Many electric vehicle owners charge their cars overnight at home.

But to take an EV on a road trip, they need places to quickly power up along the way. Until recently, those could be hard to find.

Killen: “What we’re trying to address – the two major barriers of EV avoidance today are not enough chargers that I see and it’s not fast enough.”

Wayne Killen is with Electrify America. It’s a subsidiary of Volkswagen that was created as part of a settlement after the company was caught cheating on emissions testing. VW agreed to spend two billion dollars over 10 years on EV charging infrastructure, education, and access in the U.S.

So at Walmarts, Targets, and other businesses along highways, Electrify America is installing EV chargers where drivers can pay to power up. Killen says they work far faster than older technology.

Killen: “You’re talking about 20 miles of range per minute – so 10 minutes of charging, 200 miles of range – that is now approaching gasoline refueling speeds.”

The company’s on track to install chargers at almost 500 sites by the end of the year.

It’s a start toward building the kind of charging network that will help even road-trippers get out of their gas-guzzling cars and into EVs.

Reporting credit: Sarah Kennedy/ChavoBart Digital Media.