White House announces new "EV Corridors" and $4.5 billion in funding

Witness the power of open standards. Looks like the federal government is helping to kick start a nationwide EV charging network.

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The Obama Administration announced today a new series of initiatives to accelerate deployment of electric vehicles and charging infrastructure. The main announcement is the creation of 48 national EV charging corridors on 25,000 miles across 35 states.

The announcement follows another series of initiatives announced earlier this year by the White House to boost electric vehicle adoption in the US by unlocking $4.5 billion in investments.

With the new programs announced today, state and federal agencies will be working together to ensure that each of those corridors will be equipped with enough charging stations to support electric vehicle drivers.

In a press release, the White House said that “drivers can expect either existing or planned charging stations within every 50 miles.”

More here:

https://electrek.co/2016/11/03/white-house-ev-corridors-electric-vehicle-charging/

Yup this is a must. Western Canada is so much slower in initiatives in this area but we are seeing a large influx in charging station locations

Map of Corridors

Good start, but look at all of those holes. I guess some states "opted out", I-80 through Wyoming would be much better than I-70 in winter.

For me, on the west coast, this looks good enough. Any place I'd like to drive is covered. Arizona has chargers in Phoenix/Tucson, so if they put fast chargers in Blythe, it would make a CA -> AZ trip possible.

Great to see the Oregon Coast covered. That's a prime vacation destination for me and there's so much to see that a single fast charge each day during lunch (plus overnight charge at a hotel) would be perfect.

SeanNelson said:

Great to see the Oregon Coast covered. That's a prime vacation destination for me and there's so much to see that a single fast charge each day during lunch (plus overnight charge at a hotel) would be perfect.

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Right now it's CHAdeMO only on the Coast for DCFC.

DucRider said:

Map of Corridors

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This is an abundance compared to Canada!

The funding it appears comes mainly in the form of loan guarantees, which is really just a way of writing down financing costs somewhat. One wonders how quickly this will bring together an actual charging network, particularly filling it in where the demand is commercially marginal.

roundpeg said:

The funding it appears comes mainly in the form of loan guarantees, which is really just a way of writing down financing costs somewhat. One wonders how quickly this will bring together an actual charging network, particularly filling it in where the demand is commercially marginal.

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Much of that corridor map is likely to be built out by VW.

http://www.hybridcars.com/vw-settlement-may-supercharge-non-tesla-dc-rollout-in-us/

Interesting but it isn't clear that the charging stations built with funding from the settlement are part of the $4.5 billion White House initiative, which seems to be a separate financial assistance program offered to companies other than VW. Might be an element in building out the corridors however.

I did a very rough overlay of Breezy's 175-mile radius map with the proposed new EV corridors to get a sense as to how much this initiative would add.

Looks like it completes an east-west corridor through Colorado/Nebraska.

The gap between Southern Arizona and El Paso needs approx 1-2 more chargers to make a viable southern corridor into Texas.

roundpeg said:

The funding it appears comes mainly in the form of loan guarantees, which is really just a way of writing down financing costs somewhat. One wonders how quickly this will bring together an actual charging network, particularly filling it in where the demand is commercially marginal.

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In the commercially marginal areas we can suspect long long delays if we use the historical data from implementing infrastructure with public transit