Electric avenue: vehicle-charging stations remain scarce in North Carolina, but a surge may be nearing.

• Author: Emmett, Arielle
• Position: TAKING INVENTORY

When Randy Talley drives up the Blue Ridge Parkway, he sometimes wonders whether he'll have enough charge to make it home at night. Talley owns a Nissan Leaf, a plug-in electric vehicle with a range of about 90 miles on a single charge. It's a fun ride, and he loves zipping around town in it, especially since an electric vehicle charging station is 400 yards from his office door. But a trip to the mountains, where charging stations are scarce, involves some risk. "The mainstream will comfortably buy EVs once they know high-speed charging stations are everywhere. Right now they're not," says Talley, co-owner of Asheville's Green Sage Cafe. Between range anxiety and waiting for the next generation of electric cars to debut, Carolinians are way behind in EV purchases and adoption of charging stations. California has 174,000 electric cars on the road; North Carolina has 4,200, adding about 1,000 a year, according to Katie Drye, transportation manager of Raleigh-based nonprofit Advanced Energy. The state has about 600 public and private EV charging stations, mostly at workplaces in metro areas.

"North Carolina now ranks twelfth in charging stations, but that may be close to jumping up a few spots soon," Drye says. State and federal governments are trying to jumpstart EV adoption and charging stations by encouraging businesses, including Duke Energy Corp., Siemens AG and SAS Institute Inc., to install stations for commuting employees. The N.C. Department of Transportation provides some grants for charging stations, but private-sector companies including NRG Energy, Nissan, BMW and Tesla are the leading installers, prepping for 2017 when more affordable cars capable of longer trips are expected to debut, Drye says. Tesla, with cars capable of going as far as 260 miles per charge, has more than 500 stations nationally, including five in North Carolina. They are available only to Tesla owners.

For an average Research Triangle Park...