EV Demand, Make-Ready, and the Economics After 30C

Demand. Your demand signal is the cumulative number of EVs registered in your catchment area, the installed parc◆, not the national quarterly sales print. Confusing the two produces both kinds of capital error: overbuilding during hype and freezing during slowdowns.

Start with the bad print, because a reference you can trust does not round it away. U.S. battery-electric sales fell 27.3% year over year in the first quarter of 2026 and held at 5.8% of new-vehicle sales in the second. Total plug-in share sits near 7.3%. The federal charging-infrastructure credit is gone, the consumer credit before it, and conventional hybrids◆, which never touch your electrical panel, just posted a record 16% share. That is the American market as it is, and any vendor projection built on the 2023 curve should be read accordingly.

Now the wider frame. Globally, one in four new cars sold in 2025 was a plug-in; the IEA projects 28% for 2026. China is moving toward 60%, Europe toward a third. The technology question is settled everywhere except here. What varies in the United States is pace and policy, not direction. Plan for a slower American curve. Do not plan for a reversal no market on earth is exhibiting.

And here is the sentence that makes the demand thesis downturn-proof: every EV sold in the past decade is still on the road and still needs somewhere to charge. Quarterly sales share can fall 27% while the number of vehicles hunting for a stall in your garage keeps rising, because the parc only accumulates. California alone passed 2.5 million cumulative ZEV sales in January 2026. A garage in Sacramento and a garage in Wichita are not in the same market and should not read the same headlines.

MARGIN NOTE The practical method: pull ZEV registration counts for your county or ZIP from your state DMV or energy office, trend them over three years, and size against section 7.8's dwell analysis. Two data series replace every national forecast a vendor will ever show you.

WHERE THE EVIDENCE ENDS How fast the U.S. curve re-steepens (with subsidy restoration, price parity, or neither) is genuinely unknown, and the Council does not pretend otherwise. What the parc data supports is narrower and sufficient: demand for charging at parking facilities rises even through sales downturns, at a pace your local registrations will tell you and national coverage will not. This section's figures carry an August 2026 verification date and will be revised as the market moves. That is what a living edition is for.

Electrical Infrastructure. The charger is the cheapest part. Conduit, panel capacity, and utility service are where the money and the schedule live, and the industry's vocabulary says so: the infrastructure between the transformer and the stall is called the make-ready◆, and it routinely costs more than every charger it will ever serve.

The code vocabulary grades the commitment. EV-Capable◆ means conduit and panel capacity installed, wires and equipment deferred; EV-Ready◆ adds the circuit and outlet; EV-Installed◆ is the working charger. The cost ratio between rungs is the whole argument: capable-at-construction costs a fraction of the identical capability as a retrofit, because the expensive part of retrofit is not the equipment but the trenching, coring, and closed stalls required to reach it. This is why section 7.17 argues codes should mandate the bottom rung and let demand climb the ladder.

Capacity is the scarcest resource in the building, so spend it deliberately. An ALMS◆ shares a fixed service across more ports and shaves the demand charges◆ that a handful of unmanaged chargers can trigger; where on-site solar exists, generation offsets the same peaks from the other side of the meter. Oversize the conduit, not the chargers. Empty raceway is the cheapest future-proofing ever poured into concrete.

MARGIN NOTE Sequence the utility first. Service upgrades run on the utility's calendar, not the project's, and make-ready funding programs, where they exist, typically require application before construction. The five-figure retrofit mistake of section 7.12 is usually a sequencing mistake first.

The Economics After 30C. The federal charging-infrastructure tax credit, Section 30C◆, expired for property placed in service after June 30, 2026. There is no phase-down and no grandfathering by purchase date: what governs is when the equipment is energized, not when it was ordered or paid for. A charger invoiced in May and commissioned in July receives nothing.

This is not a footnote to the economics; it inverts them. For a decade, a credit covering 30% of qualified installation costs quietly absorbed the price of mediocre procurement: the oversized unit, the proprietary platform, the service contract nobody read. That cushion is gone. Every avoidable demand charge◆, switching cost, and truck roll now comes straight out of the owner's pocket, which means the diligence this chapter teaches was always good practice and is now the entire margin. The vendor-selection decision has never mattered more, precisely because the government stopped paying for the bad ones.

What survives the federal exit is a patchwork: state rebate programs, utility make-ready◆ funding, and commercial EV rate structures. These vary by state, by utility, and by program year, and that variability is itself a selection criterion. A vendor who can name your utility's make-ready program, its current funding cycle, and its interconnection queue is demonstrating competence; one who leads with a tax credit that no longer exists is demonstrating something else.

MARGIN NOTE Check the utility before the design. Make-ready programs frequently fund the most expensive segment of the project (the infrastructure between the transformer and the stall) but only when the application precedes construction. Sequencing the utility conversation after design is the most common five-figure mistake in retrofit charging.

Keep the denominator honest. A charging stall sells two to five dollars of electricity against a daily parking transaction worth twenty-eight. The charger is not a fuel business bolted onto a garage; it is an amenity protecting the revenue the garage already earns. Run the total-cost analysis against retention and occupancy (does charging keep the monthly parker who would otherwise leave) and the right-sized answer from section 7.8 usually pays for itself. Run it against kilowatt-hours, and no answer does.