The Biden administration is awarding $623 million in grants to help build an electric vehicle charging network across the nation.

The Biden administration is awarding $623 million in grants to help build an electric vehicle charging network across the nation.

Grants being announced Thursday will fund 47 EV charging stations and related projects in 22 states and Puerto Rico, including 7,500 EV charging ports, officials said.

“America led the arrival of the automotive era, and now we have a chance to lead the world in the EV revolution — securing jobs, savings and benefits for Americans in the process,” said Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. The new funding “will help ensure that EV chargers are accessible, reliable and convenient for American drivers, while creating jobs in charger manufacturing, installation and maintenance for American workers.”

Congress approved $7.5 billion in the 2021 infrastructure law to meet President Joe Biden’s goal of building out a national network of 500,000 publicly available chargers by 2030. The charging ports are a key part of Biden’s effort to encourage drivers to move away from gasoline-powered cars and trucks that contribute to global warming.

  • cosmic_slate@dmv.socialEnglish
    131·
    1 year ago

    Everything in the last year with EV charging is incredibly exciting.

    1. NEVI funds going out should help fill in a few holes (or at least will add capacity). There are very, very, very, very, very few places in the continental US I can go in an EV now (though, specifically relying on Tesla’s supercharger network)

    2. Tesla’s Supercharger network is open to other EVs, with adapters being available for other EVs in the coming months, this significantly increases the number of available chargers and stalls for non-Tesla owners, and should be a big wake-up call to other charge networks to prioritize reliability/ease of use.

    3. We finally have one standard, and the NACS standardization fixed a few issues that J1772 had.

    • seang96@spgrn.com
      28·
      1 year ago

      I consider NACS a downside and will refuse to buy an EV with one. There is an actual standard and it should be used. I am sure there are updates in the future for the real standard that will fix problems that it has even though I personally haven’t had any issues in regards to it.

      • cosmic_slate@dmv.socialEnglish
        81·
        1 year ago

        There is no downside at all if you’re buying new, so I’m not sure what you’re talking about.

        On AC power, NACS supports a wider range of power input, allowing for more flexibility in certain commercial situations (277V) vs J1772 (240V).

        On DC power, there’s no regression from CCS1.

        This transition has the potential to really suck for people with cars already with CCS since you might have to use an adapter if chargers near you swap CCS cables for NACS.

        • seang96@spgrn.com
          45·
          1 year ago

          That’s the problem, Tesla wanted their own shit and.is forcing it down other manufacturers throats because they have the most charging stations. This only affects america.because no one else allowed him to adopt his crap standard elsewhere. He could have worked with them and improved the existing standard and remained compatiblity, but instead decided “let’s do another standard!”.

          I imagine Tesla will be the manufacturer for these and I cannot trust these lunatics with a fast moving machine that can kill me due to the charging port screwing up other devices in the car because of their shoddy manufacturing processes.

          • cosmic_slate@dmv.socialEnglish
            41·
            1 year ago

            It really doesn’t matter. Tesla out-sold everyone, combined, and out-deployed everyone else’s fast chargers by stall count and almost by site-count. A standard doesn’t matter if nobody is really using it.

            Multiple CEOs called out how unreliable the various CCS providers are and how stable the Supercharger network is. Tesla’s network is ranked substantially higher than any other US network for reliability, and is under much more use.

            That’s all objective fact.

            If you don’t like Tesla or Musk or whatever for political reasons, you are more than welcome to hold those views, but you haven’t provided an objective technical reason.

            • seang96@spgrn.com
              12·
              1 year ago

              Trust a company where steering wheels fall off to make a product VS something used by millions already in multiple countries, including in the US, tough choice indeed.

              The great thing about standards is they can be improved. Sure CCS has issues and I’m sure NACS does, we can only think so far ahead. Standards get revisions and improve over time. Making new ones results in fragmentation, confusion, adapters, and man kind fixing more standards than one.

              • cosmic_slate@dmv.socialEnglish
                2·
                1 year ago

                Do note that you’re actually defending Tesla here if you want to use the steering wheel argument, which I suspect is not your intent.

                Every major carmaker behind CCS has had more physical safety recalls (w/ higher %), and in a lot of cases, with more safety critical components (ie wheels, critical suspension components, various fire hazards)

                And yes, standards can improve, they can also change. NACS is the standard and CCS is now effectively dead in the North American market. CHAdeMO was available much earlier than CCS and implemented by multiple manufacturers but there are very few people talking about that.

                I implore you to rent a vehicle instead of speculating in the comments. CCS is a terrible connector.

                • seang96@spgrn.com
                  11·
                  1 year ago

                  There are recalls and there is factory testing. Musk doesn’t believe in testing so they skip these checks. A standard car manufacturer catch manufacturing issues before it leaves their door.

                  My car uses CCS and I have not experienced anything so terrible. Standards are built better working together not separating and making your own shit.

      • Fal@yiffit.netEnglish
        62·
        1 year ago

        NACS is a better standard. Existing standards are awful and there is in fact no 1 single standard

        • seang96@spgrn.com
          23·
          1 year ago

          The name is North American Charging Standard, which is a stupid name, but because Tesla wanted to make their own for the US. You really want that guy running a standard?

          There are not that many standards. Could’ve went with the most common one and worked with everyone to develop it further for the further good of everyone. Unfortunately this would’ve hurt his pathetic ego though.

        • cbarrick@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          That’s… an outdated analogy.

          I have used neither of those products in over a decade.

          Google Workspace (Gmail, Docs, Drive, etc) is a better office suite product than MS Office. It’s also free for personal use.

          Re Acrobat, Web browsers and operating systems ship built-in PDF readers these days. For the handful of PDFs that I don’t open in Chrome, Apple Preview does a great job.