In the back of a Walmart parking lot on the city’s Northeast Side sits a row of eight electric vehicle chargers.
Looking a little like skinny white gas pumps with flashing digital touch screens, these are some of the only “fast chargers” in San Antonio.
Also known as Level III chargers, fast chargers can top off an EV within an hour or two compared to Level II chargers — the standard for most homes and offices — which can take four to 10 hours.
That’s why Kerrville resident Chao Hsui Tu always stops at this bank of chargers when he has to come to San Antonio, he told the San Antonio Report last week. Walking away from his 2021 pine green electric Mini Cooper and into the Walmart, Tu said there are few fast chargers in the city.
“It’s not a convenient location, but I don’t want to be stuck in one place for hours and this one only takes an hour or less,” he said, waving a hand to where his car was plugged in.
While San Antonio has roughly 250 public EV charging stations, just 30 of those, in eight locations, are fast chargers, according to Charge Hub. And some of those are only for Teslas. All of them are located on the city’s North Side.
The federal government has a goal to make half of all new vehicles sold zero-emission vehicles by 2030. A lack of adequate charging infrastructure in the U.S. is considered the No. 1 barrier to that goal. To help break that barrier down, the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act included $7.5 billion in new funding for EV charging infrastructure, of which $5 billion will go to states.
Some of that money will eventually flow to the Alamo Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, which will develop a plan to spend it.
But if San Antonio wants to speed up the adoption of EVs, it will need to ramp up the rate at which it rolls out advanced EV infrastructure, said Alan Montemayor, chairman of the Alamo Sierra Club — and that means Level III chargers.
“We definitely need more fast chargers for people transitting through; the existing ones are 100 miles apart along I-35 and that’s too far for most folks,” he said. “Also where they are located today is not convenient for most people because [they’re] not along a lot of the major arteries. We will need to see multiple organizations collaborate to make it happen.”
No single entity responsible
As of today, there are about 15,000 EVs registered in Bexar County, and about 200,000 in total across Texas. While a recent Axios report found that San Antonio is not adopting EVs as quickly as some other major U.S. cities, San Antonio saw its greatest year-over-year EV sales growth in 2022.
While this growth increases the need for more public fast charging stations, the challenges are many.
For one thing, there is no single entity responsible for making sure San Antonio has enough fast chargers to meet demand. The city, CPS Energy, AAMPO and private industry all have a role to play.
Cost is another factor. The price tag for Level II chargers is up to $6,500 per unit, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, while Level III chargers can run as high as $40,000. Installation can double each of those costs.
“Level III requires a lot more infrastructure behind it because you’re basically charging at a much higher voltage,” said Jonathan Tijerina, CPS Energy’s vice president of enterprise risk and development.
Various shortages of equipment, labor, precious metals and microchips have added to the challenge. Each new Level III charger must also be approved by CPS Energy, to ensure they won’t overload the grid.
“The good news is, none of that’s happening overnight,” said Tijerina.
That may not be good news for EV drivers, but Tijerina and other officials described a “chicken or egg” situation around the development of EV infrastructure.
“Do you wait for the mass production of EV cars to come? Or do you build out the infrastructure and then the cars will come?” Tijerina said.
Some private companies are not waiting, thanks in part to the availability of federal funding. Earlier this month, Walmart announced plans to build a fast charger network outside its stores across the country. And Tesla has said it is working to make a portion of its “supercharger” network available to other car brands.
Equitable access to infrastructure
Encouraging greater EV adoption is a major goal of the City of San Antonio; policies encouraging adoption can be found in its Climate Action and Adaptation Plan, SA Tomorrow Sustainability Plan and Ozone Attainment Master Plan.
In 2021, the city contracted with Blink Charging to build 202 Level II charging stations and three fast charging stations in San Antonio. So far, about 30 Level II stations have been built, said Julia Murphy, the city’s deputy chief sustainability officer.
She referred questions about Level III chargers to CPS Energy.
Tijerina said CPS Energy has just begun discussions around building fast chargers. The utility has already installed roughly 100 Level II charging stations around San Antonio, and has several incentive programs to encourage drivers to go electric, including a flat-rate pilot program for unlimited access to its charging stations.
But having so many entities adding chargers without a cohesive plan comes with risks, said Tom “Smitty” Smith, the executive director of the Texas Electric Transportation Alliance.
“Just like [with] broadband, unless we develop policies to make sure this is universal, we’re going to have a situation where about a third of Texans — those who live in rural areas, or in less affluent urban areas — don’t have access to this infrastructure.”
Smith said it would be up to the state’s regional MPO’s to make sure EV infrastructure is available to all residents.
Those agencies will receive federal money through TxDOT, which recently developed a statewide plan for EV infrastructure. That plan, which relies on $408 million in federal funding, includes the installation of Level III chargers at 50-mile intervals along Texas highways to create a reliable interstate network for EV drivers.
As part of the plan, the Alamo Area MPO is slated to receive $18.6 million from federal and private dollars for EV infrastructure as well as $4.6 million for five years of maintenance. The private money will come from “third parties” which will fund “the non-federal share” of the plan, according to TxDOT.
AAMPO has yet to develop specifics about how that money will be used, said Transportation Planning Program Manager Clifton Hall. He said MPO staff is waiting on further guidance from TxDOT.
“I think we’ll get to put kind of our regional local touch on it eventually,” he said. “But for now, we’re just kind of waiting on their guidance to see how they want us to handle it and what process they want to use.”
CPS Energy is a financial supporter of the San Antonio Report. For a full list of business members, click here.
