EV charging comes with challenges.

Streetside charging comes with plenty of challenges. For one, these kinds of chargers are generally slow, taking anywhere between three and eight hours to fully “top up” an EV. They’re also subject to the delightful randomness that makes up city life—if too many trucks, motorcycles, or sedans are parked on the block, the EV won’t be able to line up with the available charger. Then there’s the ICE-ing issue: That’s what EV drivers call it when a car with a regular old internal combustion engine hogs their charging spot. “On-street parking is definitely a challenge,” says Anne Smart, the vice president of public policy at ChargePoint, a company that builds and installs electric vehicle chargers. “We’ve found the parking lots create a better charging experience.” Her company, along with other US-based ones like Greenlots and Electrify America, have struck deals with urban malls and shopping centers to build chargers outside stores.  

Still, it’s most convenient for people to charge at home. But renters and condo owners have little guarantee that their next place will have a charger, which makes it harder for them to pull the trigger on an EV. So lots of cities and states are working through how to convince apartment developers and managers to buy into the unfamiliar and expensive process of installing them. Los Angeles is offering rebates for managers who put charging stations into their apartment lots, and it is updating its building codes to require chargers in new construction. “Los Angeles is a city of renters more than anything else, so we have to be really conscious of that potential tension and the solutions we have to offer,” says Lauren Faber O’Connor, the city’s chief sustainability officer.

Another option is to convert gas stations to provide electricity instead. These spaces would provide a faster type of charger for drivers who need quicker boosts. (They also tend to be more expensive to install and use.) “The challenge now is, can you have enough of these major charging stations that dispense electricity at a high rate?” asks Michael Kintner-Meyer, a research engineer and systems analyst at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, who studies the power grid.

Revel, a company that runs fleets of electric mopeds and ride-hailing vehicles, is going after a slightly different charging strategy. In Brooklyn, the company built a “superhub”—basically an empty parking lot with 25 fast chargers. (Other companies have undertaken similar projects in European and Chinese cities.) The sheer number of chargers should guarantee that drivers will be able to charge when they want, says Paul Suhey, Revel’s chief operating officer. Finding new spaces for these hubs in a space-constrained area like New York City will always be a challenge, but Suhey says Revel plans to stay flexible, considering parking garages and lots near big shopping centers. “The first and most important constraint is the grid,” he says. “That really drives everything we do.”

INDEED, THE CHARGING dilemma goes far beyond the plug. You have to consider the power grid too. Utilities maintain a balance of supply and demand by generating about as much electricity as is being used. With fossil fuels that’s easy enough: If demand spikes, power plants can burn more fuel. But renewables complicate matters because their sources are intermittent—the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine. Even worse, peak demand is usually in the early evening when people return home and turn on appliances and plug in EVs, right as the sun is setting.

EVs could help steady the demand. With better distribution of charging infrastructure, some owners will still charge their cars at home overnight, but some might charge them at work, in a parking lot covered with solar panels. Others will plug in at the grocery store or what used to be a gas station. This would more evenly distribute the temporal demand, particularly by pushing it into daylight hours when there’s more solar power in the grid.

And in return, EVs can become on-demand batteries for the grid to tap into. Say 100 cars are sitting in a company parking lot overnight, fully charged. Demand spikes a few miles across town—but it’s dark, so solar energy isn’t available. Instead, power could flow from those plugged-in EVs to where it’s needed.

Individual charged-up cars could even chip in to support the grid in an emergency, like the power failure that followed last winter’s Texas freeze. “They could become together like a virtual power plant,” says Patricia Hidalgo-Gonzalez, director of the Renewable Energy and Advanced Mathematics Laboratory at UC San Diego. “They could actually provide this backup that we have during all hours of the day, ready to kick in whenever the grid needs that type of support.”

If grid operators can exploit idle EVs, they won’t have to spend so much money on batteries to store emergency power. “We could see up to 30 percent savings in the total cost of operating the electricity grid,” says Hidalgo-Gonzalez. “So that’s quite dramatic. That would save us from having to install massive amounts of storage, if we can leverage the storage that we have in electric vehicles.”

Of course, what might be best of all for the grid—and for city residents—is less demand for electricity altogether. Better charging infrastructure will encourage better air quality; after all, EVs don’t spew carbon and particulates. But putting every resident in their own car isn’t great either. It worsens traffic congestion, is dangerous for pedestrians, and undercuts the demand for public transit.

But maybe you don’t have to own an EV to enjoy one. Kintner-Meyer, for example, envisions ride-hail companies that include electric vehicles, which might be parked in central urban lots, where they charge via solar panels until they are picked up by a driver or deployed autonomously. (In fact, Uber and Lyft have pledged to transition to electric by the end of the decade—and some governments are requiring they do so.) Another option: electrify the buses and trains, and convince urbanites to ditch private cars altogether. “Public transportation is the other side of the coin,” says Faber O’Connor, the LA official. The city’s transit agency has converted one line to all-electric buses, and it plans to operate only zero-emission vehicles by 2030. Get urbanites to hop on the (electric) bus, and they won’t have to worry about charging at all.