Biden’s EV Charging Network Plan Will Go Slow

Earlier this week, Vice President Kamala Harris publicly hooked up to a Chevy Volt at a charging station in Maryland. “There is no sound or smoke!” she said during the demo, that served as the formal announcement of Biden’s ambitious government $7.5 Billion Plan to Build Half a Million EV Charging Stations about the United States. This investment represents the latest version of a proposal that started with: a budget of $15 billion for the same number of chargers. If you do the math — or even if you don’t actually do it — something isn’t quite right.

Simply put, to build 500,000 chargers with half the budget, the Biden administration will have to opt for slower chargers. (The faster the charger, the more expensive it is to install.) The Biden administration’s plan, which uses money from the recently passed $1.2 trillion two-tier infrastructure bill, gives priority chargers that take hours to fully charge an electric car — a potentially tough sell for Americans used to filling gas tanks from empty to full in minutes. And while more chargers are great, the plan is indicative of how watered down Biden’s energy policy has become over the past year. Democrats still did not agree on a clean energy plan, and without one, those EV chargers could eventually get their energy from fossil fuel sources.

But while energy policy is shaky, electric vehicles represent one of the most tangible changes ordinary people can make in the fight against climate change, and the Biden administration seems to recognize that. “We need to act, the transportation sector is the largest part of our economy that emits greenhouse gases, and cars and trucks are one of the biggest parts of that,” said Transport Secretary Pete Buttigieg. told CNBC earlier this year.

The ubiquity of the right kind of electric vehicle chargers will play a big part in making that possible. There are currently three different types, or levels, of electric vehicle chargers. Level 1 chargers plug into a standard 120-volt outlet and supply power to electric cars with a range of three to five miles per hour. At that rate, it would take a few days for most cars to go from empty to fully charged. Level 2 chargers convert the 120 volt connection to about 240 volts, so that cars are charged about 10 times faster than Level 1 chargers and a battery is full within a few hours. Level 3 chargers, also known as DC fast chargers, are the fastest of the bunch. They add anywhere from 3 to 20 miles of range per minute.That means your car can be charged about 80 percent in the time it takes you to go to the toilet and have a cup of coffee at a rest stop.

You may have heard of DC fast charging because it’s the technology behind it Tesla Superchargers and the Rivian Adventure Network. Both patented charging systems provide high-speed charging exclusively for people who purchase that company’s vehicles. (To his credit, Tesla has announced) plan to open its charging network to non-Tesla cars.) While the owners of other electric vehicles must fight with By signing up for a plethora of competing charging services with varying charging speeds, the Tesla and Rivian networks promise the speed and simplicity customers have come to expect from getting to gas stations. “Just plug in and charge automatically”, the Tesla website say. “Pull and plug in without touching a button”, Rivian brags.

But for the most part, industry experts say we don’t really need every charger to be a fast charger — which is why the Biden administration’s charging framework might work.

“The temptation is to mimic the gas station model where we say, ‘Oh, I’m running out of fuel, I have to fill up now and be on my way in five minutes,'” Joe Britton, executive director of Zero Emission Transportation Association, Recode told. “That would be a mistake.” (Just don’t tell Harris, who said charging the Volt was “just like filling up your car with gas.”)

Instead, Britton said, it’s important to consider how most people use their car on a typical day. Most people don’t drive hundreds of miles every day; they drive between home and work or do their shopping in the city. For those folks, level 2 chargers would work just fine. They can charge their car at home, drive to a supermarket, plug in the parking lot and drive home with a full battery. So while the Biden plan includes strategically installing faster chargers along highways and in rural areas, focusing on building many Level 2 chargers in local communities is one way to stretch that $7.5 billion a long way. .

“We’re making it easier for people to go electric,” Harris told the Maryland crowd on Monday. The biggest obstacle for most people looking to buy an electric car, she added, is “figuring out where and how to charge.”

The stakes are high here. Despite being home to EV pioneers like Tesla and GM, the US is lagging behind far behind Europe and China in the sale of electric vehicles. The majority of US electric vehicle sales are also concentrated in major metropolitan areas, with almost half of all EV sales in California alone. And while transportation is the sector with the highest greenhouse gas emissions in the country, energy is a close second.

Biden’s plan could make buying and charging electric cars easier, but electric vehicles are only as clean as the grids that power them. have studies shown that electric cars that draw power from coal-fired power stations may even be worse for the climate than hybrids. And so far, the president’s attempts to clean up the network have been repeatedly thwarted by senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who single-handedly stripped a proposal to replace coal and gas-fired power stations with solar, wind and nuclear energy. Most of the energy policy that mortal remains Biden’s signature Build Back Better bill focuses on clean energy tax credits, with few penalties for continued, polluting energy production.

Inevitably, more electric vehicle chargers — even if they’re slower — are better than no chargers at all. But they are not a solution in themselves. The whole planet is fighting for a lose battle against CO2 emissions and climate change, and all those electric vehicles will have to get their energy from somewhere. Through the Build Back Better Act and the new infrastructure bill, the Biden administration is making progress on a robust plan for clean energy and the adoption of electric vehicles in the United States. But the plan will only work if the Build Back Better bill passes and the measures in the infrastructure law become a reality.

Will these things happen this year, or not at all? Are does not look good.

This story was first published in the Recode newsletter. Register here so you don’t miss the next one!