Study finds parts of country have large gaps in charging infrastructure

NEWARK, Del. (WPVI) — Electric vehicle drivers on I-95 in Delaware now have 12 new fast-charging stations to use.

DelDOT just announced Thursday morning that the bays are open at the Biden Welcome Center, which can charge a vehicle in under 20 minutes from 10% to 80%.

Multiple payment forms will be accepted, and no membership or subscription is needed.

Expect more charging stations in New Jersey and Pennsylvania as well.

A recent data study has found that parts of the country still see large gaps in charging infrastructure.

“When people are talking about EVs they’re talking about, well, I’m afraid of the charging,” said Jen Brady.

Brady is a data analyst with the non-profit Climate Central. She said for most drivers looking to go electric, the main question is, “Where can I plug in?”

“In a city like Philadelphia, I can’t plug into my house. I don’t have a garage, for example. And so public chargers are a big part of the equation,” she said.

Brady said with that in mind, she and her team decided to look at the growth of EV chargers across the country over the past decade.

Climate Central found that since 2016, public EV charging ports has grown more than 6-fold.

“There’s incentives, but there’s also a lot of cities and states that are incentivizing charger growth. Private companies are putting up chargers,” she said.

Businesses in eligible low-income or non-urban areas can receive a federal tax credit of 6% to 30% of the equipment and installation costs for an EV charging station.

Many locations in the Delaware and Lehigh valleys qualify.

And Brady said, while states like California, New York, Florida and Texas lead the way in the number of ports installed, if you account for population density, the percentage is higher in the northeast.

“You see a real concentration on the East Coast. You see Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey have a lot of chargers.”

According to the study by Climate Central, in January 2025, there were more than 195,000 public charging ports nationwide supported by nearly 70-thousand stations.

Meanwhle, Pennsylvania recently opened eight new federally-funded EV stations and Philadelphia alone has 478 public charging stations. New Jersey has five public EV chargers per 10 square miles and Delaware has three.

And expect more charging stations in our area.

Funding for them will be restored after Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and 13 other states won a lawsuit against the Trump administration, which had halted the distribution of that money.