Electric vehicle charging will become political

The question is whether all local authorities are willing to contribute where federal funding might fall short. “The next 10 years (in electric vehicle charging) are about the urban environment, cities and low- and middle-income people,” Reig says. In a world where electric vehicles become a political lightning rod, those places could be the ones that see the most charger action.

Electric vehicle charging is bipartisan

Many people would prefer if electric vehicles (and their chargers) could avoid the culture wars altogether. Joe Sacks is the executive director of the bipartisan EV Politics Project, an advocacy group, and says having more public chargers in the ground is critical to getting more electric vehicles on the roads. The group’s surveys suggest that customer fears about electric vehicle range and an unreliable charging network are preventing some of them from purchasing electricity.

Cargo companies are still in their infancy and some are struggling to operate as profitable businesses. Obstacles to shipper financing, then, could be an almost existential concern for the industry. “There’s a scary trend where some members of the incoming administration view EV financing as low-hanging fruit,” Sacks says. Some political operators “use the attack on electric vehicles as a tool to enact policies of any kind they find interesting. “That’s frustrating for us.”

For those who rely on federal charging money, even during a lukewarm Trump administration, there is some good news: It will be very difficult for the feds to recover all those federal charging funds. The government has already assigned at least $3.5 billion in charger money for states. Forty-two states have begun receiving bids for charger contracts and 12 have at least one station in operation. Those states run the political gamut: Texas, Utah, Kentucky and Ohio voted Republican in October and are leading the way in building chargers. So are Democratic states, including New York, California, Rhode Island and Maine.

“There is broad support for electrification among a large group of critical stakeholders,” says Jason Mathers, associate vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund’s zero-emission truck initiative. Manufacturers, unions, community organizations, politicians who want more EV-related jobs in their districts, and big companies already experimenting with EVs, including Walmart and Amazon, all have reasons to want in-ground chargers. . Advocates like Mathers don’t believe those constituencies will disappear just because of a change in administration, meaning the pressure to build out the charging network will continue.

Sacks, director of the Electric Vehicle Policy Project, says many messages related to electric vehicle charging should appeal to politicians of all stripes. “We want the Trump administration to see that the transition to electric vehicles is not only critical for the jobs here, but also for maintaining our competitiveness against China.”

Sacks finds it encouraging, for example, that the Trump administration appears to want to invest in domestic battery minerals industries. (Today, most battery material mining and processing is done abroad, and particularly in China.) To create demand for that type of industry, more Americans will need to buy electric vehicles, and they may not do so without plenty of electric vehicle chargers. around. Making sure all Americans have access to those new chargers, not just those who live in specific “EV-friendly” states, could come down to getting that message across.