By RAZAK DIALLO 

Capital News Service

For Lynn Parsons, knocking on a stranger’s door was once the difference between getting home or having her car hooked onto a flatbed truck and towed away.

In 2014, the advertised 84-mile range of her Nissan Leaf was barely enough to get her from Washington, D.C., to Hagerstown.

It had just run out of juice in Potomac. She pulled into a house with multiple cars packed in the driveway and knocked on the door. Luckily the stranger at the door was willing to help. Unluckily, the house was undergoing renovations and had no power, so Parsons had to use a generator on the stranger’s front porch.

Public electric vehicle charging infrastructure was scant at the time, with fewer than 300 stations in the state and only six where Parsons lived in Bethesda, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Furthermore, Parsons lived in a condominium without off-street parking, which made overnight home charging impossible.

Today, Parsons lives in Kensington and drives the same 12-year-old Leaf, but the state of charging infrastructure is different. The median range of EVs has tripled since 2014, and there are nearly 1,700 charging stations in the state for over 150,000 registered EVs (including plug-in hybrid electric vehicles). Additionally, the state government has established widespread EV adoption as a core tenet of its climate goals.

“I’m impressed at how much [public charging] has grown and the more opportunities I have,” Parsons said.

But those opportunities are not spread evenly across the state. A data analysis of federal figures shows that 45% of all Maryland zip codes do not have a public charging station and a quarter of zip codes with stations have fewer than four ports.

In other words, the lack of a truly widespread charging network still poses a challenge to the state’s climate goals, which aim to have over 1.1 million registered EV drivers by 2030 and have all new passenger vehicles sold in the state to be zero-emission by 2035.

“[As EVs] become more affordable for people who may live in apartment buildings, or just anybody that doesn’t have access to putting in their own charging station at home, they would be dependent on public charging,” said Lanny Hartmann, an EV advocate and editor of PlugInSites.org.

Uneven growth

To hear Maryland officials tell it, the perceived lack of access to public charging is a major barrier to EV adoption.

“There is a more robust and available network of charging between home charging, workplace charging and public charging across the state than people may realize,” said Deron Lovaas, the chief of environment and sustainable transportation at the Maryland Department of Transportation.

Lovaas pointed to Maryland’s national ranking per capita as evidence of the network’s success. Maryland is just behind New York, ranking 11th with around 88 ports per 100,000 residents.

Across all stations in Maryland, there are around 5,400 EV charging ports. The majority are Level 2 ports, which provide about 25 miles of range for each hour of charging, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The other type of public charging equipment is DC Fast, providing over 100 miles of range per charging hour.

While Level 2 equipment would typically be found at a grocery store or workplace — locations where drivers will spend a lot of time — DC Fast chargers are placed along highways for quick repowering. Along with providing faster charging, DC Fast chargers are more expensive to use.

But research indicates limits on charging may exist beyond the perceptions of Marylanders. A joint study by HERE Technologies and SBD Automotive sets the national target electric vehicle to public charging port ratio at around nine vehicles per public port, the sweet spot where drivers can reliably find an unoccupied charger.

Per the study, Maryland has nearly 14 electric vehicles per port, including Level 1 ports (5 miles of range per charging hour), placing it 22nd in for the vehicles per port category but 12th in the study’s overall ranking.

U.S. DOE port counts (without Level 1 chargers) and EV registration data provided by MDOT show the ratio is closer to 27 registered EVs for each port in the state. In broad and oversimplified terms, for each public port in the state, 27 EVs are lined up to use it.

The zip code 20871, covering Clarksburg in Montgomery County, has the worst ratio, with over 1,000 EVs for each of its two ports. The 21146 zip code, representing Severna Park in Anne Arundel County, has the most EVs without a public charger in the same zip code. Both of the zip codes are relatively affluent suburbs, which usually means better access to home charging.

There’s a significant gap in charging access between counties near metropolitan centers and more rural counties. Montgomery County alone has more ports than all of the Western Maryland, Southern Maryland and Eastern Shore counties combined.

The National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program is key to partially closing this gap. The program provides federal funds to states for the improvement of their EV infrastructure. Maryland is using funds from the program to add DC fast chargers to major roadways, with community charging being a secondary goal for the program. In the first two rounds, the state has granted $19 million in federal funding to 31 projects that will install 166 DC fast chargers.

Earlier this year, the state announced the third round of funding, which will target major roads such as I-70, I-270, U.S. 301 and MD 4, among others.

Community charging

According to Lovaas, 80% of EV charging happens at home. It can be as simple as pulling into your garage and plugging your car into a standard home outlet for a few hours. Some homeowners even install Level 2 chargers.

“This is where the best kind of charging is, charging while you’re sleeping,” Parsons said.

In 2021, the National Laboratory of the Rockies, the DOE’s primary lab for energy systems, projected that with increased EV adoption, consistent residential charging access becomes more uncertain, ranging from 35% to 75% if EVs were to make up 90% of the national fleet. The study also found residential charging access being lower among low-income households, renters and multifamily units.

Getting a Level 2 charger installed requires traversing a complicated world of homeowner’s associations and local government.

