Ontario being more populous. If we assume broadly, as EVs start to outnumber gas cars, for every gas station we are going to need a L3 fast charger, we are still short 3238 fast chargers in Ontario. More will need to be built in the coming years as more EVs hit the road, but at least for now, it seems to me that infrastructure in Ontario is slightly ahead of the EV wave.
Electric car adventures 