Worried about finding a place to plug in your EV? You needn’t be, at least if you live in Japan – Nissan recently made the surprising announcement that the number of power points in Japan has passed 40,000, more than the 34,000 gas stations in the country.

“An important element of the continued market growth is the development of the charging infrastructure,” Nissan Chief Financial Officer Joseph G. Peter told analysts this week.

This figure isn’t quite as impressive as it sounds at first hearing – it includes both private and public chargers, and refers to the number of individual charging points, whereas most of the 34,000 gas stations have multiple gas pumps. However, it’s interesting that, as Bloomberg noted, in the few years since EVs came on the market, Japan’s infrastructure to support them is already comparable in extent to what the oil industry has built over a century or so.

There’s no question that chargers are quickly proliferating around the world. Automakers such as Tesla, Nissan, BMW and Volkswagen are steadily investing in public chargers, and electric utilities are beginning to get into the game in a big way. Kansas City Power & Light recently revealed plans to build a network of over 1,000 stations, an announcement that was quickly eclipsed when PG&E, California’s biggest utility, asked for approval to build a network of 25,000 public chargers.

Source: Nissan via Bloomberg
Image: NissanEV/Flickr