California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office released a news bulletin last week announcing that The Golden State now has 48 percent more public and shared private EV chargers than the number of gas nozzles. The state’s primary energy policy and planning agency the California Energy Commission or CEC said that as of 2024, there are 178,549 EV chargers across the state versus about 120,000 gas nozzles. The vast majority of these are Level 2 chargers, with about 10 percent or 16,971 chargers capable of Level 3 fast charging.
California leads the country in EV ownership rates, so it’s a good thing that public charger access has grown exponentially over recent years. Many EV owners charge their vehicles at home on private chargers, which are not included in these numbers, but public access to reliable EV chargers will become more important as more people buy new or used electric vehicles.
The numbers don’t lie
The data shows a sizable jump in the number of publicly available and shared private EV chargers last year, with 2024 nearly doubling the number of chargers in 2023. 26 percent of all cars on California roads in 2023 were plug-in hybrids or battery electric vehicles according to Edmunds, and the CEC says there has been about 2.2 million PHEVs, FCEVs, and EVs sold in the state as of 2024. Separate from the 178,000 public chargers, the CEC estimates that more than 700,000 Level 2 chargers are currently installed in single-family homes in California. CEC Chair David Hochschild said,
“The California EV driver experience is getting better by the day. The state will continue to heavily invest in EV infrastructure, with particular emphasis in hard-to-reach areas, making these vehicles an easy choice for new car buyers.”
Newsom has vocalized his distaste for the Trump administration’s efforts to defund public charging expansion initiatives, but California recently approved its own $1.4 billion EV infrastructure investment plan to continue its impressive momentum in EV adoption. The CEC acknowledges that about half of the chargers included in the 2024 charger totals were installed prior to 2024, but new data sources just identified them.