Public Electric Vehicle (EV) Charging Infrastructure Gaps
We provide data that help identify areas where EV charging infrastructure is inaccessible to state or federal-prioritized populations and areas.
Alternative Fuel Corridor (AFC) Gaps
Alternative fuel corridors (AFC) represent portions of highways that meet standards about publicly accessible locations to charge electric vehicles. However, these corridors are not yet widely available in all locations, and we want to identify where these gaps may exist in a community. We define these alternative fuel corridor gaps as geographies with potential opportunities to provide chargers that would support the AFC network.
We want to identify parcels that would help to bring the AFC towards compliance with the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program if a public charger were installed. We calculate these metrics for parcels overall and for specific land uses (such as parcels with commercial land uses, as these locations are more likely to install publicly accessible chargers than residential locations).
To identify these gaps, we calculate the total and percentage area of parcels of specific types in a geography that are within 25 miles of a gap in the planned AFC network (as indicated with a status of “signage pending”) and within 1 mile of the highway containing a gap along it. These thresholds were used because the NEVI criteria specify that there must be publicly accessible charging stations at least every 50 miles along a given highway and within 1 mile of the highway.
Electric Vehicle (EV) Charger Community Gaps
We identify EV charger community gaps using two methods: the number of chargers per population of specific demographic groups and the proximity of chargers to people who may need them.
Chargers per Population
For this metric, we calculate the number of chargers per population for specific demographic groups. We consider groups based on racial and ethnic demographics (from U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS) 5-Year Data). Low values on this metric indicate that publicly accessible electric vehicle charging stations may underserve these demographic groups.
Charger Locations
We identify where chargers aren't closely accessible to people who may need to use them. We measure this in two ways, but we first calculate the straight-line distance between every parcel and the nearest publicly accessible charger. Then, we:
Calculate the person-weighted average and median distance to the nearest charger across parcels for both the population on the parcel and the number of employees on the parcel.
Calculate the number and density of parcels of a given type (such as multifamily residential) that do not have any public chargers within a given distance (such as 1/4 mile).