28 New Fast EV Charging Stalls Launched In San Diego

Support CleanTechnica’s work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe.

EVgo just opened a new EV fast charger hub in San Diego with 28 charging stalls. They add to the over 1,200 new chargers installed by the same company last year.

Nationwide, EVgo has over 5,000 fast EV chargers in operation. Going back to San Diego for a moment, 28 new fast charging stalls might not seem like a lot, but this is a significant increase because the city of San Diego has just about 290 fast chargers, according to PlugShare. The total number of public EV chargers in San Diego is around 2,700–2,800.

The area where the new chargers are is not far from Ocean Beach, and a little further away is Mission Beach. Within walking distance to the new chargers is a Wendy’s restaurant, a Vons grocery store, and a Sprouts grocery store. So, there are options for food and beverages and restrooms.

Fast chargers provide charges multiple times faster than the public chargers that are typically available, which are Level 2 stations providing about 30–40 miles per charge. The new EVgo location may be a good one because Ocean Beach can receive hundreds of thousands of visitors per year and some of them will be driving electric vehicles.

Zooming out a bit, the city of San Diego had over 30 million visitors in one year, and undoubtedly a portion of them drove there in electric vehicles or they rented EVs while there. California is easily the US state with the largest number of electric vehicles and it has the most public EV chargers.

The Golden State may also be running entirely on clean electricity by 2045. “That matters because California is legally required to run on 100% clean electricity by 2045 — while also electrifying cars, homes, and facing surging demand from energy-hungry data centers fueling the rise of artificial intelligence.”

Haters and critics sometimes try to wrongly claim that electric vehicles, “run on coal,” which is impossible because they operate using electricity not burning coal. Ssome electric vehicles are charged with electricity from a variety of sources, including fossil fuels. However, grids are getting cleaner as more and more renewables are added, especially California grids. Some homeowners have their own solar power and charge their EVs with their own clean electricity as well.

Additionally, electric vehicles are far more energy efficient than gas and diesel vehicles.