WASHINGTON — The Biden administration said Tuesday it’s awarding $521 million in grants to construct out electric vehicle charging and deploying greater than 9,200 EV charging ports.
The Energy Department and Federal Highway Administration said $321 million can be allocated for 41 community projects that expand EV charging infrastructure, while $200 million will fund 10 corridor fast-charging projects.
Milwaukee will receive $15 million to put in EV chargers at 53 sites while Atlanta will receive $11.8 million to put in a DC Fast Charging Hub at the town’s airport with 50 DC fast chargers providing charging for rental cars, ride-share drivers, and airport shuttles.
A full list of grant recipients could be found here.
The Biden administration has faced harsh criticism for the slow deployment of EV charging stations from a $5 billion U.S. government program created in 2021.
Automakers and others say drastically expanding EV-charging stations is crucial to the wide deployment of electrical vehicles, key to U.S. efforts to scale back greenhouse gas emissions.
The White House goal is to grow the nationwide network of chargers to 500,000 ports, including high-speed chargers — not more than 50 miles (80 km) apart — on the nation’s busiest highways.
As of August, the US had 192,000 public charging ports and for the reason that start of the Biden administration, the variety of publicly available fast-charging ports has increased by 90%.
FHWA said roughly 1,000 latest public chargers being added each week.
In June, just seven EV-charging stations had been deployed under the 2021 U.S. program consisting of a number of dozen total charging ports, said Shailen Bhatt, who heads the Federal Highway Administration.
“That’s pathetic. We’re now three years into this … That could be a vast administrative failure,” said Senator Jeff Merkley on the hearing. “Something is very mistaken and it must be fixed.”
Bhatt said in June he was frustrated with slow deployment and said the agency is working with states on their plans to deploy EV chargers.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has also repeatedly criticized the deployment pace.
This Article First Appeared At www.autoblog.com
