As Cornell scholars Derek and Laura Cabrera illustrate in their “Systems Thinking Made Simple,” the most important societal problems are also the most difficult to solve because we haven’t practiced our systems thinking sufficiently. The challenges of electrifying personal transportation in the U.S. exemplify such a wicked problem.
Like all wicked problems, it requires technical advances, policy development, and human behavioral changes to enable each other. It is part of the energy transition, which is indeed a transition still underway. It is important for those of us committed to electrification to be truthful about the realities of the current transitional state so that other consumers are not so disappointed with EVs that they stick with gasoline powered vehicles even when their driving needs would be well served by an EV.
EVs have penetrated the U.S. personal vehicle market remarkably quickly, comprising 7.5% of 2023 new car sales. The models of available EVs have exploded, and U.S. policies have made some EVs more affordable. At the same time, EVs comprise a mere 1% of cars on the road today, and the growth rate of market penetration by EVs has slowed. As an early adopter, I know why.
During the last 15 months, my wife and I have driven 20,000 miles in our 2023 Ford F150 Lightning pickup truck. The mileage has piled up from many 1,400-mile round trips between our home base in Ithaca, New York, and my wife’s hometown on the coast of North Carolina to care for her aging parents. Not all those trips have been trouble-free.
It turns out that we were sold an incomplete vehicle because of the supply chain problems. There was at least one chip missing and lots of software glitches, one of which required a three-week stay in a Ford dealership service department while apparently the “mechanics” and the Ford experts in Detroit (or somewhere) came to understand each other, a communication gap we’ve experienced multiple times.
In a gasoline-powered car, the trip from Ithaca to North Carolina takes 12 hours no matter what time of year we do it. According to Ford’s route planning app (which includes charging stops), it is a 15-hour trip this time of year – when outside temperatures are warm. In the winter – when colder temperatures reduce battery efficiency and require lots of electricity to heat the cab – more charging stops are necessary, sometimes routes that are longer but have appropriately placed charging stations. Our winter trips turned into grueling 16- to 17-hour days. It’s a good thing that the Lightning is so fun to drive. My wife’s standard answer to people who ask what it is like is that “it drives like silk.”
Charging, however, often involves a lot more friction than does silk. Although there are multiple good apps for locating charging stations and checking on their availability, they are impossible to use safely while you are driving. Since my wife spends more time in NC than I do, I am often doing the long drive solo in the Lightning. I have to plan ahead and hope for the best. I have not always found the best.
Waiting for a fast charger to become available is common, and charging takes two to three times as long as a typical 15-minute stop for gasoline and a bathroom. The worst experience was arriving with less than 50 miles of remaining range at a bank of eight Electrify America fast chargers, only to find that they were all nonfunctional.
Next to worst is the station that is in the middle of a large parking lot surrounded by stores and restaurants that are closed late at night. My desperate need to empty my bladder has twice made me glad that no lighting illuminates these chargers. The absence of toilets and lighting is typical at charging stations, as is the absence of a roof, trash cans, and water source. For my wife especially, a dark, isolated, no-bathroom situation is not comfortable. Hence no solo long trips for my wife in what she calls the electric steed.
Putting aside the quality of charging stations, the availability of them is declining. On U.S. roads between 2022 and 2023, the number of EVs powered solely by batteries plus the number of plug-in hybrid EVs increased 42%. During the same period, the number of public charging stations and charging ports (to account for multiple ports at some stations) grew by only 20% and 24% respectively. In other words, the relative access to charging has declined even as the number of chargers increased. The already challenging situation for your average EV driver looking for an available charger is getting harder.
At this point in our transition to EVs, a purely battery-powered vehicle is perfect for someone whose daily round-trip commute is less than the car’s range and who can plug it in at home. Relative to a gasoline-powered vehicle, it is easier and cheaper over its lifetime. Cross-country drivers must currently look at owning an EV as an adventure.
To turn that adventure into something boringly predictable – like driving a gasoline-powered vehicle – several things must happen. Expanding the charger network must accelerate dramatically. The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill allocated $5B for the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program, but the money is just beginning to result in new chargers.
Simultaneously, expansion of the electrical grid must accelerate to keep pace with the accelerating rate of electricity use, including by chargers. Recent forecasts suggest demand will double in the next five years. Recent announcements from DOE and FERC promise to accelerate grid expansion, but much more permit reform is needed by federal, state, and local governments for transmission lines as well as for the solar and wind farms needed to generate the additional electricity.
Mutually reinforcing and simultaneous actions on the technology and policy of electricity production and distribution, and on the affordability of EVs, have driven rapid progress on the electrification of personal transportation in the U.S. But those advances won’t matter if the current lagging component within this wicked system – charging stations – is not addressed more robustly and quickly. My indicator of meaningful progress will be when my wife starts driving solo in the electric steed to North Carolina.
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