Biden Administration Announces New Standards to Make EV Chargers More Accessible

author: Vineeth Joel Patel   

Earlier this February, the Biden Administration announced a plan to allocate $7.5 billion to states over the next five years to build a national electric vehicle charging network. Now, the Biden Administration has released a new set of standards to speed up the process of installing 500,000 electric vehicle chargers across the country within the next eight years. 

New Standards To Help States

Officials hope the new standards will help establish a baseline for states to begin building chargers that are accessible to all EV owners. The standards lay out how states should award contracts for projects, as well as direct companies building the chargers to make them affordable, convenient, and accessible to owners. More importantly for states, the standards outline what type of projects won't receive any money from the government. These include proprietary charging stations that can only be utilized by a single automaker's vehicles. This specifically goes after Tesla's Superchargers. 

With these standards, the Biden administration hopes that states will be able to create a unified charging network with similar charging speeds, methods of payment, and pricing information by 2030. The standards require that real-time information on location and station pricing should be available to drivers so that they can plan their trips better. Stations will have to have certain types of chargers and a minimum number of available chargers. 

Requirements For New Chargers

Additionally, the standards will require charging stations to be placed at 50-mile intervals down major interstates throughout the country. These charging stations will also have to be located no more than a mile off an exit. To ensure that there are plenty of available chargers for consumers, each station will have to have at least four DC fast chargers. While these may seem like strict standards, they're meant to make EV chargers available to all owners. 

"Everyone deserves a chance to benefit from EVs," said Transportation Secretary Pepe Buttigieg during a call with reporters earlier this week. "We're paying attention not only to the quantity of EV chargers but also their quality. "Everyone should be able to find a working charging station when and where they need it." 

A good national charging network is necessary if the government wants more consumers to purchase electric vehicles. Charging remains one of the largest issues with EV ownership. It will also be necessary if the Biden Administration aims to reach its goal of having 50 percent of new vehicle sales come from electric cars by 2030. 

Vineeth Joel Patel

Joel Patel has been covering all aspects of the automotive industry for four years as an editor and freelance writer for various websites. When it comes to cars, he enjoys covering the merger between technology and cars. In his spare time, Joel likes to watch baseball, work on his car, and try new foods