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U.S. EV Charging Kept Up With Growth, Gained Reliability in 2024

Via Green Car Report | December 31, 2024

U.S. public electric vehicle charging infrastructure kept up with EV sales growth in 2024, and even improved in reliability, according to a study released in early December by Paren, which provides data services for EV charging.

The study looked at end-user experience for fast charging sessions during the Thanksgiving travel week—described as the "Super Bowl of fast charging." 

The study found that the number of charging sessions increased nearly 50% during Thanksgiving week of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023. But the number of charging connectors also increased by about the same amount.

The Thanksgiving week served as 2024's "pressure test" for the charging sector, as it's when motorists are out on the highways at once in a way that's not rivaled by any other holiday time—even the Christmas and New Year's week, when travel tends to be spread among many days.

As a result, the average rate of utilization—defined here as a measure of total charging session minutes per connector as a percentage of open hours (typically over a 24-hour period)—declined slightly from 24% to 22%, year-over-year. It shows that infrastructure is keeping up with the increased number of EVs on U.S. roads.

And the number of EVs in the U.S. did indeed increase steadily throughout 2024, with sales up by more than 10% year-over-year in the latter months of the year, and EV market share inching closer to 10% of the overall U.S. light-vehicle market. But 2024 has definitely been a year in which infrastructure gets out ahead of sales growth for EVs—surely a good thing to set the stage for the market. Lack of public chargers was a dealbreaker for nearly half of shoppers in a 2023 J.D. Power survey.

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