The Biden administration said Tuesday it is awarding 521 million dollars in grants to build out electric vehicle (EV) charging and deploying more than 9,200 charging ports.
The Energy Department and Federal Highway Administration said 321 million dollars will be allocated for 41 community projects that expand charging infrastructure, while 200 million dollars will fund ten corridor fast-charging projects.
Milwaukee will receive 15 million dollars to install EV chargers at 53 sites while Atlanta will receive 11.8 million dollars to install a DC Fast Charging Hub at the city’s airport with 50 DC fast chargers providing charging for rental cars, ride-share drivers, and airport shuttles.
The Biden administration has faced harsh criticism for the slow deployment of charging stations from a five-billion dollars U.S. government program created in 2021.
Automakers and others say drastically expanding EV-charging stations is crucial to the wide deployment of electric vehicles, key to U.S. efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The White House goal is to grow the nationwide network of chargers to 500,000 ports, including high-speed chargers – no more than 50 miles (80 km) apart – on the nation’s busiest highways.
As of August, the United States had 192,000 public charging ports and since the start of the Biden administration, the number of publicly available fast-charging ports has increased by 90%.
FHWA said approximately 1,000 new public chargers being added each week.
In June, just seven EV-charging stations had been deployed under the 2021 U.S. program consisting of a few dozen total charging ports, said Shailen Bhatt, who heads the Federal Highway Administration.
Read more: Waybler overcomes the “impossible”: charges up to 6 times more EVs than competitors
