The answer to the first question is possibly unknowable unless one is a Tesla insider or has a REAL lot of time on their hands, or if Tesla has shared that statistic (which I don't recall seeing). Some jurisdictions have good online building permit repositories, but most do not, so getting this information would require actually calling up town offices and requesting that information. You shared the EA stat because they themselves shared the information in the context of complaining about the average time in CA versus other states.
Either way, is the question the average time for Tesla to get a permit for a station going back to 2013? Or perhaps is it more meaningful to look at where things stand currently (and possibly what the trend is)?
Determining the utility hookup timespan is a bit easier if you have a dedicated army of sleuths out there investigating construction progress (creating this is one of my goals for fastcharger.info). So I think we have pretty good data on the Tesla side. On the EA side, I am mainly relying on Plugshare (for now), which admittedly is far from ideal.
But I did take a look at the most recent Supercharger openings to fill in some kind of picture, and I'll compare that to at least the subset of EA sites that I had been monitoring earlier this year, as well as some that have recently opened.
| Supercharger | Permit Applied | Permit Issued | Construction | Transformer | Power | Commissioning |
| Laurel, MD | 4/23/21 | | 8/2/21 | 11/18/21 | 12/13/21 | 12/14/21 |
| Manassas, VA | 6/1/21 | 7/21/21 | 10/24/21 | 12/8/21 | | 12/13/21 |
| Franklin, MA | | 7/12/21 | 8/23/21 | 11/13/21 | 12/11/21 | 12/13/21 |
| Austin - Southpark Meadows, TX | 6/3/21 | 7/26/21 | 9/17/21 | | | 12/10/21 |
| San Ramon, CA | 8/3/20 | | 6/19/21 | 10/31/21 | | 12/10/21 |
| Elizabethtown, KY | | | 8/16/21 | 12/6/21 | 12/9/21 | 12/10/21 |
| Rockingham, NC | | | 9/29/21 | 11/21/21 | 11/22/21 | 12/10/21 |
Now those dates are not necessarily perfect. The construction, transformer, power and commissioning dates are when a particular forum poster first noticed construction started, the transformer was delivered, the meter was installed, and the site went live, respectively. Of the sites where we have data, the permit process appears to have taken 50 and 53 days. For Laurel, MD and San Ramon, CA we can also put an upper bound of 101 days and 320 days, respectively, but that combines the permit process with the start of construction, so there may be other factors at play as well. Additionally, the variability here is probably too great to draw any strong conclusions anyway. Some sites in areas that have been already populated with chargers likely have a relatively easier time than those for which they are a brand new entity. The stretch across I-90 you pointed out for EA would seem challenging because of this.
On the Construction->Commissioning side, the range is from 50 days (Manassas, VA) to 174 days (San Ramon, CA) with an average of 106 days, although it should be noted that I skipped a few sites that literally just popped up without anyone even detecting any activity until it showed up on the map!
Looking at the EA side of things, I clearly don't have much great data (consider these dates--other than the final live date--very approximate), but here is what I have for a collection of sites that I have been monitoring, and some recent EA openings:
| Fastcharger | Permit Applied | Permit Issued | Construction Start | Construction End | Transformer | Power | Commissioning |
| Syrcause, NY - Erie Canal Center | | | 2/10/21 | 2/28/21 | | | 7/14/21 |
| Syracause, NY - Mirabito North | | | 6/3/21 | 10/22/21 | | | 11/22/21 |
| Binghamton, NY | | | 4/16/21 | 5/30/21 | 8/14/21 | | 9/22/21 |
| Stafford, VA | | | 2/27/19 | 3/9/19 | | | 5/3/19 |
| Aptos, CA | | | 7/7/21 | 8/14/21 | After 10/28/21 | | 11/30/21 |
| Fullerton, CA | | | 7/28/21 | | | | 12/6/21 |
| Henderson, NV | | | | 5/2/21 | | | 11/16/21 |
| Phoenix, AZ | | | 6/13/21 | | 9/1/21 | | 11/25/21 |
The duration from start of construction to commissioning ranges from 65 days (Stafford, VA) to 172 days (Syracuse North), with most clustered around the upper number, for an average of 142 days.
Would I read a lot into this? Probably not. The sample size is very small. But having watched the pace of Supercharger permits, installs, transformer deliveries, and commissionings acclerate over the past year or two, not to mention the acceleration is the raw number of sites being installed (in the past month there have been 32 Superchargers open in the US to 15 Electrify America sites), I feel I need to reiterate my point that Tesla has the more streamlined process for now. I'm not trying to knock EA here: it's natural that they are still ramping up their capability. I have no doubt they will eventually catch up to Tesla as Tesla starts to saturate and reach a point of diminishing improvements. But we're not there yet.
