Despite a boost in demand for electrified vehicles of late, especially hybrids, the EV sector faces headwinds from the Trump administration’s tariffs and policy changes rescinding support for electrification.
EV sales are expected to take a hit after the Sept. 30 sunsetting of federal tax credits for EV purchases. The sector also has been navigating the rollback of federal fuel economy standards and the pause earlier this summer of federal funding for EV charging infrastructure projects.
But a recent report from EV charging data provider Paren Inc. contains some positive news for the EV charging sector. Paren’s Q2 State of the Industry Report on EV fast charging in the US found that “DC fast charging (DCFC) infrastructure growth is on track to surpass previous yearly highs, despite government pushback,” according to a news release.
In fact, Paren analysts forecast a 19% YoY increase in port deployments in the US this year.
The report also homed in on a few other trends, including the addition of more large stations “with more ports and high-power chargers, as well as improved reliability and more predictable pricing.”
“We’re here to tell you that we’re on a record pace,” Loren McDonald, chief analyst at Paren, said during a recent presentation. “The industry is building out and deploying stations at an uncanny pace that we’ve never seen before.”
Takeaways: Paren is forecasting that 16,700 new fast charging ports will open this year, 2.4 times as many as in 2022. Analysts estimate that, if the current growth rate continues, the US will have more than 100,000 fast charging ports in 2027—four times the number from 2022 and roughly double the number from 2024.
The report’s authors pointed to several factors to explain this trend, including the Tesla Supercharger network picking up the pace on deployments after slowing down for a period in early 2024, the entrance by charging networks like Ionna and Mercedes-Benz High Power Charging to the fast-charging space, and growth in deployments of fast-charging ports by other chargepoint operators like Electrify America and Blink.
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Analysts estimated that the total number of DC fast-charging ports in the US this year will grow 245% since 2021.
Other trends: At the same time, chargepoint operators are installing larger stations and higher-power chargers which, according to Paren analysts, “provide a better experience for drivers and minimize wait times and frustration.”
- In Q2, per the report, the share of 250-plus kilowatt-hour chargers among non-Tesla chargepoint operators grew from 24% to 38%.
One of the more downbeat findings was that the national average use rate for DC fast chargers fell to 16.1% in Q2, down from 16.6% in Q1. Analysts chalked this up, in part, to “seasonality and warmer weather” but warned that they’ve “observed declining utilization rates across some unexpected markets,” indicating that the supply of new chargers may be starting to outpace demand. In Q2, fast-charger use fell in 26 states.
According to the authors, the US EV charging sector is not so much struggling with an inadequate number of charging stations, but with the need for more stations in “charging deserts in rural areas” and in cities dealing with congestion.
“Private industry will solve the latter issue, but programs such as the federal (National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure) funding are key to building out charging stations in areas without chargers but may have very low utilization,” they wrote.
“The takeaway is, despite the NEVI pause, despite the negative buzz and what we’ve been hearing and headwinds and stuff with the industry on many fronts,” McDonald said, “we are deploying at just an amazing pace.”