Do EV chargers count toward a building's required parking minimum?

Whether an EV charging space counts toward a building's required parking minimum is set by state or local zoning law, and there is no default national answer -- a jurisdiction that has never addressed the question does not automatically grant or deny the credit.

Where a state has addressed it, the pattern so far is generous toward EV charging. California and New Jersey, the two states verified directly on this page, both count an EV-served space toward the requirement rather than treating it as extra parking layered on top of the total.

California Vehicle Code Section 22511.2, added by Assembly Bill 1100 and effective January 1, 2020, states that a parking space served by EV charging equipment, or designated as a future EV charging space, counts as at least one standard automobile parking space for meeting a local jurisdiction's minimum parking requirement. An accessible EV charging space with an access aisle counts as at least two standard spaces under the same section.

A separate California law does something further. Government Code Section 65850.71, added by Assembly Bill 970 and read directly from the Legislature's own bill text, requires a city or county to reduce the number of required parking spaces by whatever amount an EV charging installation displaces, and bars requiring the property owner to replace those displaced spaces elsewhere. Counting and reduction are two different mechanisms, set side by side in the table below.

New Jersey's law, P.L. 2021, chapter 171, requires municipalities to permit Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment and Make-Ready parking spaces as a permitted accessory use in every zoning district, confirmed directly from the state's own Department of Community Affairs page, checked September 2026. A 2023 amendment, P.L. 2023, chapter 220, further updated the EVSE requirements within New Jersey's Municipal Land Use Law.

Secondary sources describe a make-ready space earning a two-for-one credit toward the minimum parking requirement, capped at 10% of total required parking. That specific credit detail could not be independently verified from the law's own text for this page, because the primary PDF returned unreadable binary content on direct fetch -- flagged plainly here rather than treated as confirmed.

The two states use genuinely different mechanisms, not the same rule expressed with different numbers.

No, an EV-ready parking mandate and a parking-minimum credit are two separate questions a state can answer independently of each other. An EV-ready mandate, covered on a separate article on this site, requires new construction to be built with the wiring and electrical capacity for future EV charging -- it says nothing by itself about whether an installed charging space counts toward or reduces the property's required parking total.

A jurisdiction can require EV-ready capacity without addressing parking-minimum credit at all, or address parking-minimum credit for existing EV spaces without mandating EV-ready construction anywhere. Check both questions separately rather than assuming one settles the other.

A developer or property owner should check the specific state statute and the local municipal zoning code directly before assuming a credit or reduction applies, because even within a state that has addressed the question, as California has, a city's own ordinance can add further detail on top of the state floor.

Bring the actual site plan and port count to that conversation with the local planning department. A parking-minimum credit only helps a project if the authority having jurisdiction confirms it applies to that specific site before the plan is finalized, not after.