Biden administration has pledged to have 500,000 public charging stations for electric vehicles in place by 2030. The administration is providing more than $5 billion to states over the next five years to build a network of charging stations along the nation’s interstates.
The proposed standards, which will be published next week in the Federal Register, dictate that a charging station be located every 50 miles along the interstate and no more than a mile off the highway. Stations would be required to maintain a minimum number and type of chargers capable of serving multiple customers.
Stations would be prohibited from requiring drivers to have a membership or be part of a club to use their chargers. Real-time information on pricing and location would have to be available to help motorists using a GPS app better plan their trip.
$5B sure sounds like a big number until you break it out that hes saying $10k per station.
Thats not enough to put an actual station… maybe enough to put a level 2 charger or two on the side of a business.
Curious if this meant to be $5B in subsidies to people like EA and tesla for putting in chargers or if this is literally going to the states for them to put them in.
EVs powered by coal don’t really help anyone. Details matter. Their policy championing the transition needs a little more thought than just encouraging as many EV on road as possible.
The National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program will provide $5 billion in formula funding to States to build out charging infrastructure along highway corridors. Could be wrong, but I don’t think it’s meant to be all encompassing. Based on the release, today’s minimum standards and requirements will guide states on how to spend federal funds in a way that makes chargers function the same from state-to-state, easy to find, use, and pay for, no matter who operates chargers. Assuming this will require buy-in from states and the private sector too.
I like the idea of more DCFC stations and L2’s at rest areas but I disagree that it should be by mandate that is not explicitly tied to market trends and conditions.
EV‘s do not need help selling in this market and infrastructure will scale with demand.
Fair point. I wonder if the thought of federally subsidizing and incentivizing some costs, will help with not only more affordable EV options, but quicker widespread adoption.
The best thing the feds/states can do is get the hell out of the way and fast track/unblock significant portions of the red tape involved with putting a DC fast charger up.
I’m just sharing in case people hadn’t seen it and were curious. I personally don’t know much about EV manufacturing and infrastructure. Although, like many others, I’m assuming in the next 5-10 years I’ll make the conversion.
The last I read dc fast chargers were 100k to install (largely power runs), not including land costs. As such needed a high utilization to break even. There are three in range of my Mach e, and 75 percent don’t work. Along my routes there is only one functioning (EA) in any direction within range. If they are down, I’m stranded. A long expensive way to go
Probably state dependent since I’ve seen Tesla chargers at rest areas up north while at the same time, CA had to put up those finicky as hell BTC 50KW chargers to avoid bringing in a vendor like Tesla or EA.
Anti-competitive protections for local businesses that were added around the time the interstate highway system was being built (motto: Ike slept here).
There is some points related to what we’re discussing in this brief on the INVEST in America Act (EV charging and interstate commerce)
All of these chargers are useless on a long trip unless it is like a Tesla L3 charger. No one wants to stop every 250-300 miles and charge for hours on a trip.
