It’s electric! More EVs rolling through city means need for more travel juice

More than 800 state-registered Maricopa electric vehicle owners are getting a real charge out of their green wheels. That’s a record high, according to the Motor Vehicle Division.

Some passing through the city want to stop, charge up and eat or shop while they wait. No such place exists — yet.

But the EV industry is charging into Pinal County at a shocking pace.

‘Detroit of the Southwest’
Pinal County’s mammoth Lucid Motors manufacturing plant employs many from Maricopa and is based on Thornton Road in Casa Grande.

Then there’s a multibillion-dollar EV battery plant set to open in 2026 in Queen Creek’s industrial leg in the county.

To fill the growing EV-related manufacturing demand for workers, Maricopa Unified School District formed a partnership with the Central Arizona Valley Institute of Technology to expand its Career Technical Education Program, adding EV technology. Students will build their own EV as part of their trade education.

CAVIT is a public school district in Coolidge partners with 17 Arizona high schools, including Maricopa and Desert Sunrise.

The EV-olution is bound to inject a big jolt into the local economy, slowly shaping Pinal County as “the EV Detroit of the Southwest,” as experts in the industry have put it.

Dead batteries
Despite the rise of EV ownership in Maricopa, the city still lags on EV infrastructure with the closest two Tesla supercharger stations each 24 miles away in Casa Grande and Chandler.

While there are slow-charging spaces at Maricopa’s Copper Sky Recreation Area parking lot, fronting the recreation complex, and La Quinta Inn & Suites next door, four disconnected chargers can be found at the city-owned Estrella Gin building on Loma Road.

InMaricopa photographed gas-guzzling trucks, including one city-issued vehicle, using the spaces, and reporters sent the photos to city spokesperson Monica Williams, inquiring why non-EVs were using them.

“The EV chargers identified in the photos were installed by the owner of the Estrella Gin property for private use,” Williams said. “The use of these EV chargers would be at the city’s expense, so a decision was made to turn them off for the time being. Should the City of Maricopa’s fleet expand to include additional EVs, they may be returned to a working status. To avoid further confusion, we will add proper signage to signal they are non-operational.”

Williams said the city has no say in how Arizona Department of Transportation will spend part of more than $76 million of National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure funds in Maricopa to support a charging station on State Route 347.

EV owners weigh in
But some Maricopa residents believe the city should have a say in deciding how the state spends NEVI dollars close to home.

“It’s time for local governments and private enterprises to recognize this need and act,” said Sorrento Park resident Justin Craig, a Nissan Leaf owner. “Maricopa can lead the way, making electric travel not just feasible but effortless and worry-free.”

Craig’s Leaf tops out at a 150-mile range per charge, which creates “range anxiety” because of the lack of Level 3 supercharger stations that can fully charge such a vehicle in about a half-hour.

“This is impractical for long-distance travel or emergencies,” Craig said.
The options are an overnight charger using a 220-volt setup, or Level 2 in EV parlance. The slowest of EV chargers run on 120 volts at home and can take 60 hours to fully charge a vehicle with a 250-mile range.

Consider people who live in the hundreds of new five-story apartment units changing the Maricopa skyline. They don’t have a garage or driveway with a power outlet to plug in an EV.

“They’re going to need a place to charge up,” said Jeff Lockerman, who is the only Tesla Cybertruck owner in Maricopa. He said he does not have range anxiety because his Cybertruck has a range of 340 miles, one that allows him to comfortably charge up at home and drive distances that rival many gas-driven vehicles.

Lockerman agrees there are not nearly enough EV fast chargers in Maricopa to meet the growing need.

Help is on the way
It won’t be immediate, but help is on the way, said one ADOT representative.

“ADOT expects to advertise for a location to be determined along State Route 347 in early 2025, with projects awarded in 2025,” said ADOT spokesperson Garin Groff. “The award process includes determining the station location.”

Because SR 347 runs north and south through Maricopa, the supercharger station could be located within the city limits.

ADOT’s goal is to dot the entire state with superchargers, with no more than 50 miles between them.

Survey says…
A recent InMaricopa poll found most residents were against building more EV charging stations in the city. About 56% opposed, compared to 44% in favor of more EV charging stations in the city.

