The National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program
This past week you are probably aware that the Trump administration has been a bit busy. In the flurry of executive orders, however, you might not have noticed that one of those policy changes was focused directly on electric vehicles. On February 6th, the new administration “suspended” the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program.
NEVI was an incentive program that was part of the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure and Investment Jobs Act that passed in 2021 with bipartisan support. (In this case “bipartisan support” meant that all the members of one party were joined by 18 senators of the other party plus 2 Independent senators in approving the bill on a 69-30 vote.) Amongst other things, that enormous bill authorized funds to build highways, transit, broadband access, clean water systems, and electric grid renewal. 0.4% of the $1.2 trillion was allocated to NEVI to support and build electric car charging stations.
Under the NEVI program, states could apply to the federal government to get money to help them contribute to a nation-wide EV charging network. States had to develop and justify their plans, submit these plans to the federal government, and, if approved, they could get up to 80% of their costs covered to do everything from community outreach to purchasing and installing charging stations.
The US Federal Government has a long history of promoting specific technologies and easing technology transitions. For instance, in the Great Depression there was significant concern that farmers and others living in rural areas would be left behind technologically. If you lived in a US city in the 1930s there was a 90% chance your home was wired for electricity. If you lived on a farm, there was only a 10% chance. Corporations argued it wasn’t economically feasible to run electric lines to every small town in the United States. In an effort to make sure that the benefits of technology were more equitably distributed, in 1936, Congress passed the Rural Electrification Act (REA).
The REA provided low cost loans for people willing to run electric lines to rural areas. Many farmers banded together, formed cooperatives (co-ops), and used this government support to build out the necessary infrastructure. The results were pretty dramatic. By the end of World War II, about half of farms had electricity and the percentage quickly went up after that. The REA continues to this day and has been amended many times. In the early 2000s it was expanded to include support for helping farms get access to the internet and later broadband.
NEVI was somewhat similar to the REA in that it was created to try to extend the benefits of electric vehicles more equitably across the country. The goals were to give people living in rural areas better access to charging stations and to allow everyone who owned an EV to more access to more places. The hope was that NEVI would make cross country travel by EVs easier and allow for seamless visits to even the most remote places; thereby connecting people and invigorating rural economies.
It’s interesting to look back at the plans developed in my home state of Arizona. In 2023 the Arizona Department of Transportation announced its goal of using $76.5 million of NEVI funding to make sure that no one would have to drive more than 50 miles to find an EV charger. The locations they had in mind for EV charging stations include highways that give access to some of my favorite remote places including the Grand Canyon, Antelope Canyon, Hoover Dam, and Tonto Natural Bridge State Park. NEVI funding was being used to make electric vehicles in Arizona significantly more useful. The enhanced network of charging stations would have reduced charge anxiety and made it possible to explore the entire wonderful state while driving under electric power.
Building a network of EV chargers takes time, however. Even though NEVI started in 2021, there haven’t been very many charging stations completed. There was the long process of plan development, securing state funding, federal government review, purchasing equipment and organizing construction crews. Just as many of those plans were beginning to be implemented, the Trump Administration announced that the program was being indefinitely suspended. The federal funds for all State plans approved under NEVI, including the Arizona one I discussed above, have been cut.
What happens next is unclear. The Trump administration says it intends to revisit the program’s rules and issue new guidance at some point in the future. But even if this is only a delay, the disruption will have far reaching effects. Without federal funds, most projects will stop. Construction crews will need to find work elsewhere. Brand new chargers will sit in warehouses with nowhere to go. And parking spots at rest areas that were being prepped for chargers will remain a pile of rubble.* It’s possible that some states will redirect some of their own funds to complete these projects. But since in many cases they were only providing 20% of the costs, finding a way to quintuple their budget is likely to prove impossible.
So where are we now without NEVI? According to US News and World Reports, as of last summer we had about 70,000 public EV charging stations in the US with a total of 188,000 individual charging ports. That sounds like a lot, but there is a catch. Most of those stations – 61,000 – are “Level 2” stations. That means they can charge your car, but it will take several hours. And if anyone else wants to charge, you’ll have to wait in line for hours before you can start charging yours. So in reality, if you want to go on a road trip, you need Level 3 fast charging stations and there are only 10,000 of those.
Where I live in Phoenix, there are a decent number of public Level 3 fast charging stations. Plus I’ve got a home charger. So I can drive without worry. I’ve even been brave enough to do a roundtrip to Prescott. The distance from chargers in the northern suburbs of Phoenix to the chargers in Prescott is 70 miles – something I’ve been able to manage even with the steep climb up the mountains.
