White House Touts Charging Gains, but Real Gaps Remain

• The Biden Administration announces $521 million in additional funds to be awarded as part of the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure (CFI) Grant Program to continue building EV charging infrastructure along travel corridors and in communities.

• The Electric Vehicle Charger Reliability and Accessibility (EVC-RAA) program aims to upgrade existing but non-operational EV stations with quicker charging hardware, with $150 million available to communities to repair some 4500 charging ports.

• Issues with EV charging infrastructure are partly responsible for slowing EV adoption rates in the country, prompting some automakers to shelve planned EV models in favor of PHEVs.

Driving an EV across several states still takes significant planning, but gains are being made, the Biden administration points out.

Without taking credit for all of that progress, the White House says that the number of publicly available EV chargers has doubled since early 2021, with over 192,000 charging points now dotting the country with about 1000 being added each week.

Still, plenty of work remains to be done when it comes to geographic coverage and upgrades to existing charging stations.

The administration is now awarding $521 million in grants to 29 states, the District of Columbia, and eight Federally Recognized Tribes to continue building out the nation's charging infrastructure. $200 million of that total will be spent on 10 fast-charging corridors along major routes, while $321 million will be devoted to 41 projects on a community level.

The grants themselves will be sourced from the $2.5-billion Charging and Fueling Infrastructure (CFI) Discretionary Grant Program under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, as well as from the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program.

"The Biden-Harris Administration has taken action to ensure that America leads the EV revolution, and the historic infrastructure package includes resources to support a nationwide EV charger network so that all drivers have an accessible, reliable, and convenient way to charge their vehicles," said US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

Whether charging progress (along with the EV adoption rate) has truly lived up to expectations since the start of the decade is a different matter. And it is one that deserves a sober assessment especially now that we're a few years out from the rush of automakers announcing very ambitious EV strategies for the coming years, strategies that are now seeing some backpedaling.

Of course, far from all EV charging happens at publicly accessible stations.

"Most EV charging happens at homes, workplaces, or other destinations while vehicles are already parked, providing a safe, reliable, and vastly more convenient way for anyone to fuel," said Gabe Klein, executive director of the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation.

Complicating matters is the fact that quite a few charging stations that were opened over the past decade now require updated hardware or other forms of maintenance, including station redesigns aimed at greater safety and convenience.

To help address this, the country's first Electric Vehicle Charger Reliability and Accessibility (EVC-RAA) program just kicked off in Washington, DC, days ago. The EVC-RAA grant program has made $150 million available to communities to repair some 4,500 existing charging ports.

"These upgraded chargers offer faster speeds, serve more drivers, and are part of a wave of projects creating good jobs across the country," Klein said earlier this month regarding the project.

This program is focused on upgrading stations that have become inoperable over time—a common enough occurrence—with the aim of installing faster charging hardware, at times triple the speed of older chargers.

Overall, it's clear to automakers themselves that the average charging experience is still one of the main factors that is hampering EV adoption. And slow EV adoption is apparently enough of an issue to have contributed to several car companies shelving planned battery-electric models in favor of PHEVs and hybrids.

If there is one other category of the EV ownership experience that could benefit from updates, whether government-administered or not, it is still that of electric vehicle affordability.

The revamped tax credit rules did not see a smooth roll-out in 2023, with automakers being unable to tell for months what kinds of tax credits particular vehicles would be eligible for. And quite a few of the new EV arrivals of the current year are still positioned well north of the $50,000 mark, even though more economical models certainly exist as well and continue to trickle in.

This is ultimately more of an issue for market forces and automakers to solve, but it's abundantly clear to EV shoppers that there are still too many vehicle models aimed at the deep-pocketed, especially when it comes to electric pickup trucks.

We have a feeling that, were we to travel back in time, very few EV enthusiasts in 2014 could look at the EV landscape of 2024 and say "Yes, this is all unfolding in an ideal manner."

Do you view EV charger reliability as a greater barrier to EV adoption than EV price, or are other factors like geographic coverage more consequential? Let us know in the comments below.