EDITORIAL: The charge for charging

The gathering tide of electric-vehicle (EV) launches in the next few years is going to finally start the mainstreaming of electric propulsion. But if some things don't change quickly, selling EVs in volume is going expose the dirty little secret of the current EV experience: public recharging more or less is the Wild West.

Ironically, most studies show that EV owners or intenders will predominantly do their recharging at home. So, the state of public recharging really shouldn't be a deal-breaker. But two flashpoints can't be ignored: Even with ever-improving vehicle driving ranges, there's always going to be range anxiety - at least until DC fast-charging replicates the ubiquity of today's liquid-fuels refueling network that boasts some 168,000 sites in the U.S. The Dept. of Energy reported in early 2019 that there were slightly fewer than 11,000 DC fast-charging sites in the country.