Gov. Jared Polis and the Colorado Department of Transportation released a statement calling the state’s public fast-charging network nearly built out.

The Aug. 27 news release reports there are now 486 DC fast-charging locations and 83% of the state highway system is now within 30 miles of a station. But those raw numbers do not mean the stalls are as available, or as quick, as ordinary gasoline pumps.

According to public data, there are other metrics involved in evaluating EV efficiency.

The Energy Department lists 2,857 public electric charging locations in Colorado and 7,748 public ports.

Industry counts put Colorado at about 1,500 retail gasoline stations. Count every public plug, including about 6,100 Level 2 ports, and Colorado has more charging hardware than gas stations. Count only the 1,646 public DC fast ports that do the work of a pump and those stand against roughly 15,000 gasoline fueling positions in the state — about nine pumps for each fast-charge stall, using the industry average of 9.8 positions per gas station.

The stop is different, too. Public fast-charging sessions averaged 33 minutes in late 2025, according to a Transportation Energy Institute study of millions of sessions. That stop adds on the order of 100 miles of range to a typical EV, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

A 12-gallon gasoline fill adds about 300 miles — three times that range — in about five minutes at the pump, according to standard pump volumes and fuel-economy figures.

Public fast-charging electricity costs about four times as much per unit of energy as gasoline. On the road the costs land near each other — about 17 cents a mile either way — because the EV uses about one-fourth the energy to cover the same distance, according to posted fast-charge rates, Energy Department pump prices and standard energy conversions.

The price per mile is close. The time at the fueling point is not, and neither is station throughput. A public fast-charge port averaged about seven vehicles a day in late 2025, according to the Transportation Energy Institute. A gasoline pump handled about 40 vehicles a day, based on National Association of Convenience Stores pump-transaction counts.

“Every one of these projects makes the map a little more complete,” said Shoshana Lew, executive director of the transportation department. “Five or six years ago, the challenge was establishing fast charging across broad portions of Colorado. Today, we’re increasingly talking about individual gaps — a mountain corridor, a rural community or a stretch of highway that still needs a station.”

Seventeen federally funded National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure sites are open. Another 33 awarded NEVI sites are not open; they are under development, the statement said. Coverage of the highway network has more than doubled from 40% in August 2020.

Polis tied that build-out to new car sales.

“Colorado is the national leader in electric vehicles. Colorado is making historic investments in a fast and convenient EV charging network, which is one reason why EVs make up a big percentage of new cars sold in Colorado,” Polis said in the statement.

Sales share is not the share on the road. The highway mix still counts gasoline and diesel vehicles already registered. New-car sales count what left the lot last quarter.

Plug-in vehicles made up about a quarter of new light-duty sales in Colorado at the 2024-25 peak, prior Denver Gazette reporting showed. They remain about 3% to 4% of registered light-duty vehicles, according to U.S. Department of Energy Alternative Fuels Data Center data and an Alliance for Automotive Innovation tally.

The administration’s target is 940,000 light-duty electric vehicles on Colorado roads by 2030. Registrations today sit near 200,000 to 220,000, about one-fifth of that goal.

Nationally, the same split appears at a lower level. Plug-ins were about 6% to 7% of new U.S. sales in 2026, Argonne National Laboratory figures show, and about 2.5% of vehicles in operation, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation reported. Colorado leads on sales share. On the road, the gap is about a percentage point.