One of the biggest obstacles to EV adoption is that public charging infrastructure can’t keep up with demand. Charging at home, for those who are able, is a great way around this, except for one small problem. According to Telemetry, we’re too lazy to clean out our garages.
As of a 2021 report by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, 42% of homeowners already park close to a 240-volt outlet capable of Level 2 charging, regardless of what they drive. But a lot of people use their garages for general storage rather than parking a car inside. Using a garage for its intended purpose would, in itself, give 68% of homeowners easy access to a charging outlet with no other changes required.
To put it another way, 31 million homes are currently capable of EV charging, according to Ars Technica. Simply cleaning out the garage and parking inside would increase that number to 50 million homes. In many cases, 90% according to Telemetry, it’s possible to add a 240-volt outlet to a garage that doesn’t already have one. Doing so brings the number of homes capable of EV charging to 72 million.
There is a catch
While these numbers sound like sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows for the future of EVs, the real world is a bit more complicated. The cost of adding a 30-amp, 240-volt outlet to a garage for EV charging can be quite expensive. This is particularly true of older homes, built when practical EVs were just a figment of our imagination, but even some newer homes may not support this. It can cost thousands of dollars to have a suitable outlet installed, which negates or even exceeds the cost savings of buying an EV in the first place. While it is a one-time purchase that will support whatever EVs you plug in for many years to come, that initial cost is a hurdle many homeowners can not afford to overcome.
Of course, this assumes you can afford to buy a house in the first place. Households now require an annual income of $118,530 to afford the average American house, more than 52% above the median income, according to Investopedia. Home ownership is now a luxury most of us can not afford, and multi-family dwellings are severely lacking in EV charging capabilities. That leaves residents reliant on our lacking public EV charging infrastructure. At least the $5 billion allocated to expand and improve this is still there despite the Trump Administration’s efforts to stop it, as we predicted. We just have to hope people don’t park like idiots and block access to these chargers.
