It’s getting easier and easier to find a public EV charger in the U.S.
Between 2020 and 2024, the number of public EV charging ports available to U.S. drivers doubled, reaching nearly 200,000 by the end of last year, according to International Energy Agency data. Northeast states have the highest charger density by far, with Massachusetts at the top of the list.
It’s solid growth, though significantly slower than other regions that have embraced EVs more wholeheartedly. In Europe and China, both of which are adopting EVs much faster than the U.S., public chargers roughly quadrupled over the same period.
Even though an estimated 80% of charging happens at home in the U.S., concerns about a lack of public charging infrastructure have dogged EV adoption for years. American drivers consistently cite the issue, or its close cousins, like a fear that EVs are no good for road trips, as among the top reasons they are unlikely to get an electric car.
That’s why widely available public EV charging ports are so important to the transition to electric vehicles — a shift that needs to happen for the U.S. to clean up transportation, its biggest source of carbon emissions.