“For multifamily, it’s always a battle between the assigned parking or general parking,” said Scott Wilson, the vice president of the Electric Vehicle Association of Greater Washington D.C. “So, are we going to put the charger somewhere where somebody’s assigned space and, OK, well, now it’s there, is it their property, or the HOA’s property?”

Around the time she first got her Leaf, Parsons decided to advocate for a home charger in her condominium community’s common space. The process was lengthy, mired in doubts from the homeowners association and bureaucratic red tape, but she eventually got approval to install a 110-volt outlet on a wooden post in the parking lot at the price of a few thousand dollars.

“So the bottom line is, it was a really long and arduous process to get these charging stations,” she said. “I took the time that I probably would have devoted to family and other things and worked on getting the thing pushed through.”

Since then, the state has passed legislation to make this process easier. In 2021, then-Gov. Larry Hogan signed the Electric Vehicle Recharging Equipment for Multifamily Units Act into law. The law officially treats EV charging installation like architectural modifications and prevents governing bodies, such as homeowners associations, from avoiding or delaying the process.

EV owners still must work with a licensed contractor to install the equipment, and front construction and maintenance costs.

Public chargers

One of these contractors based in Montgomery County is Robert Borkowski, owner of Plug IO. He recommends against purchasing an EV without home charging.

“Unless you are understanding that your lifestyle will change because you’ll be forced to go and charge at the public charging stations and DC flash charges,” Borkowski said.

In its 2030 National Charging Network projections, the DOE concluded “convenient and affordable charging at/near home is core to the ecosystem but must be complemented by reliable public fast charging.”

Most multifamily units in Maryland do not have a station within a quarter-mile. Half of the units with a station nearby have fewer than five ports available to them.

For drivers who live in those units, charging can’t be done passively and hours of the day have to be scheduled around making sure they have the range to get where they need to be.

Even if they opt to use the faster DC chargers, the combined cost and time investment would make a gas vehicle the better option for most. Those with the least time and money to spend are impacted worse: subsidized housing units are 25% less likely to have an EV charging station within a quarter-mile.

The state has a program that addresses this discrepancy. The Community Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment Grant Program aims to increase access to affordable charging infrastructure and emphasizes overburdened communities, minority or low-income populations that are disproportionately impacted by environmental risks.

Although in previous years the grants specified areas in those communities, this year’s program says any location in Maryland is eligible for a grant.

Erin Harty is in the minority of multifamily residents. Although her Baltimore City rowhouse requires her to park on the street, the city’s Level 2 chargers at a nearby park gave her the confidence to purchase an EV.

“It’s six blocks from my house. The park is where I walk my dog anyway,” she said.

Her routine usually looks like this: She drives to the park with her dogs in the afternoon and plugs in her car. From there, she walks her dogs around the park and then back home, leaving the car until the next morning.

Doing this a few times a week is enough for her to frequently commute between Baltimore and Northern Virginia, where she rides horses.

“What Baltimore has done is perfect,” Harty said. “In my case, they just put the chargers on a street that’s a little too busy for parking overnight.”

A ‘shaky’ goal

When asked about the state’s goal of having 1.1 million drivers in EVs by 2030, Lovaas said, “It’s fair to say that goal is shaky.”

He pointed to President Donald Trump’s administration’s blows to environmental regulation as the main culprit. In February, the Environmental Protective Agency rescinded vehicle emissions standards.

Last summer’s One Big Beautiful Bill sped up the termination of multiple clean energy tax credits, including up to $7,500 taxpayers could get from purchasing electric vehicles. By June 30, the credit for alternative refueling property, including EV chargers, is set set to expire.

Months before Congress passed that bill, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore issued an executive order that gave the Department of the Environment the power to delay penalties against manufacturers who fail to meet 2027 and 2028 EV sale goals of 43% and 51%, respectively. The act cites tariffs and reduced federal funding to the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program as chief causes.

In 2025, the Maryland Department of Agriculture Weights and Measures program announced a registration process for EV chargers involved in commercial transactions. The state hopes to ensure the accuracy of electrical meters in charging ports just as it does with gas pumps..

The registration fee was set at $150 per port, with the fee revenue going to purchasing metering equipment and staffing.

There are exceptions for chargers installed before 2023 and “private use chargers,” which must have a means to prevent public access digitally or physically.

However, the department has since pushed the registration deadline from January to July to allow time for more dialogue between itself, the EV industry and consumers.

And an emergency action requested by the Department of Agriculture would change the fee to $75 starting May 15 and expiring on Nov. 10. With an average of three ports per station in Maryland, owners could see $225 in fees per year if the emergency action is approved by the Joint Committee on Administrative, Executive and Legislative Review.

While large EV networks such as Tesla or ChargePoint can likely take the hit, smaller companies like Borkowski’s face more difficulty.

“Right now we’re still in early adoption. We don’t have clients. We don’t even have EVs to actually generate revenue to break even,” Borkowski said. “Do I scale back and let the residents suffer, meaning they’re going to be fighting for the little chargers I’m going to install?”

But for Parsons, what really matters is for the state to continue expanding its charging network so that EV drivers can get from point A to point B.

“The point is that we just need more chargers, not less opportunity,” she said. “So anything that drives the process backwards is a bad thing.”