FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration Driving Forward on Convenient, Reliable, Made-in-America National Network of Electric Vehicle Chargers [press release]
Through his Investing in America Agenda, President Biden is building the economy from the middle out and bottom up, creating American-made products in American factories with American workers and positioning the United States as a leader in the clean energy economy. President Biden understands that to compete and win the 21st century global economy, strengthen the American auto industry, and tackle the climate crisis, we must build a convenient and reliable network of made-in-America electric vehicle (EV) chargers along America’s highways and throughout all our communities, especially underserved and overburdened communities.
That’s why President Biden set the country on a path to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 and advance an industrial strategy that will continue to build out the domestic EV and EV charging industry – all while creating good-paying union manufacturing and installation jobs on the way.
Thanks to President Biden’s leadership, we’re on track to meet these historic goals.
2030 NATIONAL CHARGING NETWORK STUDY
Today, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) released the 2030 National Charging Network study
https://driveelectric.gov/files/2030-charging-network.pdf – a new analysis that quantifies the estimated number, type, and location of the chargers needed nationwide to support rapidly growing EV adoption. The study, produced in collaboration with the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation (Joint Office) and the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Vehicle Technologies Office (VTO), assesses charging infrastructure needs for light-duty EVs with an unprecedented level of detail, including by accounting for the effects of local variation in EV adoption, climate, travel patterns, housing, and charging preferences.
The study finds:
-- The United States is on track to install a network of 1.2 million public chargers by 2030, keeping up with rapidly growing demand for EVs.
-- Of the 1.2 million charging ports, about 1 million are expected to be Level 2 charging, providing convenient, low-cost charging to meet a variety of daily needs, with the remaining charging ports being DC fast chargers that are critical to driver confidence and longer distance travel.
-- Building out this public charging network will require between $31 and $55 billion of cumulative public and private capital investment and will help unlock hundreds of billions of dollars of consumer savings from reduced fuel and maintenance costs.
Thanks to President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, rising demand for EVs, and investment from private firms, the public sector, and electric utilities, nearly $24 billion has already been committed for public charging infrastructure through 2030. We are on track to achieve President Biden’s visionary goal of 500,000 public chargers and we will keep going even further by harnessing private investment to meet the nation’s EV charging needs identified in the study.This shows how effectively the Biden-Harris Administration has catalyzed private investment in a race to line our highways and roads with public chargers. The Biden-Harris Administration remains committed to working with industry and all levels of government to ensure that the pace of investment is sustained in line with the increased demand for EVs.
BUILDING A CONVENIENT, RELIABLE, AND FULLY INTEROPERABLE CHARGING NETWORK
President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law invests $7.5 billion in EV charging, $10 billion in clean transportation, and over $7 billion in EV battery components, critical minerals, and materials. These flagship programs put a down payment on our nation’s EV future and complement the Inflation Reduction Act’s landmark support for advanced batteries, tax credits for EVs and chargers, and dozens of other Federal initiatives.
One of the flagship programs for EV charging is the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program (NEVI), a $5 billion initiative to create a national network of high-speed EV chargers along major highways and interstates. All 50 states, Washington DC, and Puerto Rico are participating in the NEVI program, and the first two years of funding alone will electrify over 75,000 miles of the national highway system.
The Administration also set new national standards for Federally-funded EV chargers, including NEVI-funded chargers.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/02/15/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-announces-new-standards-and-major-progress-for-a-made-in-america-national-network-of-electric-vehicle-chargers/ The minimum standards set a baseline to ensure the national EV charging network is interoperable between different charging companies, with similar payment systems, pricing information, and charging speeds. This protects the traveling public by ensuring a predictable and reliable EV charging experience – no matter what car you drive or where you charge. The minimum standards allow flexibility to support industry innovation in this evolving field and to allow States, communities, and their partners to build charging infrastructure that meets local needs. For example, Federally-funded fast chargers are required to include Combined Charging System (CCS) connectors, which are used by the majority of automakers today, but may also offer other connector types such as the North American Charging Standard (NACS) developed by Tesla. Several states, such as Texas and Washington, have already signaled their intent to require both CCS and NACS connector types on their NEVI-funded charging networks.
President Biden’s goal is to build out the national network of EV chargers as quickly as possible while ensuring that Federal investment continues to support a reliable, convenient, and user-friendly charging experience. The Administration is working to support even greater interoperability within the NEVI program, tasking experts across the Federal government to work closely with States, localities, labor, automakers, charger manufacturers, and standards setting bodies to achieve this goal. As part of this work, the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) announced today
https://www.sae.org/news/press-room/2023/06/sae-international-announces-standard-for-nacs-connector that they will initiate an expedited process to review NACS as a potential public standard. This would open the NACS connector to other suppliers and manufacturers and has the potential to dramatically increase the size, reliability, and availability of an interoperable charging network supported by industry recognized standards. That’s a win for the EV charging industry and a win for all EV drivers.
IMPROVING RELIABILITY OF EXISTING CHARGING INFRASTRUCTURE
Reliability and availability are critical to enabling confidence in charging. That’s why the Biden-Harris Administration is complementing its charging standards with a multi-pronged approach to both build new, reliable charging infrastructure and improve, fix, or replace existing infrastructure. In addition to the Joint Office’s work with the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) to review NACS as a potential public standard on an expedited and unprecedented timeline, the Administration’s approach is driving forward with key pillars including:
-- Providing funding to repair, replace and upgrade chargers to improve network performance reliability, performance, and interoperability. The Federal Highway Administration anticipates making available up to $100 million from the NEVI Program to help States and localities quickly repair, replace and upgrade broken or unreliable chargers across the country.
-- Measuring and evaluating the charging experience to understand opportunities for continued improvement. The Joint Office of Energy and Transportation is developing EV-ChART, a centralized data platform for EV charger data reporting that will maximize access to data and insights that can enhance future charging reliability.
-- Combining efforts of the Joint Office with the National Charging Experience Consortium (ChargeX)
https://driveelectric.gov/chargex-consortium/, which, over the next two years, will identify and pursue opportunities to significantly improve the charging experience. The Consortium has over 30 partners from across the private sector that are focused on delivering near-term improvements in three areas: payment processing and user interface; vehicle-charger communication; and diagnostic data sharing.
To bring together industry, State and local partners, DOE and DOT will host a summit in early July to discuss and collaborate on how all partners involved are working to achieve the Administration’s EV charging goals.
PROGRESS TO DATE ON AN EV FUTURE
Since President Biden took office, EV sales have tripled and the number of publicly available charging ports has grown by more than 40%. There are now more than three million EVs on the road and over 140,000 public chargers across the country. Companies have recently announced new commitments to expand their networks by thousands of public charging ports in the next two years, using private funds to complement Federal dollars and putting the nation’s EV charging goals even closer within reach.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/04/17/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-announces-new-private-and-public-sector-investments-for-affordable-electric-vehicles/ Earlier this year, the Administration released its Build America, Buy America implementation plan to ensure that our EV future is Made In America. The NEVI Program standards’ strong workforce requirements mean that historic investments in EV charging create good-paying jobs in communities across the country.
At the same time, Federal funds are attracting a generational wave of private investment to ensure that the clean energy transition is powered by American manufacturing and creates and sustains good-paying union jobs. Since President Biden took office, the private sector has announced well over $130 billion of new investment for electric vehicle, battery, and EV charging manufacturing in the United States.
These investments also span more than just personal EVs – the Administration is investing in medium- and heavy-duty clean energy and electric vehicles. Yesterday, the Federal Transit Administration announced nearly $1.7 billion for low- and no-emissions buses and transit projects, that will more than double the number of zero-emission transit buses on America’s roadways – and they will be manufactured with American parts and labor.
https://www.transit.dot.gov/about/news/biden-harris-administration-announces-nearly-17-billion-help-put-better-cleaner-buses And later this year, the EPA will announce the next round of awards from the $5 billion Clean School Bus Program to lower emissions and promote safer environments for children to learn and grow.
For more information on these announcements visit
https://driveelectric.gov/. See
https://driveelectric.gov/news/#private-investment for a more comprehensive list of investments in EV charging in the United States.
Fact Sheet:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/06/27/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-driving-forward-on-convenient-reliable-made-in-america-national-network-of-electric-vehicle-chargers/