Showrooms are quieter, yet the plugs keep multiplying. Electric-vehicle sales have cooled off, but EV charging keeps getting better anyway, according to a Wall Street Journal report published Oct. 11. It finds public chargers still going up at a steady clip, even as the industry faces a tough road to long-term profitability.
Call it a split-screen economy. Here is what the available data says, and what it does not.
Why EV Charging Kept Growing While Sales Slid
The slump is real. Cox Automotive’s third-quarter forecast update says the EV sales outlook bottomed out at the start of the year as incentives fell away. It also says dealer sentiment on EVs has improved for a second straight quarter. Automakers are feeling the squeeze, too: Aston Martin just pushed back its first EV until at least 2033.
The network did not wait for buyers to catch up. The Washington Post reported in January that the US fast-charging network grew more than 30% in 2025, even as sales slumped. Most of that growth came from private operators, not from government programs. In short, EV charging expanded because companies bet on the long game.
Reliability Is the Real Upgrade for Public Chargers
A plug that doesn’t work is just a very expensive lawn ornament. This is where the improvement is easiest to feel.
J.D. Power’s 2025 study found that 14% of public-charging visits failed to result in a charge. That is down from 19% in 2024 and the lowest in four years. Still, roughly one in seven visits ending in failure is not exactly a victory lap.
Newer numbers point the same way. According to data from Paren, most states now see charger reliability of 90% to 95%. A year earlier, the range was roughly 85% to 92%.
Bigger Sites, New Players
Operators are also building differently. Paren counted 617 new fast-charging stations in the first quarter of 2026, delivering 3,387 ports. A year earlier it was 721 stations and 3,331 ports. In other words, operators built fewer sites but added more plugs at each one.
Tesla’s dominance is slipping slightly, too. Ionna accounted for 8.2% of new ports in that quarter and Red E for 7.8%. Average utilization was 15.6%, just below a 16.5% peak in late 2025. More competition in electric vehicle charging should help drivers, even if it squeezes margins.
Here’s the Thing: Better EV Chargers Won’t Pay for Themselves
For drivers, the takeaway is simple. Range anxiety has always been about the fear of pulling up to a dead charger with a nearly empty battery. That fear is shrinking. It also helps that Tesla’s Powershare home backup shows how the car itself keeps getting more useful.
For the companies building the network, the picture is murkier. The WSJ’s own subhead flags a hard road to long-term profitability. When utilization sits around 16% and sales are down, who exactly is paying for all those 400-kilowatt cabinets? Operators have not yet answered that question publicly.
Gaps also remain. Metro areas are better served than rural ones. At the end of 2025, the US had over 81,000 charging stations and more than 250,000 ports. Yet only about 56 to 57 stations funded by the federal NEVI program were operating across 15 states, according to GreenCars. Officials paused that program and then relaunched it, and several states are moving ahead again. Rural EV charging, in particular, still lags the cities.
So the chargers are getting better, and they are not waiting for the sales rebound. Can the businesses behind them last as long as the wait?
