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US electric vehicle (EV) sales are already cooling off after over a year of month-over-month growth. Car makers such as Genesis and Volvo are seeing customers turn their noses up at their EV models. Both automakers are reportedly rethinking their EV strategies as a result.

Uncertainty about federal incentives isn’t helping. The Biden administration has already slashed subsidies and reversed vehicle pollution rules, with fewer purchase incentives from Washington than before. But US consumer researchers say the most important factor in whether customers will go electric may not be politics at all: it may be their own garages.

Consumer surveys have long pointed to charging as the number one concern for US EV buyers. New research from Sam Abuelsamid, vice president of market intelligence company Telemetry, looks into the factors that impact that anxiety. One solution, he points out, is right under Americans’ noses: their garages.

Home chargers get less attention than flashy DC fast charging networks, but they are the backbone of EV infrastructure. In fact, about 80 percent of EV charging sessions are done at home and use AC power. Single-family households are most likely to have this capability; a National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) study found that 42 percent of homeowners have their car parked near an outlet able to charge at 240 volts.

A change in parking behavior and more space in garages could help. That NREL research showed that garage clutter and storage were key reasons owners didn’t have their cars parked near a suitable outlet. Clearing out garages, the report says, could nearly double the number of American homes with a charger-ready outlet, to 68 percent of households. As Abuelsamid says, “90 percent of all houses can add a 240 V outlet near where cars could be parked. Parking behavior, namely whether homeowners use a private garage for parking or storage, will likely become a key factor in EV adoption.”

Clearing Out the Garage and the Path to 2035

Opening up garages for cars, not storage, could also mean more homes with charging capability. The number of US homes with an outlet close to where cars could be parked (or could be parked with some rearrangement) would grow from 31 million to over 50 million, according to Abuelsamid. Adding in homes that could put in new wiring for chargers, that figure reaches more than 72 million homes. To put that in context, Telemetry’s most optimistic EV adoption scenario only sees 33 to 57 million electric cars on US roads by 2035.

But this doesn’t translate to widespread EV readiness overnight. That same NREL study found that 33.7 million homes would need expensive electrical upgrades to support a level 2 (240-volt) charger, which typically requires at least 30 amps. These upgrades, which could range from new wiring to full panel replacements, can cost several thousand dollars.

This comes on top of the already challenging task of selling electric vehicles, where one of the main selling points is the lower total cost of ownership compared to gasoline or diesel cars. Add in the cost of charging infrastructure, and the upfront costs may approach or exceed those of a new gas-powered vehicle.

Multi-Family Housing Residents Can’t Charge

And it gets harder still for the 23 percent of Americans who live in multifamily housing: apartments, condos, townhomes, and other residential buildings with multiple dwellings. These households cannot typically add chargers at will; instead, they need to seek permission from landlords, building management, or co-op boards. Getting approval in these buildings is by no means a guarantee.

It can also cost much more. For example, adding two shared level 2 chargers at a cooperative may first require a full electrical panel upgrade, which may cost up to $5 million. Wiring may need to run from the panel to distant parking spots or garages, further increasing costs. Apartment and condo dwellers are also usually not eligible for utility or municipal charger installation subsidies.

About 1 million US EV owners currently live in multifamily housing, but only 11 percent of these have parking spots close enough to an outlet to charge their cars. States have started requiring that 20 to 25 percent of spaces in new developments be EV-ready, but Telemetry still only forecasts that between 6.7 million and 11.4 million spaces in multifamily dwellings will be charging-capable by 2035. Even these estimates may still be too high for projected demand.

Public Charging Will Fill the Gap

That’s where public charging comes in. Telemetry estimates that between 11.7 million and 14.3 million EV drivers who own homes will still use public chargers in 2035, and another 7.8 million to 8.1 million will live in multifamily residences and use public charging as well. That demand will need to be met by 523,000 to 586,000 DC fast chargers and another 1.5 million to 1.6 million level 2 chargers across the country.

That won’t be easy either. While public chargers continue to multiply, the grid may not be able to support the added demand. Power companies are already straining under the capacity needs of new AI data centers. New large-scale charging sites will compete for generation and distribution capacity, potentially raising prices and delaying permitting.

All of this could mean range anxiety for EVs in the US long after governments, car makers, and infrastructure companies think the problem is solved. The biggest barrier to EV adoption in the US may turn out not to be the price tag on the car or federal subsidies but the clutter in US garages.