Are you thinking about buying an electric car? You are not alone.
With gas prices high and a series of climate reports showing the importance of moving away from fossil fuels, more Americans are expressing interest in electric vehicles.
A record number of electric car searches were done on the internet last month. Cars.com saw a 43 percent increase in searches for electric vehicles from January to February and a 57 percent increase from February to March. Most of the car commercials during the Super Bowl featured electric vehicles.
The journey to actual purchases that put more electric vehicles and fewer gas-powered vehicles on roads in the United States has two major obstacles: the supply of cars and infrastructure to charge them.
With the United States struggling to find the political will to make the drastic changes needed to limit climate change, more people would be a positive step if they switched to electric vehicles.
There were a number of factors that strained the electric vehicle supply. The supply chain problems have hampered the auto industry as a whole. There are long wait lists for electric vehicles because of the war in Ukraine.
Shortages are not universal, but the places where demand is increasing are not the same places where supply is not keeping up. In states like Arizona and Georgia, demand is higher than supply on Cars.com, according to the website's editor in chief. California has both high demand and high supply.
Consumers may not be able to get what they want and need because the economics become even better than they had been.
The need for strong standards is reinforced by this, because the better choices need to be available before the price spikes, not in response to them.
The limits of public charging infrastructure become clear when people start driving electric vehicles. Electric vehicle owners will want more places to charge their cars.
Most of the people buying electric vehicles are people with the ability to charge them at home. That is an excellent option for many Americans, but it is not feasible for everyone. Some people who can charge at home worry that the scarcity of charging stations would make it hard for them to travel long distances in an electric car.
Daniel Sperling is a professor of engineering and environmental policy at the University of California, Davis. The buyers tend to be affluent and often own multiple cars, meaning they may use an electric vehicle for everyday commute but also have a gas-powered vehicle for longer trips.
Charging an electric vehicle is not as easy as plugging it into a garage outlet in densely populated cities where parking is hard to come by, and its range between charges becomes a more pressing question for people who don't have multiple cars.
In the short term, the infrastructure can meet a ramp-up in demand, according to the director of clean vehicles and fuels at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The International Council on Clean Transportation found last year that the United States would need to increase the number of public charging stations by an average of 25 to 30 percent annually through the year 2030.
Mr. Tonachel said that some of this is already happening. He said that utility companies have invested more than $3 billion in charging infrastructure and pending applications would add billions more. The bipartisan infrastructure bill that Congress passed last year included another $7.5 billion for charging stations, and the Biden administration is spending tens of billions of dollars to promote electric vehicles.
There are geographical differences in where those charging points are installed. A basic problem is profit.
Professor Sperling said that it is difficult to make a profit selling electrons to vehicles. Professor Sperling said that in the future, we will probably need one public charging station for every 10 vehicles.
Hiroko Tabuchi was involved in reporting.
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