The year 2025 was quite spectacular for public DC fast-charging (DCFC) infrastructure in the United States, as the industry is expanding like never before. Significant growth has been achieved despite challenging EV sales, as charging networks focus on long-term goals.

A comprehensive view of public DC fast-charging infrastructure is available in a new State of the US EV Fast-Charging Industry Report (Full-Year 2025), released today by Paren, a leading EV charging data platform. State Of Charge‘s Tom Moloughney spoke with Bill Ferro, co-founder and CTO of Paren, about the key takeaways from 2025.

The report contains a quarterly analysis of public DCFC infrastructure, utilization, reliability, and pricing across the US. We will now walk through some of the findings.

US DC Fast-Charging Industry Report: Charging Infrastructure Expansion

Record Year: 18,000+ New DCFC

The year 2025 brought an all-time record of DC fast-charging infrastructure expansion with more than 18,000 new DCFC ports (up 30% year-over-year) and over 3,350 new DCFC stations deployed.

The installation of new infrastructure is accelerating: Q4 2025 shattered records, with 5,769 new ports (up 44% year-over-year) and 949 new stations.

70,000+ DCFC Ports (Total)

At the end of 2025, the US public DC fast-charging infrastructure passed a total of 70,000 DCFC ports, according to Paren. That’s roughly a third more than a year ago. The numbers are similar to the ones from the Alternative Fuels Data Center (AFDC), which recently reported 68,000 ports.

Paren forecasts that in 2026, the number of DCFC ports will increase by roughly 19,500, including 12,200 non-Tesla and 7,300 Tesla chargers. That’s a cautious assumption following an expectation-beating year 2025. If the EV industry really deploys almost 20,000 charging stalls, then the total infrastructure will reach roughly 90,000!

Larger Sites

The expansion is fast (beating expectations) and accelerating, as charging networks are deploying not only more sites, but larger ones. The average number of ports per charging location is increasing rapidly, especially for non-Tesla chargers (for Tesla, it was already high).

“The narrowing gap does not suggest convergence, but rather parallel scaling strategies: Tesla maintaining its large-site model, while non-Tesla operators catch up by deploying more capacity per location. Together, this supports the broader trend seen across the industry in 2025—capacity growth increasingly driven by more ports per site, not simply more sites.”

Growth by Charging Networks

One of the most interesting data points is the leaderboard of charging networks by new DCFC port deployments.

As shown, Tesla, with 6,786 new DCFC ports, accounted for 37.6% of the total 18,041 new DCFC ports in 2025. Tesla deployed more ports than the next nine networks (6,126). However, the rest of the EV charging industry is growing much faster than Tesla, which is consistently losing market share. Tesla’s share remains dominant at 52.3% (36,631 ports), but it’s declining.

Paren highlights a few charging networks with the highest deployment of new DCFC ports: ChargePoint (+976 ports, although the network does not own the chargers), Red E (+854), EV Connect (+785), and Ionna (+740). Notably, the Mercedes-Benz charging network is growing rapidly (10th with 468 new ports).

Domination of High-Power Chargers

In 2025, the US market entered an explosive growth period for high-power DC fast chargers. According to Paren’s data, in Q4 2025, more than half (51%) of non-Tesla chargers had at least 250 kW (mostly 350-400 kW, we believe). Tesla also installs high-power chargers (all new V3.5 sites are rated at up to 325 kW, and the first “true” V4 offers up to 500 kW per stall).

This data aligns with our report, based on the AFDC database, which indicates that there were roughly 10,000 350+ kW charging ports at the end of 2025. Soon, we should see rapid growth in this category.

NACS Adoption

Adoption of the NACS (SAE J3400) charging connector standard at DC fast-charging stations is increasing. Paren reports that in Q4 2025, a record 716 new NACS connectors were deployed by non-Tesla charging networks, which is almost 18% of all connectors. Tesla deploys only NACS connectors.

Nonetheless, the CCS1 remains the primary connector on non-Tesla networks. That’s why Paren says that adapters between CCS1 and NACS will become standard before NACS becomes dominant (outside the Tesla Supercharging network).

