The US Department of Transportation has officially approved all 50 states to begin the countrywide electric vehicle charging network developments under President Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill approved last year. According to CBS17, North Carolina will receive $109 million to construct charging networks.
The Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Deployment Plan is also a part of Gov. Roy Cooper’s ambition to cut statewide greenhouse gas emissions by half on 2030. This initiative includes having 1.25 million EVs registered and half of all vehicles sold to be electric. By 2030, Gov. Cooper intends to have 1.25 million EVs registered.
Market evaluations will be conducted to determine the optimum locations for the chargers, as per NDOT officials. The project will then be auctioned in the spring of next year to select which business will construct the charging stations.
“It’s going to be probably the end of 2023, beginning of 2024 before the first ones get in and that’s probably going to depend on a lot of different factors happening,” said Jen Weiss, senior advisor for climate change policy with NCDOT.
It is worth noting that supply chain concerns and potential grid improvements are among the factors mentioned by Weiss. In fact, electric car drivers in Raleigh told CBS17 that the network is urgently needed.
“The need’s getting greater and greater. I just bought this last week so I’m obviously in favor of it,” said EV driver John Preiss.
However, charging stations will not appear suddenly because the Biden Administration’s $5 billion investment is over a five-year period project. This will assist states in developing a statewide network of 500,000 charging stations spaced every 50 miles along designated alternative fuel routes.
North Carolina now has 1,408 EV charging stations around the state, albeit this does not include Tesla chargers, which are solely available to Tesla owners.
