There Are More Car Chargers Than Gas Pumps In California

Recent data from California shows there are now more electric car chargers than gas pumps within its borders, according to the California Energy Commission. California as a state is much further along on the whole EV adoption trend than the rest of the United States, so much that it’s not even a contest, so this really isn’t even a little surprising.

New car prices could increase, something they’ve been doing for over a decade.

Still, this does mark a transition for the Golden State, showing just how serious the government and private sector efforts have been to populate EV chargers anywhere possible. Still, this push hasn’t made EVs more popular than internal combustion cars in the new vehicle market.

According to data shared by VELOZ, EV sales constituted just over 25 percent of overall new car sales in Q2 2024. While that number might have increased some in the last few quarters, that’s still not even close to the majority of the market.

The CEC released a report recently which states there are 178,549 electric car chargers in the state, compared to an estimated 120,000 gas pumps. That sounds impressive, but the chargers figure includes not only public charging stations but also shared private chargers, as reported by Fox LA.

Also, if you figure a gas pump allows the average driver to fill up their tank in five minutes or less, versus an EV charger needing about 30 minutes or so to top off an EV’s battery, and suddenly the gap between the two doesn’t feel like as much of a victory.

What’s even worse is over 162,000 of the chargers in California are Level 2, so those aren’t quite as practical as the almost 17,000 fast chargers, like all those Tesla Superchargers, which are probably around half of the fast chargers in the state. In other words, that half hour to top off batteries estimate might be a little too generous.

We already know there are way more ICE cars than EVs in California by a landslide. But some are taking these numbers to mean electric cars now rule the roadways of the state, which simply isn’t true.

Image via Tesla