Austin has recently surpassed Dallas and Houston as the Texas city with the most electric vehicles, and it is working hard to make sure it keeps that badge of honor.
In order to keep up with the ever increasing numbers of electric cars on the road, the city’s co-op electricity provider, Austin Energy, is continuing to add EV charging stations in and around the city to be used to top-off commuters who may have failed to get a complete charge at their home. Currently, there are over 650 public charging stations, with new ones coming online every week.
A new initiative for the city is to add state of the art DC Fast charging stations, which can charge a vehicle in 5-20 minutes, as opposed to several hours for a standard charging station. The city has only one of these fast charging stations at the moment, located on Electric Drive, formerly West Second Street. 10 more will be rolled out in 2019, and 24 more by 2021. At a cost of $150,000 for each DC Fast charger, the commitment to Austin’s EV future is evident.
This push to increase the infrastructure for public charging of electric vehicles is needed, as The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) has recently published a report forecasting 1.6 million EVs on Texas roads by 2031. That would mean 20% of all passenger vehicles in Texas will be electric, which translates into 320,000 in Austin.