“Let’s not encourage others to pass through Maricopa,” said Homestead resident Cheryl Green, responding to the unscientific poll that measures the intensity of feeling on a particular issue.

“We don’t need to support this sort of nonsense,” Rancho El Dorado resident Bryan Moore responded.

Vanessa Vazquez Binkley, Rancho El Dorado, said she did not see the need for more charging stations because most people charge at home.

Others supported it.

“Keep ahead of the curve,” offered The Villages resident Paul Wignall.

The future of EV charging
Elaina Farnsworth, CEO of SkillFusion, an EV software company in Rochester, Mich., talked in a recent interview with InMaricopa about how the need for innovative EV charging station software is becoming a game-changer, optimizing user experience and integrating with broader smart-city initiatives.

“It’s phenomenal, but we have ways to go,” Farnsworth said of tech innovation that is making EVs and EV charging more seamless. “We are in a wonderful time of opportunity now.”

She said the Biden White House is a driving force behind EV technological advancements.
“We’re fortunate in that the current administration has done a lot of investment through the NEVI program,” she said, referring to dollars earmarked for SR 347.

NEVI has allocated $76.5 million to the state of Arizona, dispersing those dollars first to Arizona’s major highway arteries, such as Interstates 17 and 10, then to secondary highways like SR 347.

Tesla still has the largest share of charging stations because the company started building charging infrastructure before it built cars, Farnsworth said.

“New technology will allow the 1,000-mile range EVs,” she predicted. “In the newer vehicles you’ll see more with energy management. Your car’s going to be talking to the charging station.”

Charging for a charge
The commercial side is making great advances as well.

George Orona, owner of Orona Electrical Contractors serving Maricopa, said his company has sold and installed EV wall chargers to about 80 homes over the past year in Pinal County.

“We don’t even promote it,” Orona said. “Actually, a majority of our contracts are with Meritage Homes. I know a lot of people are buying them now.”

Orona owns a Tesla Model 3 and installed his own home EV wall-charging system.

Phoenix has 769 public charging station ports, according to Charge Hub. More than 80% of the ports are Level 2 chargers and a quarter offer free EV charging. Level 2 can charge most EVs in about eight hours.

In Phoenix, there’s a public charging port for every 2,100 people. Maricopa has just six ports, one for every 12,000 people.

Farnsworth said Tesla is aligning with other EV manufacturers to make its supercharger stations accessible to all EVs.

Seeing that people need a place to eat and stretch their legs near Tesla supercharger stations, the company has a business agreement with Buc-ee’s country stores in Texas, locating its charging stations a burger’s throw from the popular eateries. That deal could expand to other states, including Arizona, where the first Buc-ee’s is going up in the West Valley.

Tesla also plans to open a 24-hour diner and drive-in movie theater on the final link of old Route 66 in Hollywood.

Costco has some stores with fast charger spaces, none of which are in Arizona, but it’s a possibility statewide stores will get them depending on the success of the discount warehouse’s initiative.

Do EV energy sources pollute?

Some argue EVs are merely running off power generated by polluting energy sources. To some extent, that’s true, but most energy sources in our state leave little or no carbon footprint.

Arizona’s electrical energy-generation mix last year was 47% natural gas, 28% nuclear, 11% coal, 7% solar, 5% hydroelectric, 2% wind and 0.2% biomass.

Further development of solar farms is reducing Arizona’s power-generating carbon footprint.

Construction of the CO Bar Solar plant began last year on 2,400 acres of private land northwest of Flagstaff. Upon completion this year, it will offset 1 billion pounds of carbon dioxide each year while generating power for 80,000 Arizona homes.

It will be Arizona’s largest solar farm.

The project is designed to help the Salt River Project meet its carbon-reduction goals. It expects nearly half of the energy it provides to come from carbon-free resources and reach 2,025 megawatts of solar by next year. That is enough to generate power to more than 1.5 million homes.

Solar farms are being built or already exist in Pinal County.

The 300-megawatt Box Canyon solar project near Florence is expected to become operational next year.

Also to consider is many EV owners have solar arrays on their home rooftops that generate an additional layer of clean energy to their homes and EVs.

Farnsworth believes new home and commercial solar systems, and additional public infrastructure, will make EV ownership more seamless and accepted among automotive market consumers.

Said Farnsworth: “Billions of dollars will be coming down to make the infrastructure better.”

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