Biden Moves to Rein In the Wild West of Car Charging
The first national oversight of US charging infrastructure calls for standardized prices, interoperable chargers and 97% reliability.
Volta electric vehicle chargers at a shopping center in Escondido, California on Jan. 29, 2023.
Photographer: Bing Guan/BloombergThe Biden administration wants to make sure America’s next 500,000 charging stations work a lot better than the 59,000 it already has.
As the White House prepares to spend $7.5 billion on public EV infrastructure, it published a lengthy set of rules Wednesday aimed squarely at the broken chargers and confusing pricing that have hamstrung EV adoption to date. Roughly one in five public fast-charging sessions is a failure, according to a recent J.D. Powers report, and Twitter appears as crowded with irate EV owners as it is Tesla evangelists.