If you do a search for the number of electric vehicle charging stations in the US, you'll likely get a number somewhere around 160,000. But to better understand what this means, you'll probably want to ask a few follow-up questions:

• Are these individual charging ports (for a single vehicle) or are these stations (locations with multiple charging ports)?

• How many of these chargers are private versus publicly-accessible?

• And how many of these are DC fast, versus just level 2? Level 2 is what most people have at home (I think), whereas DC charging is what you need if you're stopping on the side of the road and need to supercharge your car in 20-30 minutes.

Usually the biggest fear with EVs is range anxiety. We have come to expect that we'll be able to find a gas station when we need it, but, for the most part, we don't yet feel that way about EV charging stations.

So for this concern, the more precise question would be: How many publicly-accessible DC-fast charging stations are there in the US? This is the filter that gives you stations that would be most comparable to how gas stations function today.

The answer, according to the US Department of Energy, is about 10,597 stations and 44,160 charging ports. And according to Bloomberg Green, this puts the US on track to have public fast-charging sites outnumber gas stations in about 8 years.

Of course, it's probably safe to assume that the pace of EV adoption will only increase. And that means that this flip could happen well before 8 years. In my mind, that's soon.

If you do a search for the number of electric vehicle charging stations in the US, you'll likely get a number somewhere around 160,000. But to better understand what this means, you'll probably want to ask a few follow-up questions:

• Are these individual charging ports (for a single vehicle) or are these stations (locations with multiple charging ports)?

• How many of these chargers are private versus publicly-accessible?

• And how many of these are DC fast, versus just level 2? Level 2 is what most people have at home (I think), whereas DC charging is what you need if you're stopping on the side of the road and need to supercharge your car in 20-30 minutes.

Usually the biggest fear with EVs is range anxiety. We have come to expect that we'll be able to find a gas station when we need it, but, for the most part, we don't yet feel that way about EV charging stations.

So for this concern, the more precise question would be: How many publicly-accessible DC-fast charging stations are there in the US? This is the filter that gives you stations that would be most comparable to how gas stations function today.

The answer, according to the US Department of Energy, is about 10,597 stations and 44,160 charging ports. And according to Bloomberg Green, this puts the US on track to have public fast-charging sites outnumber gas stations in about 8 years.

Of course, it's probably safe to assume that the pace of EV adoption will only increase. And that means that this flip could happen well before 8 years. In my mind, that's soon.