EV charger rollout sputters as power, permits stall growth
The gist
America’s EV charger boom is hitting a major speed bump, as ambitious expansion plans run headlong into power grid delays and permit gridlock.
What to know
- EVgo aims to end 2026 with 5,000 DC fast-charging stalls and will ramp up with 3,000–5,000 new stalls each year, eyeing a 750 kW charger launch in 2027.
- San Francisco’s curbside charging effort has managed just two posts in nearly a year, with citywide permitting slowing progress to a crawl.
- California’s EV infrastructure buildout is falling behind, at just 66% of this year’s target even as hundreds of Walmart and Tesla sites are still in the works.
Next-Gen Chargers in Sight
EVgo is doubling down on rapid expansion and ultra-fast 750 kW chargers, aiming to leapfrog rivals with a two-year head start on next-generation infrastructure.
The market’s expansion case is clearest in operator plans that still run into the thousands. In an October interview, EVgo said the “first sites will certainly be new sites” and that “all of this happens right now in 2027,” adding, “certainly, uh, we would start to see these next year, uh, getting deployed,” while CEO Bedar Khan said EVgo should end this year with about 5,000 DC fast-charging stalls in the ground and then “plans to install somewhere between 3 to 5,000 charging stalls per year” starting next year. The author notes EVgo is “currently the fourth largest DC fast charging network in the country” and “they’re not slowing down,” predicting that by “the end of the decade, they could easily have 15,000 plus DC fast” chargers.
That buildout is not just about adding more plugs; it also points to a higher-powered next phase of the network. The interview headline itself was “EVgo Plans 2027 Launch of Next-Gen 750 kW Chargers,” and EVgo said the program has been in development for two years, with CEO Botter Conn saying the company had “been sort of in in works for 2 years building this,” while another October report said EVgo is working on “their next generation DC fast charger” for 2027 and, as the country’s fourth-largest DC fast network, “they’re not slowing down.”
Permitting Gridlock Stalls Progress
San Francisco’s ambitious curbside charging plans are paralyzed by red tape, with just two chargers installed in a year and city leaders questioning why deployment remains painfully slow.
Recent data point to a market where deployment is slowing in visible ways even as announced expansion remains alive. In San Francisco, the Analysis reported that in March the city’s “first curbside chargers” were “still the only ones the city had,” with “two hip-height silvery posts” sitting in the ground for nearly a year despite the mayor’s broader goal, and Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman pressed staff on “why they planned to take an additional four years to install just 100 plugs,” asking, “Can you talk more about why this is hard and what’s taking so long?” The article notes that in 2021 California granted “automatic permit approvals if cities failed to act within 20 business days for small sites,” but when a lawmaker proposed extending the same rules to the “public
That pattern also shows up in broader deployment tracking: the Explainer said “we're seeing growth in the infrastructure, but not at the same speed as last year,” with the market only “about at 66% of our overall infrastructure estimate for this year.” Yet the same source argued this is a timing bottleneck, not a retreat, noting Walmart “were down in installed sites” over the prior two months “because they have hundreds of sites right now under construction,” including “129 sites” in permitting or construction, roughly “1,200” chargers tied to those locations, plus “another 900 sites Tesla has.”