The Biden administration on Thursday announced over $620 million in grant funding to help counties, cities and tribes around the nation install new charging stations for electric vehicles and long-haul freight trucks.
The funding, which comes from the bipartisan infrastructure law, will fund 47 projects in 22 states and Puerto Rico – including EV charging and hydrogen fueling stations – and will result in 7,500 new charging ports nationwide, according to Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg.
“We’re at a moment now where the electric vehicle revolution isn’t coming, it is very much here,” Buttigieg told reporters.
The Biden administration and private companies are racing to get more charging stations installed as more Americans shift to electric vehicles. About 1.4 million EVs were sold last year – about 9% of total passenger vehicles sales in the US, Buttigieg said.
White House national climate adviser Ali Zaidi said there were about 170,000 chargers on US roads by the end of 2023. Early in his term, Biden set a goal of 500,000 chargers publicly available to motorists by the end of the decade. One of the barriers to getting more EVs on the road is a lack of reliable and fast charging stations.
Buttigieg told reporters the new grants are especially focused on getting more charging stations into both rural and more densely populated urban areas – kickstarting charging infrastructure in areas that are harder to reach or have multi-family apartment buildings that lack charging ports. Two Indian tribes in Alaska and Arizona will also receive funding.
Some of the projects selected for funding include EV and hydrogen fueling facilities for freight trucks in some of the busiest freight corridors in California, new EV charging stations across Boise, Idaho, and chargers for residents of multi-family apartments in multiple New Jersey communities.
Zaidi called the announcement a “big deal” and said it will help “massively” grow “consumer choice for drivers in the US.”
