Dustin Schell from the California Energy Commission: How California will build 850,000 chargers by 2030

According to Schell, there are about 150,000 chargers in California, and EV sales through the second quarter of 2024 were 25 per cent. By 2030, there should be about one million chargers across the state. “So we are definitely headed in the right direction,” he says. The state is looking to invest 1.5 billion dollars in state funding through fiscal year 2028. That is on top of the 160 million dollars from the NEVI (National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure) programme and another federal grant for “about 100 million.”

Availability and reliability are still an issue. However, the state is working on closing the infrastructure gap in Central California, where there are few metropolitan areas compared to Southern and Northern California. “We have a lot of programmes where we funded chargers specifically in rural areas throughout California,” Schell explains, adding that there are also programmes for multi-unit housing. “And a lot do get targeted into the Central Valley and all of those other areas that are not the Bay Area or Southern California.”

Regarding reliability, the CEC – and Schell himself – is working on legislation that requires public chargers funded through the state of California to meet specific requirements, such as uptime percentage rates, “a lot of reporting and automated data transmission through OCPP.” Schell says the additional requirements are necessary to level the playing field and should not be too much of a hurdle for charge point operators. “Yes, it’s always going to be an added thing. But in my mind, requirements are better than having a bunch of broken chargers on the side of the road that taxpayers of California funded.”

We met up with Schell at the Intercharge Network Conference (icnc24) in Berlin. Asked about whether there are EV-related policies from Germany or Europe as a whole that could serve as an example for California, he admitted that Germany might be two steps ahead but that California was doing a lot of the same things. “It is refreshing to me that the German approach seems to mirror our approach, and maybe you guys are just a few months ahead of us.”