The gas station of the future is not what you think

There’s a bodega on the corner where I live in Brooklyn with a massive TikTok following and a thick cable almost always stretched out the front door and plugged into a Tesla. In a tiny parking lot around the corner, the local grocery store has a fast charger that looks like a mini gas pump. The parking garage down the hill has a line of public chargers.

Brooklyn looks different than the rest of America, but this mix of solutions for fueling up our battery-powered cars highlights an increasingly obvious fact about the future. As we continue to transition to electric vehicles, the gas station of the future won’t just be those big pavilions on the roadside with 20-foot-tall signs bearing an oil company’s logo. You’ll probably be able to buy fossil fuels at gas stations for decades, but you’ll also be able to charge your EV very quickly. And those familiar fueling destinations won’t be the only place you can charge.

The future of EV charging is already here. It’s everywhere and sometimes not where you’d expect it. 

There are already hundreds of thousands of chargers in people’s garages, in supermarket parking lots, in national parks, and yes, even in old-fashioned gas stations. In the near future, if you drive an EV, you won’t worry about finding a place to charge your car. You’ll get to choose between multiple experiences, based on your needs and desires, and you won’t even need to open an app or get out a credit card to charge up and get on your way.

This forecast probably sounds a little bit fantastic in light of recent developments. The Trump administration suspended the rollout of the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program, which was established by the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and apportioned $5 billion for states to build public EV chargers. The goal was to ensure there were charging stations at least every 50 miles on certain corridors, especially those in rural or low-income areas. 

It’s unclear how long Trump’s NEVI halt will last. Democrats in Congress were quick to call the administration’s actions illegal, and some states were allowed to keep spending the program’s previously approved dollars to build chargers. The Trump administration has asked states to submit new plans for approval, although it’s not clear if or when they will be approved. Meanwhile, the funding freeze is being challenged in court. So for now, the future of that massive federally funded EV infrastructure project is in chaos. 

Several people in the EV charging industry told me that, with or without federal funds, progress in the charger space can’t be stopped. That should be good news to EV owners or potential EV owners who worry that they might end up stranded on the side of the road because they couldn’t find a charger before their battery dies — a condition commonly known as “range anxiety.”

“Every single day that goes by, there’s more and more public charging infrastructure that goes in the ground, literally every single day,” Mike Battaglia, CEO of Blink Charging, told me. “So each day that goes by, there is less and less range anxiety.”

There are currently over 210,000 EV charging stations in the United States, and that number was growing by about 1,000 per week towards the end of the Biden administration. (Those numbers still pale in comparison to the 1 million-plus gas pumps currently in operation.) The NEVI program aimed to get 500,000 public chargers online by 2030. Of course, exactly where those chargers are and how easy it is to use them matter a lot. 

The infrastructure buildout has historically focused on getting EV chargers built in affluent suburbs and along highways, leaving city centers and rural areas largely unserved. This inequality is worsening over time, according to a recent study led by the Department of Energy. That said, the vast majority of EV owners — 80 percent — have the ability to charge their vehicles at home, which complicates the question of how to build out America’s EV charging infrastructure.

If you own an EV or are thinking about getting one, the main thing you need to know is that you’ll probably do most of your charging at home. The gas station of the future is effectively your garage or your driveway. The cost per mile of range will vary depending on your local utility rates, but it’s safe to say charging at home is cheaper than charging on the go and, for most people, much cheaper than buying gas. 

EV chargers fall into three categories: level 1, level 2, and level 3. A level 1 charger plugs into a regular 120-volt wall outlet and charges slowly, like two to five miles of range per hour. A level 2 charger requires a 240-volt outlet, like the kind a washer-dryer uses, and provides 20 to 30 miles of range per hour. On average, a one-vehicle household drives about 50 miles per day, so charging overnight with either a level 1 or level 2 charger is probably sufficient.

“It’s way easier than actually going to a gas station,” said Ingrid Malmgren, senior policy director at Plug In America, an EV advocacy group. “People who charge it at home very rarely charge publicly, usually just on road trips.”

When you do go on road trips, you’ll probably encounter level 3 chargers, also known as DC fast chargers. These beasts use higher voltages, usually 400 or 800 volts, to pump EV batteries from a 10 percent charge up to 90 percent in about half an hour. This is as close as it gets to the present-day gas station solution, where you can pull off the road, plug in your car, grab a sandwich, and then get on your way with plenty of charge. Fully charging an EV with a DC fast-charger should still be a fraction of the cost of filling a car with gasoline — although you might end up spending more in the convenience store while you wait.

There are a couple of other variables you’ll encounter when venturing out into the world to charge an EV. First of all, not all EVs use the same kind of plug. The North American Charging Standard (NACS) plug, originally designed by Tesla, is quickly becoming, as the name suggests, the standard in North America as more and more carmakers adopt the style. Otherwise, most non-Teslas in the US will use Combined Charging System (CCS) plugs that can be made compatible with NACS charging stations thanks to an adapter. 

This standardization is simplifying the search for a compatible charging station. With NACS becoming the primary plug-in use, more and more drivers can use not only Tesla Superchargers but also growing networks of chargers made by companies like ChargePoint, Blink, Electrify America, and EV Connect. Even paying for a charge is getting streamlined thanks to software updates that are popularizing an international encrypted communication standard colloquially known as Plug and Charge. As the name implies, at stations with this feature, you simply plug in your EV, and the station recognizes your car and charges your payment option of choice. There’s no need to download an app or tap a credit card.

It’s very likely you will have this fast charging experience at a place that also sells gas and diesel. Many fossil fuel companies see the writing on the wall and are investing in EV charging infrastructure for all your energy needs. Shell has its Shell Recharge Brand, BP has BP Pulse, Pilot and Flying J have GM Energy co-branded stations. This is just good business sense. If people are already used to going to the gas station, why not provide their fuel of choice when they switch to an EV? And this year, EVs will account for 10 percent of all new vehicles sold in the US this year, according to Cox Automotive. 

Things could get even more interesting as the EV market grows and the need to keep giant tanks of explosive fossil fuels underground fades away. Those big holes in the ground could be filled with battery storage, and those familiar pavilions that keep drivers dry as they fill up their vehicles could be covered in solar panels. This type of design could turn EV charging stations into their own little power plants, where solar energy fills up those batteries, which contribute to grid stability as EVs draw large amounts of power. Electrify America has already opened one hub with this concept in mind and has ambitious plans to deploy more than 150 onsite battery systems nationwide.

As exciting as these futuristic gas stations sound, however, your best bet is almost certainly to find a way to charge your car at home and probably overnight. Then try to remember that you’re probably going to drive less than you thought the next day. Range anxiety is real, but it’s also irrational. 

“The mindset of ‘I need a vehicle that can do 400 miles and be recharged in 10 minutes.’ That has to change,” John Eichberger, executive director of the Transportation Energy Institute, told me. 

After all, most people don’t drive 400 miles in a week, much less a day. And once you start driving an EV, you’ll also start spotting charging stations everywhere. The parking garage down the hill, the local grocery store, the bodega on the corner — everywhere I turn in my Brooklyn neighborhood, there’s a place to plug in. Now if I only had an EV.