Oregon will require a 4,404% growth in public chargers to meet the demands arising from its 2035 electric vehicle targets, according to a state-funded study to be delivered to Gov. Kate Brown next month.

The draft final report by the Oregon Transportation Electrification Infrastructure Needs Assessment (TEINA) Advisory Group shows that the state must have 155,249 public chargers — compared with about 3,500 today — to accommodate the 2.5 million EVs that policymakers expect will be registered in the state by 2035. It also outlines a set of recommendations for how and why the state should get there.

“Access to EV charging infrastructure is uniformly cited as one of the key barriers to EV adoption,” the study says. “Unlike current fueling infrastructure, electric charging infrastructure can, and should, be installed where people live, work, travel and play. Critically important to instilling confidence among Oregon’s EV drivers is a public network of EV charging along highway corridors and at travel destinations, workplaces, fleet depots and for Oregonians living in multiunit dwellings.”

Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) consultants working with the group developed three scenarios to project EV adoption rates in light of the economic slowdown stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, one each reflecting a slow recovery, a faster recovery and a business-as-usual base case that assumes little impact.

The final report relies on the base case: “Regardless of the business case, the goals will be the same,” Britta Gross, managing director of RMI’s Carbon Free Mobility Global Program, explained during a May 11 virtual meeting of the TEINA group.

Those goals were established in 2019 by Senate Bill 1044, which called for Oregon’s EVs to represent 90% of motor vehicle sales by 2035.

The study sets out to determine how many public chargers will be needed in the state to meet the required load stemming from a growing EV fleet. And while the study focuses on the “sizeable and thus critically important” light-duty vehicle (LDV) sector, it also considers charging requirements for transit/school buses, local commercial vehicles, long-haul trucks and micro-mobility transport.

The report also attempts to break down the specific public charging needs of residents across urban, rural areas and disadvantaged communities.

“Broadly speaking, and as expected, the charging needs of the urban and rural LDV sectors are an order of magnitude greater than for the other transportation sectors. But across all sectors, there is an extraordinary need for charging infrastructure growth, not only by 2035, but also a significant near-term need for growth over the next four years,” the report says.

The study’s authors estimate the state must see a five-fold increase in public chargers between 2020 and 2025 — from 3,525 to 16,926 — as registered EVs rise from 33,579 to 250,000. Urban areas will require 8,000 chargers over that time frame, compared with 5,000 for more sparsely populated rural areas, where driving distances are much longer. The state’s main travel corridors, including the north-south I-5 and east-west I-84 freeways, will require 2,000 chargers.

More than 72,000 chargers will be needed in 2030 (39,000 urban, 22,000 rural and 3,900 corridor), with EVs projected to represent half the vehicles sold in the state that year as registrations climb to 1.1 million.

By 2035, the need for LDV chargers will grow to 84,000 in urban areas, 49,000 in rural areas and 6,100 along major corridors. The study assumes that, between 2020 and 2035, other categories of vehicles will require an even higher magnitude of charger growth, including local commercial (10 to 1,836 chargers), buses (15 to 7,407), transportation network companies (TNCs) such as Lyft and Uber (0 to 216) and long-haul trucking (0 to 690).

Gross said “it’s important not to just look at what’s happening in this state” with respect to long-haul trucking. She pointed out that about one-third of heavy-duty EV miles logged in Oregon will be for freight coming out of California, which is currently working on its Advanced Clean Truck rules. Growth in heavy-duty EVs likely won’t take root until after 2025, she said.

The study also points to the need for a sharp increase in EV charging outlets in disadvantaged communities, growing from the present 100 to 600 in 2025 and 6,000 in 2030.

“We wanted to be sure that we were not implanting any bias with respect to disadvantage communities” in the study, Gross said, noting that fewer EV registrations have led to less charging infrastructure in those areas. She added that the study “upscales” the number of per capita chargers needed in those areas by 25% over non-disadvantaged communities.

Heatmaps in the report illustrate that, based on current usage patterns, charger needs will be heavily concentrated in the Oregon’s urban centers in the Willamette Valley over the next five years. Over the next 15 years, those needs will extend east and west into the state’s vast rural areas both to accommodate the EV adoption rates of both local residents and travelers, requiring those areas to host a higher per capita volume of chargers — and especially fast chargers — to compensate for distances traveled.

