DALLAS – States only have until Aug. 20 to designate highway corridors where electric vehicle charging stations can be built under a new administration program that will provide $4.5 billion of loan guarantees to public-private partnerships and other collaborative efforts to develop and deploy a network of such stations.
The loan guarantees are part of an ambitious multi-faceted approach to getting more electric vehicles on U.S. highways. The efforts include a coalition of state and local governments that will partner with the federal government to purchase electric vehicles at discounted rates as well as the deployment of fast charging stations along major highway corridors.
The Energy Department opened an existing loan guarantee program for renewable energy projects to include $4.5 billion for electric vehicle charging facilities, including hardware and software.
"Loan guarantees can be an important tool to commercialize innovative technologies because these projects may be unable to obtain full commercial financing due to the perceived risks associated with technology that has never been deployed at commercial scale in the United States," the White House said in a statement announcing the new program.
Tesla, General Motors, Ford, Nissan, BMW, Daimler, Duke Energy, and Consolidated Edison are part of the effort to encourage development of rapid charging stations.
The Transportation Department has asked state and local officials to determine where the charging stations should be built by designating routes where drivers would be able to find electric vehicle charging stations as well as facilities dispensing hydrogen, propane, and natural gas.
Determining the placement of recharging facilities will help determine the type of P3s that could be needed to implement the network by 2020, the White House said.
States must submit their initial applications for corridor status to the Federal Highway Administration by Aug. 20. Establishment of the corridors is required by the five-year Fixing America's Surface Transportation (FAST) Act.
The growth in electric vehicle charging stations is a looming opportunity for public-private partnerships, said Albert E. Dotson, Jr. and Eric Singer of the Bilzin Sumberg law firm in Miami.
"State and local governments will no doubt be procuring fleets of electric vehicles in the near future, and concessions for rapid charging stations, along with restaurants and other services to keep drivers occupied while their vehicles charge, will be needed along highways throughout the country," they said.
Although governments are just beginning to plan for these procurements and facilities, Florida's P3 law lets interested private sector partners get ahead of the process by submitting unsolicited proposals, Dotson and Singer said.
"In many cases, the right P3 structure and procurement approach, along with the right private partner, will permit state and local governments to move forward with electric vehicle adoption and infrastructure right now," they said.
ChargePoint, a California-based maker of electric vehicle charging stations, said it would commit up to $20 million per year toward deployment of a national P3 network of charging stations as part of the White House initiatives.
"ChargePoint will work with the Department of Transportation, other federal, state and local government agencies, and private entities to determine the optimal location for such high-speed charging stations and to secure financing from private entities and through public-private partnerships," said company president Pasquale Romano. "We need a network of charging stations in our communities and along our nation's interstate highways."
The loan guarantees and the other initiatives will prompt the construction of more charging stations, which will encourage Americans to buy more electric vehicles and reduce the national dependency on fossil fuels, said White House senior advisor Brian Deese.
"There's a lot more to do in this space," Deese said. "The initiatives serve the goal of providing consumers with more comfort that they will be able to move across regions and across the country in their electric vehicles."
There were only 500 fueling stations for electric vehicles in 2008 but more than 16,000 now while battery costs have fallen by more than 70%, he said.
There are currently almost 500,000 electric vehicles in the U.S., with California having the most, compared to more than 250 million gasoline and diesel cars and trucks, said Lynn Orr, undersecretary for science and energy at the Energy Department.
One goal of the new initiatives is to find out how to build charging stations that can fill up an electric vehicle with enough juice in 10 minutes to go 200 miles, Orr said.
President Obama set a goal during his 2008 campaign of 1 million plug-in vehicles on the road by 2015.
More than 66,000 electric cars have been sold in the first seven months of 2016, according to the Electric Drive Transportation Association, along with 161,000 hybrid gasoline-electric cars.
