As electric vehicles gain traction in cities, I’ve been thinking about their potential in rural and semi-urban areas. While the environmental benefits are clear, limited charging infrastructure and lack of awareness pose major challenges. What do you think needs to change to make EVs more viable outside metro regions?

Hello,

I think there's less problem adopting an EV in a rural area than in a city because it's more often possible to charge at home.

And if the user has to make a long journey, they won't have any trouble finding a charging station either.

I live in the countryside, I've had an EV for 26 months, and I've traveled 36,000 km without any problems, charging practically at home.

 

The problem remains the same in cities or rural areas, there is a need for a few terminals for those who cannot charge at home.

Hello,

I agree with Marcs. Rural area is not a problem, even you can’t charge at home, most of supermarket where you have to go every weeks permit a charge during your shopping.

Good choice

It depends on what you mean by "rural areas".

 

In the "real" countryside, most people tend to live in individual housing, so charging at home for cheap shall not be an issue. Funds required to purchase an EV will probably be a much bigger problem - income is generaly much lower in rural areas.

 

On the other hand, the situation in small cities of rural areas may be more difficult for EV adoption. I am living in such a little city (a former industrial area whose economy, like many others, has never recovered from the massive industrial collapse and industrial employement bleed of the 90s-2000s), in a collective building whithout private parking lot :  everyone parks its car down in the street, so no way to charge an EV at home. There are a lot of auto drivers in this situation in the area  :  many collective buildings have been edificated during the post-war industrial boom - say in the 50s to 70s -, and in those days it was usual to let people park in the public alleys down the buildings (needless to say there were also much less cars than today). And this is clearly a real drawback for transition to EV since public charging infrastructures are really scarce, far away from the working-class living areas, and quite expensive - around 40 to 50cts per kWh, so not that much cheaper than the équivalent of gas burnt by an economic diesel car (there are a lot of old diesel cars here)  -.

 

Contrary to what is very often said, charging once a week at the supermarket is far from ideal, since in a typical half-an-hour weekly shopping you will charge only a few kW on an AC plug - way not enough for a week of home-to-work driving -, and on a 50kW or more DC charger, the biggest issue is the high cost. In fact, charging an EV the same way as filling the gas tank of thermal engine car is in many situation simply not possible, due to the limited autonomy of affordable EVs (not everyone can buy a TM3 LR or an EV6) requiring sometimes multiple charging sessions every week (all the more in my area where long daily commuting is quite common) and the limited charging power of batteries (think that a gas station delivering 30l every minute is équivalent of a 5 to 6MW DC charger...).

 

Closest affordable charging stations - Ionity, Tesla, Iecharge... - are between 60 and 100km away - the marketing départements of these companies have probably concluded (probably with good reasons) that my area is too poor and too far away from large transit roads and work/vacation destinations to be worth considering the installation of their high-power charging apparatus.

 

Due to the economic and employement structure of the area - nearly no office jobs nor medium /large size companies, lots of small and very small family businesses in traditional domains such as agriculture, forest, mountain and manufacturing -, the amount of employees able to charge at work is also very limited.

 

Interestingly enough, although a very large proportion of the local active population is public servant or work in public / parapublic state-owned structures - townhall, schools, hospital, social services, public administration and so on -, none of them offer yet any charging plug for their employees...

 

So yes, unfortunately, long way to go in my little rural hometown before every driver can switch to EV.

Modifié mai 30, 20251 a par Polaris