If I wanted to go to Antelope Canyon in northern Arizona, however, it’s a different story. There are no Level 3 chargers that fit my car’s plug north of Flagstaff. So I’d have to go with one of two plans: 1. I can completely charge my car before I leave the Flagstaff Walmart, avoid all side trips, and hope that the temperatures and elevation changes don’t zap the efficiency I’d need to make the 260 mile round trip. Or 2. I could book a room at the Hyatt, hope that their level 2 charger works, hope that no one else wanted to use it, and recharge my car overnight in Page, AZ. Neither of those options are very appealing. So on my recent trip to Antelope Canyon it was a no brainer for me – I took the old gas powered SUV.
There is actually one other option. I could use the Tesla charging network. While there are only 10,000 Level 3 charging stations in the US, nearly 2,500 of them are part of the Tesla Supercharger network. And since they were designed as a nationwide network, they have been placed strategically around the US to make travel easier. And yes, there’s a Tesla supercharger station in Page with 8 charging ports. [But, alas, it looks like that wouldn’t work at the moment!**]
For a long time only Tesla vehicles could use Tesla charging stations. But about a year ago the Biden administration, in an effort to make EV driving easier for all, convinced Tesla to make its charging stations available to other cars. It takes a bit of work. I’d have to buy an adaptor for something like $250 and I’d have to download a Tesla app to make the connection possible. But it is certainly doable.
All of the people I know who have done long distance trips in electric vehicles have done them in Teslas using the Tesla network. John Martinson, president of Drive Electric Arizona, blogged about his 6,000 mile road trip last year in his Tesla Model X to British Columbia and back. And if you think that’s impressive, he did 11,000 miles the summer before all the way from Arizona to the Eastern tip of Newfoundland, Canada and back.
With the suspension of NEVI, it’s tempting to argue that the Tesla Supercharger Network is now the default national EV charging network. On the one hand, that’s not a terrible thing. It is well designed, reliable, and accessible. But there is a catch. It is owned by a private corporation and thus it answers to its shareholders, not the general public.
This plays out in some interesting ways for me, as a non-Tesla EV owner. Yes, once I purchase the adaptor and sign up for the app I’m granted access to the network. But I don’t have the same privileges as a Tesla owner. First of all, the price I’m charged is likely to be different. It’s hard to gather specific statistics, but in general it looks like non-Tesla owners get charged about 30% more than Tesla owners. Second, if a station is particularly busy, Tesla may decide not to let me charge there at all. They privilege Tesla owners to make sure that they get the best possible experience. As a non-Tesla owner, I am basically treated as a second-class citizen by the Tesla Supercharger Network.
For at least the past 100 years or so, a desire to make technology equitably accessible is why much of the fundamental infrastructure in the United States has been run by public utilities. It doesn’t matter what brand of toaster you own, you pay the same price for electricity in your house. It doesn’t matter whether you are planning to brew tea or coffee, you pay the same price for water. And as long as your vehicle weighs less than 10,00 pounds, it doesn’t matter whether you drive a truck, car, Porsche, or Yugo, you pay the same price to drive on the nation’s roads.
In the end, I very much appreciate with Tesla has done with its network. It has not only built really impressive electric cars, it has gone a long way towards building out the charging infrastructure necessary to make those cars especially useful. And I think it is a great move to use the Tesla network as a stopgap measure to increase the mobility of all EV owners in the US. But I do hope that the we can build a public system that is just as robust.
The suspension of NEVI is a pretty significant setback to that dream. Time will tell whether the Trump administration will reinstate the federal government program to build fast public EV chargers. And if it does it will be interesting to see what values it is designed to promote.
*After I first published this, Tony Davis, reporter for the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, sent me an update about the Arizona plan. First of all, he reports that the State of Arizona is going ahead and will complete 18 charging stations that are well on their way in the process, but is putting on hold its plans for an additional 35. Also, evidently Arizona isn’t planning to put any charging stations in rest areas. Right now it is focused on “truck stops, gas stations, travel centers, Starbucks, and Burger King” parking lots. He offers even more details here in a February 9th article.
** Astute reader, President of Drive Electric Arizona, and champion EV road-tripper John Martinson pointed out a mistake in my original article. He let me know that while there is in fact a Tesla Supercharger in Page, AZ, it is a 150kw station. It is only the newer V3 and V4 Supercharger stations that can be used by non-Tesla vehicles with adaptors. So, alas, until the Page Supercharger is upgraded, it would not be an option for me.