Tesla is trying to boost its Model S sales before the year is out, but it’s got a funny way of doing it. After initially abandoning its free Supercharging for life offer in 2018, the automaker is bringing it back for some Tesla Model S cars at the end of the year. It’s something of […]
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Electric vehicle charging startup EVgo is the latest company to secure funds from the U.S. Department of Energy as the Biden administration races to approve clean energy loans before Donald Trump takes over. Trump has promised to cancel any unspent funds from Biden’s bipartisan Inflation Reduction Act, including the $7,500 tax credit for new EV […]
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Rivian has opened a new charging station in Joshua Tree, California, that is open for other EV owners to use — a first for the company. It’s part of a plan to build out a much larger interoperable charging network across the U.S., though the company is still very early in that process. The new […]
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To fill a car with gas, you generally just need a credit card or cash. To charge an EV at a DC fast charging station, you need any number of things to work—a credit card reader, an app for that charger's network, a touchscreen that's working—and they're all a little different.
That situation could change next year if a new "universal Plug and Charge" initiative from SAE International, backed by a number of EV carmakers and chargers, moves ahead and gains ground. Launching in early 2025, the network could make charging an EV actually easier than gassing up: plug in, let the car and charger figure out the payment details over a cloud connection, and go.
Some car and charging network combinations already offer such a system through a patchwork of individual deals, as listed at Inside EVs. Teslas have always offered a plug-and-charge experience, given the tight integration between their Superchargers and vehicles. Now Tesla will join the plug-and-charge movement proper, allowing Teslas to have a roughly similar experience at other stations.
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Revel is adding to its electric vehicle charging empire in New York City. The startup said on Wednesday that it has broken ground on the installation of 24 EV fast chargers at John F. Kennedy International Airport. The installation doubles the airport’s existing EV charging capacity. This is the second time Revel has partnered with […]
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"A clean desk is a sign of a sick mind" is a phrase sometimes attributed to Oscar Levant, but I give it to Egon Spengler. I also live that phrase.
My desk is not clean, but I know why everything is on it. It is inefficient if you are not me and are trying to find things or make sense of it. If you know where to look, like I do, however, every piece is doing a particular job.
If you're like me, or know someone like me, you know desk space is at a premium—not to keep it tidy and empty, but to fill it with even more junk. With this in mind, I have compiled some of the items I either own and cherish, or have saved to various online carts and considered many times. These gadgets keep devices powered, items labeled, the office space conveniently automated, and cables always within arm's reach. With all the space and mental stress these gadgets can and do save me, I have so much more room for, say, reading about Oscar Levant and putting empty seltzer cans everywhere.
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Katie McTiernan/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
The Biden administration is racing to approve funding for the US EV charging network before Trump takes office.
The government announced it would invest $7.5 billion toward charging infrastructure in 2021, with the aim of building 500,000 electric vehicle chargers by 2030.
The money is distributed through two programs: the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, which apportions $5 billion out to individual states over five years to deploy EV chargers initially on highways, and the $2.5 billion Charging and Fueling Infrastructure (CFI) grant program.
Those programs are now under threat, however, with the incoming president, Donald Trump, blasting the government's EV charger rollout and vowing to scrap incentives to promote the adoption of electric vehicles as president,
A spokesperson for the Department of Transportation told Business Insider that $2.4 billion of the funding for the NEVI program had been approved so far.
As of late November, 37 states had received approval for a third round of funding under the program, the department said, unlocking an additional $586 million for the 2025 fiscal year.
Funds for the additional 13 states plus DC and Puerto Rico are expected to be approved before the end of the year.
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Kelsey Blongewicz, a policy analyst at Atlas Public Policy, told Business Insider that if those funds are released before Trump takes office on January 20th, as they have been in previous years, then it is unlikely the new administration could revoke them.
"If that funding is released before then, in theory, it is safe," Blongewicz said.
"It would be not impossible, but very hard for the new administration to claw that back," she added.
If the funding is approved, an estimated $3.3 billion of the total pot for the NEVI program will be committed, according to a Department of Transportation breakdown, effectively putting it beyond the reach of the Trump administration.
The Biden administration has also awarded over $1.3 billion of the $2.5 billion in funding for the CFI program so far, according to the Department of Transportation, with bidding for another $779 million in grants currently open.
Blongewicz said that the new administration will likely be able to take steps to slow down or frustrate the rollout of those remaining funds, especially for the competitive grants of the CFI program.
Scrapping both programs entirely would require congressional approval, however. NEVI is an advanced appropriations budget authority that can only be undone by Congress.
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
It seems likely that the incoming administration may still try to claw back some of the already approved funds.
Vivek Ramaswamy, who along with Elon Musk is set to head a Department of Government Efficiency that will scrutinize government spending, said officials were approving funding and new regulations "to get ahead" of January 20th on Wednesday.
"All midnight-hour expenditures & new regulations will get special scrutiny and should be rescinded where appropriate," he wrote in a post on X in late November.
The NEVI and CFI programs, introduced as part of the $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in 2021, were key pillars of the Biden administration's plan to build a national network of EV chargers.
Despite being announced with much fanfare, that rollout has been criticized for proceeding slowly.
The DoT says that over 24,700 federally funded chargers are "underway" across the country, but only 31 NEVI-funded charging station sites are currently operational, according to the program's latest quarterly update.
A DoT spokesperson said the department expects to have hundreds of federally funded chargers operational this year, with thousands more coming in 2025.
That push could be put at risk under Trump. The president-elect has vowed to cut back government support for electric vehicles and is reportedly set to scrap a $7,500 tax credit for new US-built EVs.
Staff photo by Gregory Rec/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images
Blongewicz said the loss of federal support would be a blow to the development of a national EV charging network, and EV charging startup executives told BI the question marks over funding were already fuelling uncertainty in the industry.
"We had this big, clear framework, and that is all going to go down now," Tiya Gordon, cofounder and COO of Brooklyn-based urban charging startup ItsElectric, told BI.
"A lot of the funds that have already been awarded are protected and out there in the world. With the other funding that has yet to be deployed, there is definitely a lack of clarity right now in terms of what can happen," she added.
Carter Li, CEO and cofounder of EV charging startup SWTCH, said that it was likely that much of the initiative for building America's charging network would move to the states.
"I suspect that if there is a drop in terms of federal incentive dollars, we will potentially see a pickup at state level. That's something we saw in the last Trump administration as well," he said.
Some states have already pledged to replicate EV subsidy schemes that could be ditched under Trump, with California governor Gavin Newsom suggesting the state will revive its own EV-buyer credit if the incoming president scraps the $7,500 subsidy.
That raises the prospect that Americans will have to deal with a fragmented landscape when it comes to buying and charging their EVs, which could put consumers off from going electric.
"Adoption of electric vehicles will slow because of the fact that there's be conflicting messages that are happening on a government level versus on a business or a consumer level," said Gordon.
"We're going to have a more state-by-state solution rather than a national solution," she added.
We last covered EV charging platform Ampeco in 2023 when it raised a Series A round of $13 million. Today it’s raised $26 million in a Series B funding led by Revaia, a growth equity investment fund. That takes its total funding to $42 million. Many EV charging systems are end-to-end solutions which makes them […]
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