It looks like the Joe Biden administration’s Department of Energy (DOE) is in a hurry: It just finalized a $1.25 billion loan to EVgo, the U.S. operator of electric vehicle (EV) charge points, for the construction of 7,500 new fast-charging stalls nationwide.
The announcement comes just as the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump has signaled it wants to cancel much of the existing spending on EV initiatives.
EVgo says the buildout will bring its total owned and operated network to at least 10,000 fast-charging stalls by 2029. The new chargers will be deployed across the U.S., including in Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas.
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“This public-private partnership will help us continue to scale our operations to serve the influx of vehicle options that will be available to American consumers in the coming years,” says EVgo CEO Badar Khan in a statement.
The EVgo rollout features an innovative technology called dynamic power sharing, which allows EVs to charge up as quickly as possible, the DOE says. The chargers will also allow users to initiate charging without a credit card or phone.
Last week, the DOE and a private consortium announced it will establish a universal protocol to allow all EVs to just plug in and charge at all public stations in the U.S. in 2025.
A still sparse charging infrastructure is often cited as one of the main barriers for drivers to switch to full EV adoption.
When the Biden administration took office in 2021, it set a target of building 500,000 chargers by 2030, allocating $7.5 billion to the efforts. According to the DOE, there are currently more than 204,000 publicly available charging ports in the U.S., or more than double the number of chargers in place when Biden took office.
Over the past year alone, 38,000 new public chargers were added. At the current rate, nearly 1,000 chargers are added every week thanks to a combination of direct federal funding, federal tax incentives, state and local funding, and private investment.
EVgo is also partnering with General Motors to build charging stalls across 32 states. The two recently announced their 2,000th co-branded public fast-charging stall.
While the incoming Trump administration has signaled it will cancel existing spending, such as the $7,500 tax credit for new EV purchases, it’s yet unclear how much of already enacted infrastructure projects could be reversed.
According to E2, a nonpartisan group, close to 85% of the investments and 68% of the jobs created by the Biden administration’s clean energy initiatives have benefited Republican states that supported Trump.