Geographical Distribution

Three states — California, Texas, and Florida — accounted for 37% of all new DCFC ports deployed in the US in 2025. However, states with fewer chargers often show higher year-over-year growth.

NEVI Helps, but Only Slightly

The National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program (NEVI) was a hot topic in 2025, and State Of Charge even spoke with Paren about it a year ago. As it turns out, NEVI-funded chargers represent only a small portion of new chargers.

According to Paren, only 497 new DCFC ports at 99 locations were installed in 2025 (or 3% of the total). That’s why funding issues didn’t affect the infrastructure expansion much.

Utilization & Reliability

Utilization Rate

The average utilization rate of DC fast-charging infrastructure remains relatively stable at around 16% according to the analyzed data. This suggests that the demand and supply expand at a similar pace.

Paren considers data from 141 million charging sessions (up 30% year-over-year).

An important point to note is that utilization varies significantly across markets. In some states it’s over 20% (32.2% in Washington D.C.), while in others, it’s ultra-low (3.2% in Alaska).

The utilization map is probably the best tool for forecasting where charging networks will first expand and install more chargers. States with the highest utilization rate should be the most profitable.

The full version of Paren’s report covers even the top metro areas, which are usually the epicenters of EV adoption.

Sessions Per DCFC Port

An exceptionally interesting aspect of the report is the number of charging sessions per DCFC port recorded monthly during 2025. According to Paren, the average is very stable, ranging from 200 to 220 sessions per month (roughly seven per day), despite high seasonality and rapid charger growth.

This is a level at which charging networks might start to see some profits, while the queues for drivers are relatively low, if any.

The average number of sessions per DCFC port varies significantly between states. Markets with high averages will most likely see an increased charger deployment.

Reliability

Finally, reliability — a cornerstone topic behind the transition from the CCS1 to the NACS charging standard connector. The EV market wasn’t pleased with the initial reliability of CCS1 chargers. According to Paren, things are improving now.

The Paren Reliability Index, based on over 95% of all DCFC charging sessions, shows a nationwide reliability average of 93.3% as of Q4 2025. Most states clustered in the low-90s, with fewer extreme underperformers.

“Several large and mature markets led the country with the vast majority of states clustered tightly around the low-90 range. More than half of the state’s Reliability score is between 90 and 94, indicating increasingly consistent performance as networks scale and maintenance practices reach a higher level of maturity.”

That’s outstanding news, which gives us hope that reliability will soon approach 100%.

EV Charging Pricing

Pricing Model

In most cases, DC fast-charging infrastructure in the United States is priced on a fixed-rate basis. As of 2025, 80% of DCFC ports had fixed (per kWh) pricing. The second most popular model takes into account the time of use (14.3%) to combat the congestion issue, allowing for the price of a kWh to change during the day. Time-based pricing (per minute), independent of the energy dispensed, is rare (2.3%).

According to Paren, the ratio of fixed versus time-of-use pricing varies depending on the state:

The market appears to be moving toward dynamic pricing: in Q4 2025, 73.9% of DCFC ports had fixed (per kWh) pricing, while the time-of-use share increased to nearly 24%.

Prices per kWh

In 2025, DC fast-charging prices remained largely stable. Below is Paren’s map of average prices by state, which in most cases range from $0.45 to $0.53 per kWh.

Supply-constrained states, like Hawaii ($0.86/kWh) and New Jersey ($0.63/kWh), are at the higher end of the spectrum. Also, some metro areas have significantly higher rates than the state’s average.

If one knows the energy consumption of one’s EVs (like 3 miles per kWh), it’s relatively easy to calculate DCFC costs in a particular market. However, please remember that the primary charging method is home charging, which is typically several times cheaper.

An interesting finding is that more than 80% of charging stations charge between $0.41 and $0.61 per kWh.

Paren says that DCFC networks do not compete aggressively on price. We assume the networks are currently focused on growth, and that competition also includes areas such as location, nearby amenities, visibility on navigation systems, user experience, charging power, support for high-voltage batteries, and more.

Overall, the State of the US EV Fast-Charging Industry Report (Full-Year 2025) is an amazing lecture for the entire EV industry.