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California Isn't Building Enough Charging Stations For Electric Cars

Publication: San Francisco Chronicle

If California wants drivers to switch to electric cars en masse over the next decade, it must prepare by building charging stations at a much faster pace — or risk drivers not having enough places to plug in away from home.

That’s the conclusion of a report released this week by the California Energy Commission, which found that charging infrastructure isn’t being built fast enough in the state to meet its lofty transportation and climate change goals.

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Assembly Member Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, carried a bill in 2018 that required the state to conduct the report. He said releasing the sobering data now shows the state how it needs to prepare to transition more drivers to clean cars.

“We are short of where we need to be,” he said.

Ting said money isn’t the only hurdle: Efforts to build charging stations have often been hindered by bureaucracy as state utility regulators have, in the past, prohibited utilities like PG&E from building stations.