Chargers for electric vehicles should be plentiful and easy to find.

Oregonians deserve nothing less because of the state requirement that all new passenger vehicles must be battery electric or plug-in hybrids by 2035.

Do we live in such a bountiful charger world? No. Are we getting there? Not fast enough.

Let’s start with a number: zero. The federal government passed a program in 2021 to build chargers across the country. Oregon received the first money in September 2022, some $7.7 million. With the state match, it comes out to $9.6 million total.

And how many chargers has the state built with those millions? Zero.

Chargers are coming, just not yet.

“About 65 DC fast charging stations are planned,” Matt Noble, a spokesman for the Oregon Department of Transportation told us in an email. “But that’s an estimate; the final count will vary based on project costs of each site. Also to note: Each station will have four charging ports, with each port serving one EV at a time.”

Those are going to be built by private contractors near the state’s major highways and interstates. This federal program funds fast chargers, too. Some EVs can get mostly charged in as little as 30 minutes on a fast charger.

The federal program is also not Oregon’s only activity on providing chargers. The state offers rebates for Level 2 charging stations, which are basically a step up from one plugged into a conventional outlet. The state rebates are available for multi-family homes, workplaces and the like. It also puts priority on rural and disadvantaged communities. The Oregon Transportation Commission approved funding for those rebates in 2022. It has gone out to about 90 projects, so far. 

There is at least one other government program of note. The federal government is chipping in $10 million through a grant program to Oregon to help fix broken charging ports or install more at sites.

Will all that work be enough? No.

There are some 3,200 public EV charging ports in Oregon, divided among 1,300 stations. That does include Tesla chargers that are not compatible with all vehicles.

ODOT did a study and concluded that by 2025 Oregon will need about five times as many public charging ports as it has now, with some assumptions about the growth in use of EVs. It will need about 40 times the number by 2035.

The state of Oregon doesn’t need to be responsible for building all of them. Some people will have them in their homes. But the state of Oregon is the one requiring people to switch to EVs or plug-in hybrids.