36 Million U.S. Renters in Apartments Without Dedicated Parking Cannot Install Home EV Chargers

Approximately 44 million U.S. households are renters, and a large share of those -- especially the roughly 36 million people living in buildings with 5+ units -- lack dedicated parking spaces or electrical panel access needed for Level 2 home charging. Only six jurisdictions (California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Oregon, and D.C.) have 'right-to-charge' laws, and even California's law only applies when a tenant has a dedicated parking space and is willing to bear the full installation cost, which runs $2,000-$7,000 per charger. Why it matters: Without home charging, apartment-dwelling EV owners pay 2-3x more per kWh using public chargers versus residential electricity rates, so the total cost of ownership advantage of EVs over gas cars disappears for renters, so EV adoption becomes a privilege of homeowners with garages (disproportionately wealthier, suburban, white households), so the environmental and air quality benefits of EVs bypass the urban, lower-income, and minority communities that suffer most from vehicle emissions, so federal and state EV incentive dollars flow predominantly to higher-income homeowners rather than achieving equitable decarbonization. The structural root cause is that landlords bear the capital cost of electrical upgrades and charger installation ($5,000-$50,000+ per building depending on panel capacity) but cannot easily recoup it through rent increases or separate metering, while tenants who would benefit have no legal right to demand installation in 44 states, creating a split-incentive problem identical to the one that has plagued energy efficiency in rental housing for decades.