October 16, 2025 - EV Charging Infrastructure Continues to Improve

This is the Telemetry Transportation Daily for October 16, 2025, and I'm Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research for Telemetry.  

Despite the efforts of the current administration in Washington to kill off efforts like the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, the landscape for American EV drivers is continuing to improve. During the 2024 election campaign, then-candidate Trump frequently highlighted how few DC charging stations had actually been opened at the time from the $7.5 billion in federal funding. However, the reality is, it was just a matter of timing. Installing fast charging locations requires significant efforts to find sites that have sufficient power available and, in many cases, waiting for substation upgrades from utilities. Those substation upgrades have been slowed in the past couple of years as transformers have been prioritized to supply power to data centers. 

We're now finally starting to get past those long lead times and seeing new charging facilities open to the public. In the third quarter alone, 780 new DC fast charging locations opened, and since the beginning of the year, the public charging network has grown by 19%. Reliability is also improving as older sites are getting equipment upgrades. 

With more EVs on the road than ever, utilization of chargers is also improving, helping to support the business case for investing in infrastructure. While government incentives are not ideal, they have certainly helped to overcome the chicken-and-egg problem with EVs and charging. Public infrastructure will be increasingly important in the coming years as more EVs filter into the used car market, where a larger percentage of drivers may not have home charging access. Many of these new chargers are also going into sites where drivers can take advantage of amenities like food, beverages, and shopping while they wait, with companies like Walmart, Waffle House, and others installing charging. 

Through the first nine months of 2025, more than 1.03 million EVs were sold in the U.S. and even with the expected slowdown in sales following the expiry of tax breaks, other deals and new, more affordable models will likely see the annual total get close to, if not above, the 2024 total of 1.29 million. By no means is the EV dead. 

Thanks for listening.