Biden Admin to Set Standards for Federally Funded EV Charging Stations
The almost $5 billion(Opens in a new window) that last year’s infrastructure law provided to upgrade electric-vehicle charging will come with a set of system requirements for stations built with that money, starting with support for the Combined Charging System(Opens in a new window) (CCS) connector in most non-Tesla vehicles and for DC fast-charging speeds.
The Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration announced(Opens in a new window) the proposal Thursday and published an 82-page Notice of Proposed Rulemaking(Opens in a new window) detailing these standards.
In addition to requiring CCS and DC fast charging (at least 150kW), these stations must be able to accommodate at least four EVs at a time and provide data feeds about availability and rates in standard formats open to third-party apps.
The concept of a network of fast-charging stations that provide real-time updates about their status may be familiar to Tesla owners, who can tell the navigation system in their vehicles to direct them to the nearest available Supercharger(Opens in a new window) for a quick “refueling.”
Competing electric-vehicle manufacturers and charging-network operators have been working to provide similar experiences, and the Biden administration aims to accelerate that by raising industry standards through these regulations.
“These new ground rules will help create a network of EV chargers across the country that are convenient, affordable, reliable and accessible for all Americans,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement.
Tesla owners will be able to use these new charging stations with the adapters included with every vehicle(Opens in a new window), but that AC connector supports a much slower
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