This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Rolling up to a Tesla charging port, Illinois Republican state Senator Dan McConchie grimaced that wheelchair users like him couldn’t use it — or any of the others at the gas station where he filmed his Instagram reel. They’d all been placed on a raised surface that he couldn’t readily reach. McConchie introduced a state bill to improve relevant accessibility standards, including electric car chargers. But it’s a national problem: Electric vehicle charging stations are often inaccessible, despite being designed and built decades after the Americans With Disabilities Act, or ADA, became law.
By April 2023, the Department of Energy reported, there were more than 140,000 public EV charging ports in the U.S., up from around 80,000 just three years earlier. The number of charging ports accessible to disabled drivers isn’t easy to pin down, an issue in itself; Department of Transportation data estimates that half of disabled adults under ... Read more
