More than 2% of registered vehicles in Travis County are battery-powered cars or trucks. A 2% adoption rate might not sound like much, but it signals “a big change that happened recently,” said Gil Tal, a leading expert on electric vehicles who runs a research center on EVs at the University of California, Davis.

Only roughly 2% of EV owners are Black, according to the National Center for Sustainable Transportation. The statistic is attributed to vehicle costs and a lack of charging stations in predominantly Black neighborhoods, often referred to as “charging deserts.”

The charging network currently being built out across the US “is the backbone” for drivers ”to feel confident that they can use an electric vehicle to go long distances,” said Alan Jenn, assistant professor at the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis.