Getting a Charge

Ford Motor Company has announced it will make the largest investment in its history, $11 billion to build three factories that will create 11,000 jobs to build electric cars.

It is part of the company’s plan to manufacture only electric vehicles by 2035.

That’s a good idea, in fact an essential industrial program motivated by the need to level climate change and provide the cars the public will come to expect to get going on that project of the century.

But there’s a catch or two right now – big ones. Where are you going to charge your electric car when there are multiple times more of those than gasoline powered cars like the one you drive now? And how long will it take to charge it?

At a charging station, right? But where are the charging positions to fuel tens of millions of vehicles in the United States every day?

Actually, they do not – do not – exist.

Depending on the source, there are about 165,000 gas stations in the United States.

Given that some have two gas pumps, some have four and some have 20 if we take an average of 10 at each station that would mean 1,650,000 gas pumps in the country.

The real number is probably far higher but let’s use that.

Depending on sources, there are fewer than 50,000 electric car charging positions in the U.S. and they are mostly of a kind that charge slowly, very slowly in fact compared to the time it takes to fill up a gasoline tank.

Do the math. If gasoline pumps and current electric fueling positions were comparable, and they are not for now because of technology, the deficit is 1.6 million positions. Let’s leave it to experts to come up with the actual figures but the illustration gives us a good layman’s notion of the gap.

Example: In New Jersey the law says if you sell gasoline to anyone, you have to sell it to evryone. That ‘s why a Costco gas station plaza in Mercer County New Jersey has to sell gasoline even to non-Costco members. That plaza by observation fuels thousand and thousands of vehicles every week. It has about 20 gasoline pumps. It does not seem to have an electric charge station.

Clearly, we are several million fast-charge positions away from what we will need in a very few years. nThe second big problem with electric car charging is time. By all estimate current technology can fully charge a car at a charging position in about 20 to 30 minutes. But if you are used to a two-miute gasoline fill-up, that does not fit your busy life.

Even if we reach a point in an unknown future when many if not most auto owners can fully charge their cars at home, then estimates say it now takes six to as many as 12 hours to do that. That’s not just not ideal, it’s no good. Advancing the technology has to move with the development of charging positions.

The pending infrastructure bill must be passed to encourage and provide support for that investment, one that in turn has to be made by the oil and auto industries with the kind of public incentivation provided by the infrastructure legislation.

It contains an initial federal contribution of $7.5 billion for charging positions. But measure that against an estimate from one source that puts the total amount needed to build a large enough national network of charging positions at $50 billion.

Ford can make all the electric cars it wants as it takes forward its plan to transition in 15 years to manufacturing only electric vehicles.

But can it sell electric cars if the charging stations to fuel them are few and far between and if the technology has not been advanced to make them reasonably comparable in efficiency to gasoline pumps?

With other automakers, like Tesla which already bulds its own, Ford will have to invest in electric charging stations.

We need the infrastructure bill now – right now.

Yesterday in fact and, if anything, we need more of it.