Electric Car Owners Face Confusion at the Charging Station

Electric vehicles are slowly catching on. Now, if only car charging stations could keep up. About 200,000 EVs, including plug-in hybrids, travel the world’s roads these days—almost half of them in the U.S. The best-selling model on the market, the Nissan Leaf, has a range of about 75 miles.

Will Beckett, a technology consultant in Aptos, Calif., who uses his Leaf mainly to run errands and visit clients, refuels in his garage with electricity generated from rooftop solar panels. “I plug in at home 95 percent of the time,” he says, noting that his cost per charge is about $1.50. Beckett, like a lot of EV drivers, is occasionally afflicted by “range anxiety,” fear that he’ll run out of juice before getting home. That’s why he had a charger installed at his mother’s home in Palo Alto.