All Charged Up, and Nowhere to Go

At a small apartment community in suburban New Jersey, four new charging stations for electric vehicles are being installed. On a long stretch of highway in California, a rest stop is being redesigned to include an equal number of charging stations and gas pumps for travelers and truckers. In a mall in Texas, a row of charging stations occupies a prime position next to the main entrance.

For the better part of a decade, conventional wisdom held that a scarcity of charging stations was holding back electric-vehicle sales. If more stations were built, the thinking went, consumers wouldn’t worry about being stranded. Electric-vehicle sales would take off. But new data is challenging that assumption. Construction of new public charging stations is proceeding at a record pace this year, with about 16,700 expected to be added, a 20% increase over 2024. The number of charging stations in the US has more than doubled since 2022.  

But something has been left behind: EV sales. In the second quarter, sales decreased 6.3% in the US. Last year, following 20% growth (or more) in the early part of the decade, electric-vehicle sales grew just 10%; through the first half of 2025, they’re only up 1.5% overall. The numbers contrast sharply with sales globally, but the domestic challenges for the industry are uniquely American: In the US, expiring tax incentives, soaring energy costs, and a change in cultural attitudes have all conspired to produce one of the worst quarters for EVs on record. That, in turn, may put the brakes on the charging-station boom. “Anyone making an investment in electric-vehicle infrastructure in North America right now is doing so with a lot of uncertainty about the time frame for payback,” says Brad Marion, global leader for the automotive sector at Korn Ferry.

The stalling of EV sales is a startling reminder that growing infrastructure for a product doesn’t necessarily guarantee a growing customer base, says Meredith Moot, a senior client partner in the logistics, distribution, and transportation practice at Korn Ferry.  It’s a lesson that leaders in many other industries have to bear in mind, she says, as current global tariff issues threaten to rejigger some industries. “Don’t build a warehouse for a client you HOPE will grow,” Moot says by way of an analogy. “If you are investing in infrastructure, you need to cosign that investment with the individuals responsible for the growth.”

For now, though, the decline in sales is changing the calculus on charging-station investments, particularly among independent developers, says Richard Preng, a senior client partner in the at Korn Ferry. “Firms may not be as aggressive with infrastructure build-out going forward,” says Preng, noting that the growth in charging stations is owed to capital investments made years ago. To be sure, he notes that AI and the data centers needed to power it  energy costs soaring by a factor of ten or more—from $27 per kilowatt hour to $320 in some markets—while oil and gas prices are coming down. “EVs are still expensive, and if incentives go away and electricity costs continue to rise, it’s tough to see sales rebounding dramatically in the near future,” he says.

Balancing growth in charging-station build-out with slowing electric-vehicle sales will be a challenge for US leaders. Globally, electric-vehicle sales grew 28% in the first half of 2025, with China—with 5.5 million of 9.1 million sold—leading the way. In Europe, EV sales in Europe grew by 26%, to 2 million. Most experts agree that electric-vehicle sales, along with infrastructure build-out needed to support them, will continue to grow. But the pace is likely to slow significantly, they caution, at least in the US. “There will be a pause in progress in North America,” says Marion.

Moot agrees, adding that in the meantime leaders must determine how long that pause will last and where to place long-term bets. “It’s going to be a real test of the ‘If you build it, they will come’ strategy,” she says.  at Korn Ferry. “It’s going to be a real test of the ‘If you build it, they will come’ strategy,” she says.

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