The TEINA study also anticipates a fundamental change in charging habits over the next decade and a half. While nearly 90% of EV charging currently occurs at home, that figure is expected to decline to 60% by 2035. Similarly, the study assumes that 90% of local commercial charging will occur at depots, falling to 50% by 2035.

Finding the ‘Charging Deserts’

The report outlines six policy recommendations for Oregon to achieve its infrastructure goals.

Key among them is for the state to develop a statewide strategy to support the rapid deployment of EV charging infrastructure, including getting more charging into homes, Rhett Lawrence, policy director with consulting firm Forth, said during the May 11 call.

The second recommendation calls for the state to ensure that all residents have equitable access to charging infrastructure, especially those living in rural and disadvantaged communities. “We need to find out where the charging deserts are,” Lawrence said.

The study’s third recommendation builds on a key goal identified during a March TEINA meeting: ensuring that drivers’ charging experience is user-friendly, convenient, safe and consistent throughout Oregon, including use of signage that makes clear the location of charging stations. (See EV Policy Recommendations Take Shape in Oregon.)

Other recommendations include:

• ensuring that EV charging offers all drivers the benefit of “lower” electric fueling costs. This could entail developing charging incentives and streamlining permitting for EV supply equipment.
• positioning utilities for rapid expansion of EV charging statewide, including make-ready investments, rate design adjustments and system resilience requirements.
• developing “foundational” policies and providing resources to ensure the greatest number of stakeholders can build and benefit from a zero-emission vehicle future. This would include providing educational and technical assistance to communities, developing a skilled workforce and providing public charging options for micro-mobility.

Within those six policy recommendations, the study has identified a handful of near-term priorities. The first would have the state create a ZEV deployment strategy with a two- to five-year focus that includes opportunities for “targeted state investment” in EV infrastructure, including in high-density areas with large numbers of employers and disadvantaged communities.

A second priority is to address equity in EV charging, including incentivizing investment in those “charging deserts” and in workplaces, particularly those owned by women and minorities.

Lawrence said the state government should also enact a campaign of leading by example by installing chargers at state building and offices. “There are plenty of opportunities for the state to show it can be done.”

Amanda Pietz, administrator of the Policy, Data and Analysis Division at the Oregon Department of Transportation, said the state should undertake a phased approach to installing DC fast chargers (DCFCs) every 15 miles along federal highways. Rural corridors between communities should also get priority for DCFCs, while rural destination sites would get slower, Level 2 chargers to encourage tourism and shopping. Urban areas should prioritize building DCFC “hubs” for residents of multiunit dwellings and TNCs, as well as develop shared “community” Level 1 and 2 sites.

Jamie Hall, senior strategist on charging and EV policy with General Motors, said the TEINA report contains “a lot of talk” about “priorities and what kind of charging we need and where” but “less discussion about how to actually make that happen in terms of funding” and business cases.

Charlie Loeb, of the Emerald Valley Electric Vehicle Association, spoke about the need to identify ways to attract investment into Oregon’s charging infrastructure “in the next five years, not in 15 years.”

“Right now, there is a lot of investment capital washing around looking for some place to go. Some of that ends up going into various electric vehicle investments — people looking to profit off the next great trend,” Loeb said. “I think the great challenge here is to figure out a way — in order to meet your ambitious goals for charging station deployment — to pull that capital forward usefully in a way to get those stations deployed soon.”

Loeb said he hopes state’s deployment strategy will be partly dedicated to “getting some economists and some businesspeople together with folks on this call that work for some of the charging networks” to determine the right incentives. “Is it suspending demand charges for a time? Is it providing the real estate to put the charging stations in? Is it something else? Is it just sort of outright subsidies? Whatever the case might be, what is that incentive that can pull forward that investment?”

Pietz said the focus of the TEINA study was on identifying infrastructure needs and translating them into recommendations.

“We stayed high-level in some places [and] started to go a little bit deeper to add a little bit more meat to the bone,” she said. “But some of the stuff you’re bringing up is what we need to figure out next and dive into, and kind of workshop a little bit more with the right folks around the table. That is part of the next phase.”