EV CHARGING The importance given to car-charging stations by survey participants has increased significantly. In 2019, 10 percent of respondents considered them a high priority or very high priority. By 2022, the rate had increased to 18 percent. This remarkable increase – the largest among all the apartment features and community amenities included in the survey – was not too surprising considering that light duty electric drive vehicle monthly sales in the U.S. nearly tripled from 2019 to 2022. As more electric vehicles are expected to be on the roads in the coming years, the number of people prioritizing charging stations will almost certainly continue to grow. According to an aggregation of forecasts from multiple sources, 26.4 million electric vehicles will be on U.S. roads in 2030, an eleven-fold increase from 2.4 million at the end of 2021. Despite the increase, car-charging stations still ranked low in terms of high priority and very high priority response rates in 2022. Only laundry lockers and valet parking ranked lower. Nevertheless, it is remarkable that 18 percent of survey respondents viewed car-charging stations as a high or very high priority when only 1 percent of the 250 million cars, SUVs, and light-duty trucks on American roads in 2022 were electric vehicles. Demand for car-charging stations has grown the most in California, where the number of electric vehicle registrations is more than five times higher than in any other state. Among the 36 metropolitan areas with the most survey responses since 2019, six saw the rate of high and very high priority responses increase by more than 10 percentage points from 2019 to 2022. Four out of these six metropolitan areas were in California: Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, and San Jose.
The importance assigned to car-charging stations increased most among residents who have high household incomes. Among survey respondents who earn more than $150,000, the share who considered charging stations a high or very high priority increased by 13 points in four years, doubling to 26 percent in 2022. For residents earning between $100,000 and $150,000 per year, the percentage increased by nearly 10 points, going from 11 percent in 2019 to nearly 21 percent in 2022. The demand for charging stations among residents with annual household incomes below $100,000 increased to a lesser extent. The percentage of residents earning between $50,000 and $100,000 who assigned a high or very high priority to charging stations increased to 16 percent in 2022 from 9 percent in 2019. Similarly, the percentage of residents earning less than $50,000 who assigned a high or very high priority increased to 15 percent in 2022 from 9 percent in 2019. However, the correlation between income and the importance assigned to car-charging stations is not consistent across all metropolitan areas. In Jacksonville and Tampa, for instance, the largest increases in high and very high priority responses were observed among respondents with household incomes below $50,000, while those with incomes above $100,000 showed the least increase. Additionally, it is not solely the case that metropolitan areas with high average incomes had the largest increases in high and very high priority responses. Greenville, SC, has relatively low incomes compared to other major metropolitan areas but experienced an increase of almost 12 points in high and very high priority response rates between 2019 and 2022. It ranked similarly to high-income areas in California regarding the increase in these rates.
These factors include state and local tax incentives, regional electricity costs, local gas prices, and regional variations in driving habits and traffic patterns.
The relationship between respondents’ incomes and their prioritization of car-charging stations is influenced by various factors that differ across metropolitan areas.
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