Study: Twice As Many Charging Stations As Flex Fuel Stations

One of the main arguments against electric vehicles are the lack of available charging stations. It’s always seemed like a silly argument to me, as anyplace with an electrical outlet can work as a charging station in a pinch. But get this; there are almost twice as many public electric charging stations as there are E85 ethanol stations. For reals.

According to a Bloomberg study, there are 4,448 public EV charging stations spread out across the U.S., serving about 16,500 “highway worthy” EV’s. They’re probably discounting the thousands of homemade EV’s, but whatever. That’s a ratio of 3.7 EV’s for every charging station.

Now compare that to the 2,468 E85 ethanol stations serving over 7.6 million flex fuel vehicles in America. That’s…a lot more cars, and a lot fewer filling stations. Most of these stations are clustered around the MidWest. Hell, there isn’t even a public fueling station available in states like my home of Connecticut.

This is one of those real head scratchers. Despite the U.S. Government having pumped billions of dollars into ethanol-supporting policies like the soon-to-expire VEETC, and despite (largely American) automakers having produced and sold over 7 million flex fuel vehicles…there just aren’t many stations that carry E85.

Meanwhile, the Obama Administration has sunk millions of tax dollars into the installation of EV charging stations and implementation of electric vehicles across the country. Their goal is to eventually finance the installation over 14,000 EV chargers. I asked the question before if the government wasn’t putting the cart before the horse with so many public charging stations compared to so few electric vehicles. And now that ethanol has fallen out of favor, there are millions of flex fuel vehicles that don’t have access to an alternative fuel.

It’s madness. Total and utter madness.

Then again, it could also just be a ploy by automakers to get around stricter emissions and fuel mileage standards by saying “Look! We make alt-fuel vehicles!” Too bad there’s nowhere to fill them up. Let’s hope the same thing doesn’t happen to EV’s.

Source: Bloomberg

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Tags: Charging Station, E85, electric vehicle, Ethanol, EV, ev charging station, flex fuel vehicles, fueling stations public charging station, number of

About the Author

Christopher DeMorro A writer and gearhead who loves all things automotive, from hybrids to HEMIs, Chris can be found wrenching or writing- or esle, he's running, because he's one of those crazy people who gets enjoyment from running insane distances.

chuck stone

Elected Officials push ideas provided by vested interests and lobbyists who give them political funding. Eliminate the campaign fund donated by corporation lobbyists and these problems will shrink. Ethanol fuel should be limited and used for gasohol and high compression engines. Flex fuel vehicles should be abandoned or modified to high compression dedicated to ethanol/methanol. The alcohol production should be moved to available new technologies that do not use corn or any other food products. Use the corn stock and other waste materials to get the alcohol. Let the private sector develop the business instead of having bureaucrats try to do it. Alcohol fuels work very well in 12 to 1 compression. See YOUTUBE “chuckstone100″ for more info.
Guest

This is a pretty silly argument as it only takes 5 minutes to “recharge” a flex fuel vehicle, and a small “station” probablt has 4+ pumps. By my math that’s 48+ vehicles an hour, compared to .5ish vehicles per hour at a charging station…
- http://www.sublimeburnout.com Christopher DeMorro
  
  @ Guest
  
  That is a very good point. However, flex fuel vehicles are sold in areas with no access to public filling stations. Sort of negates the purpose, doesn’t it?
  - Guest
    
    I would say that’s at least as true for EVs/charging stations.
    
    Fortunately, flex fuel vehicles have the option of filling up with dino in a pinch.
    - DaveD
      
      Yes, but EVs have the option of filling up at home…a majority of the time. FFVs could never do this and thus need even more stations to truly stay off dino.
      
      Sort of makes the extra EV charging stations even more significant compared to the number of e85 stations.
      - Guest
        
        True, and good point, but not relevant to the article.
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http://chuckstone100 chuck stone

Time always brings change. So the use of oil to do work will change and another energy source will come into the mainstream soon. Some of the drivers of change are fears, discoveries and new found sources of wealth.
The establishment which is making the most money will fight the hardest to stop the change so they can continue to profit on a known product that they control.

Government research is a waste of taxpayer funds since that group wants only to extend the problem so they can extend their jobs. Taxpayers just pay more taxes because that is the law. All these vested interests support the status quo as they see it to be to their best opportunity.

Methanol from coal is still most likely to surface soon since since that process could lead to new high tech that allows the coal to produce the full range of synthetic fuels for the many applications – and produce little emissions.nat the same time. Looking back to the “Project Five” report we collected from “BIG OIL”, they have a plan to move to this option soon.

In the meantime we have been looking at terrorists planning and it is clear that they plan on attacks aimed at refineries and pipelines which support “BIG OIL” interests. There are many pipeline around the World that are difficult to defend. America is about to get a new pipeline that will also be a target for the terrorists. Our energy future is not looking good. To play it safe, individuals should consider and electric vehicle for backup. We are our worst enemy because we allow “BIG OIL” to set the standards and we send them $400 Billion in federal tax breaks each year to aid them in holding us hostage.

Watch for the news on future pipeline attacks and how they affect our gasoline supply and costs at the pumps. BIG OIL just raises the price per gallon and we just pay the price they set.

If the Flex-fuel vehicle were allowed to be changed into high compression vehicle the alcohols would all give better mileage and give more horsepower. The use of alcohol fuels could become more popular with this simple change in compression, but the current laws prohibit the higher compression. What a ness we have with the BIG OIL lobbyists calling the shots for the vested interests and the politicians selling us out.

See “chuckstone100″ for a film on how successful alcohol fuels were in our California 1980-1982 – 500 vehicle experiment with several private fleets and no government intervention. BIG OIL promised me “a shot in the back”
but that never happened.

Now they have to be concerned with our new “WATER FUELED ENGINE”.