Are State Governments Slowing the Build-Out of America's EV Charging Stations?

In November of 2021 America passed a 'Bipartisan Infrastructure Law' which included $7.5 billion for up to 20,000 EV charging spots, or around 5,000 stations, notes the Washington Post (citing an analysis from the EV policy analyst group Atlas Public Policy).

And new stations are now already open in Hawaii, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania, 'and under construction in four other states. Twelve additional states have awarded contracts for constructing the charging stations.' A White House spokesperson said America should reach its goal of 500,000 charging stations by 2026.

So why is it that right now — more than two years after the bill's passage — why does the Federal Highway System say the program has so far only delivered seven open charging stations with a total of 38 charging spots?

Nick Nigro, founder of Atlas Public Policy, said that some of the delays are to be expected. 'State transportation agencies are the recipients of the money,' he said. 'Nearly all of them had no experience deploying electric vehicle charging stations before this law was enacted.' Nigro says that the process — states have to submit plans to the Biden administration for approval, solicit bids on the work, and then award funds — has taken much of the first two years since the funding was approved. 'I expect it to go much faster in 2024,' he added.

'We are building a national EV charging network from scratch, and we want to get it right,' a spokesperson for the Federal Highway Administration said in an email. 'After developing program guidance and partnering with states to guide implementation plans, we are hitting our stride as states move quickly to bring National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure stations online....'

Part of the slow rollout is that the new chargers are expected to be held to much higher standards than previous generations of fast chargers. The United States currently has close to 10,000 'fast' charging stations in the country, of which over 2,000 are Tesla Superchargers, according to the Department of Energy. Tesla Superchargers — some of which have been opened to drivers of other vehicles — are the most reliable fast-charging systems in the country. But many non-Tesla fast chargers have a reputation for poor performance and sketchy reliability. EV advocates have criticized Electrify America, the company created by Volkswagen after the company's 'Dieselgate' emissions scandal, for spending hundreds of millions of dollars on chargers that don't work well. The company has said they are working to improve reliability. The data analytics company J.D. Power has estimated that only 80 percent of all charging attempts in the country are successful.

Biden administration guidance requires the new publicly funded chargers to be operational 97% of the time, provide 150kW of power at each charger, and be no more than one mile from the interstate, among many other requirements.EV policy experts say those requirements are critical to building a good nationwide charging program — but also slow down the build-out of the chargers. 'This funding comes with dozens of rules and requirements,' Laska said. 'That is the nature of what we're trying to accomplish....

'States are just not operating with the same urgency that some of the rest of us are.'

The article notes that private companies are also building charging stations — but the publicly-funded spots would increase America's car-charging capacity by around 50 percent, 'a crucial step to alleviating 'range anxiety' and helping Americans shift into battery electric cars.

'States just have to build them first.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.