Infrastructure Bill EV Charging Stations Slow to Start

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) passed in 2021 included 7.5 billion dollars to develop EV charging infrastructure across the country, including building a network 500,000 publicly accessible charging stations compatible with all vehicles and technologies by 2030. (For a refresher on BIL - Slimmed Down Biden Infrastructure Bill Clears House )

As of writing, March 2024, the EV portion of the BIL has funded one operational station in Ohio and is funding stations in the process of being built, but not yet operational, in Vermont, Pennsylvania, and Maine. In order to hit goals, the pace will need to pick up substantially. The 500,000 number is based partly on the goal of half of all new car sales being EV by the end of the decade. To buy electric vehicles, people need to know they have a network to charge on.

The allocation of funds for the EV portion of the BIL requires each State to submit an Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Deployment Plan, in order to make sure that the network is built in a coherent manner across States. The Transportation Department goal is stations every 50 miles, and within one mile of an interstate as a general rule. Its still unclear how many stations the allocated funding will cover, and how close that could get States to the stated milage goals by the Transportation Department, and if more rural areas will have different avenues available than more urban areas, where chargers may be easier to build out and locate.

There are a lot of ins and outs on this issue – we delved deeper into the specifics in this months article in Oil & Energy Magazine. You can read that article here: Building Designated Alternative Fuel Corridors