The number of electric vehicles in Philadelphia continues to climb, but electric chargers are not following along, writes Meir Rinde for Billy Penn at WHYY.

“These chargers are few and far between outside of Center City,” said Councilmember Nina Ahmad, author of a city law mandating maintenance of charging stations.

As of January, Philadelphia had 6,615 all-electric vehicles and 3,149 plug-in hybrids registered in the city. That represents 1.3 percent of the city’s almost 767,000 registered vehicles. The numbers do not include cars driven by the commuters and visitors who drive into Philadelphia every day.

Meanwhile, the city only has 145 publicly accessible charging stations with 378 charging ports. The majority have standard Level 2 chargers, which can take up to eight hours to fully charge a vehicle. Only some of them have Level 3 or DC Fast chargers, which usually take an hour or less to charge a car.

While the federal government is pouring billions of dollars into EV infrastructure nationwide, it is doing so slowly. Currently, the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure is mainly subsidizing chargers along highways outside of Philadelphia.

There has been only one approved location in the city, which will start construction sometime next year.

Read more about the lack of accessible chargers in Philadelphia in Billy Penn at WHYY.

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