Consider the humble gas station.
Today it’s just part of the background, one of more than 150,000 in the United States, including more than a thousand in Connecticut. Here in the most densely populated part of the country, it takes almost a willful disregard of your surroundings to run out of gas; there’s nearly always a filling station over the next rise.
It wasn’t always this way. In the pre-WWII years before individual vehicle ownership became ubiquitous, drivers had to take their chances. According to the National Museum of American History, “Before there were filling stations, consumers bought gasoline out of a barrel at the grocery or hardware store.” There were no smartphones with apps to tell you where the next barrel might be, so good luck finding your way over a long, unfamiliar distance.
Electric vehicles in 2021 are beyond the gas-in-a-barrel phase, but they’re also some distance from a scenario where there’s refueling infrastructure on every block. Where they stand on that continuum has a lot to do with how fast their sales grow, which has serious implications for minor issues like the long-term inhabitability of our planet.
A Connecticut company is trying to make the transition to charging ubiquity happen a little faster.
JuiceBar, based in Norwalk, manufacturers electric vehicle charging stations in Connecticut and has tripled its state workforce over the past year, with plans for more growth in 2022. Paul Vosper, the company’s CEO, said extreme weather in the past year could be playing a role in the quickening transition to electric vehicles, or EVs.
“People are beginning to realize climate change is here, not off in the future,” he said in a phone interview. “It’s a very real phenomenon.”
No one consider EVs a climate panacea — they still produce emissions, albeit at a far lower level than gasoline-powered engines, and the electricity that powers them has to come from somewhere, often a fossil-fuel-burning power plant. And it would be better on many fronts to move away from cars altogether. But with transportation playing an outsize role in the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, including in Connecticut, speeding up the transition to EVs is considered an important step for the environment.
But there are hang-ups, including availability, price and what the industry calls “range anxiety.” This refers to fears about how far an electric vehicle can go between charges, especially considering the aforementioned lack of infrastructure.
Those fears are fading, though, on multiple levels. One is that EVs can go farther now than a few years ago, and the range keeps increasing. The other is that the infrastructure, thanks to JuiceBar and others, is starting to catch up to expectations.
“The increased visibility of chargers goes a long way toward getting rid of range anxiety,” Vosper said. “A lot of it is fear of the unknown. Driving an EV can require a little more planning, but there are apps that can help you out,” by directing a driver to nearby charging stations.
The model for EV infrastructure, though, is not the traditional gas station. It’s more like a cellphone charger.
The difference is significant. Charging an EV is something that usually happens in the background — while you’re at work, while you sleep, at the movies or the park. Ideally, you don’t need to make a special trip to charge up.
This is partly a function of the chargers themselves, most of which take hours to bring a car up to full energy. It only makes sense to operate on that kind of schedule if you’re doing something else in the meantime.
Electric vehicles are expensive, which is why major incentives to buy them are included in the federal infrastructure package (the viability of which remains uncertain). EV availability is increasing, though Connecticut’s weirdly outdated dealership model is a hindrance. And when it comes to charging, skeptics are likely to come around.
JuiceBar, which says it’s the only American-made and -assembled EV charging station manufacturer, is looking at a near-term future where electric vehicles experience significant growth, which means plenty of demand for charging. The vehicle numbers and the infrastructure need to grow in tandem, which is good news for the company.
The transition will take some time, but we could be looking down the road at a lot of empty parcels that once housed gas stations. Electric vehicles don’t need to solve all our problems to be a worthy investment. It’s a long way from gas in a barrel to a charger at a parking space, but we still have a ways to go.
Hugh Bailey is editorial page editor of the Connecticut Post and New Haven Register. He can be reached at hbailey@hearstmediact.com.
