Lack of EV charging scuppers no-emission road trips
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Summer is for road trips — pavement, sunshine and junk food by the bag. But when I look back at this summer, I will be haunted by the road trip that wasn’t.
The car was a better one than I deserved. I’m no petrolhead, or “car guy” in American parlance. As a reporter, I’m interested in the products that Ford and General Motors sell to the extent the line-ups determine what they earn. As a born cheapskate, I’m the owner of a 2004 Honda Civic. But for an FT film, Ford loaned me a 2021 Mustang Mach-E. The moment it rolled up my Chicago street, I felt that churning mix of fear and attraction that poets call love. It was red.
The electric Mach-E is actually not a car at all, but a sport utility vehicle. Ford sold 16,000 in the first half of the year, second behind Tesla. Yet electric vehicles remain a rarity on the roads, making up just 2 per cent of the US market. I goggled when the delivery driver popped a lid to uncover not the familiar hole for petrol, but a plug.
I promised the driver that after filming I would park it safely in my spot all weekend, Honda relegated to the street. He gazed in my eyes and, in a voice heavy with disappointment, said, “Don’t do that.”
Just like that, I was starring in a personal remake of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”, soundtrack pumping: oh yeah. Where to go? I decided to head for the driftless area of Illinois, a pretty, hilly region along the Mississippi about three hours from Chicago that had escaped being flattened by glaciers.
My plan went wrong immediately. Tesla, Ford, GM and others are building electric vehicles, but the necessary charging infrastructure remains in the infancy stage. Most EV owners need to charge at home because of how long it takes. The owner of a single-family home typically spends up to $300 for the slowest, Level 1 charger, which can take up to 25 hours to fully charge a battery. A Level 2 charger takes between four and eight hours, and costs up to $2,000 including installation.
But like millions of others, I live in multi-unit housing, and there was nowhere to plug in the Mach-E. Landlords and condominium associations may decide in the future (or now, if they live in California) to spend $50,000 to install high-speed DC chargers that can charge a vehicle in less than an hour. Instead, I woke up already behind schedule for getting on the road.
There are about 54,000 public and private charging stations in the US. It sounds like a lot until you’re trying to find one. There are about twice as many petrol stations. The number shrinks to 50,000 after excluding private stations; only Tesla vehicles can access Tesla stations. Moreover, many of the stations are the older, slower charging type.
But it was a beautiful Sunday morning, and I was optimistic. The US Department of Energy’s website showed a DC station located at a nearby drugstore. Perfect.
The EVgo station looked like a fuse box marooned in a parking lot. I downloaded EVgo’s app, but there was no credit card slot so no way to pay. Ultimately, it didn’t matter. A customer service representative informed me the station was broken.
Then I noticed a bar coded plastic card affixed to the Mach-E key chain, linked to an account at “Chargepoint”, a competing chain of charging stations. Perhaps I had miscalculated. Chargepoint’s app directed me to a DC station about three miles south. I found it, scanned the card, plugged in and . . . nothing happened. I was now on my third app and second phone call to customer service. Just as a rep picked up, a parking attendant asked me to move the car. I gave up.
I could have tried a fast charging station in the suburbs, but fear of being stranded made me reluctant to venture too far from home. The whole process had taken about 90 minutes. Had I driven the Honda, I would have been halfway across Illinois.
The US Senate voted on Tuesday to advance an infrastructure bill that includes $7.5bn for charging stations — a fraction of the estimated $60bn needed to build the 500,000 President Joe Biden has called for. Until the country’s charging infrastructure is more robust, EVs will remain a good car as long as you have another, petrol-powered one.
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