NC begins to help businesses install EV chargers to fill gaps in state’s network

The state has chosen the first places that will receive government grants to install electric vehicle chargers under a federal program that aims to fill in gaps in North Carolina’s charging network.

They include travel centers, shopping plazas and a sub shop along highways in mostly small towns and rural areas where the private sector hasn’t installed chargers on its own. The goal of the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure or NEVI program is to help ensure all communities have access to EV chargers and to ease concerns people have about running out of power on long trips.

The N.C. Department of Transportation received $109 million under NEVI, which Congress created through the big infrastructure bill in late 2021 . NCDOT identified corridors where EV chargers were needed and then sought proposals from businesses that would install and operate them with government help.

The first round of awards, announced Wednesday, total $5.92 million and will help businesses to install fast-chargers in nine places along Interstates 40, 77 and 485 and U.S. highways 17, 70, 74 and 64. They include Pilot Travel Centers in Candor and Warsaw, a Firehouse Subs shop in Elizabeth City and a Piggly Wiggly in a shopping center in Leland. There’s also one urban location: Northlake Mall, near where I-77 and I-485 cross north of Charlotte.

Each station will include DC fast chargers with four ports capable of charging a car or SUV in about 20 minutes.

NCDOT expects to award grants for about 40 more of these stations to ensure there are EV chargers at least every 50 miles along major highways in North Carolina .

“Eventually, we’ll have publicly funded EV chargers that fill in coverage gaps along our major corridors in the state and in our communities,” Joey Hopkins, the secretary of Transportation, said in a statement. “We want a network that is reliable and easily accessible for people in rural and urban areas.”

The NEVI program is designed in part to help alleviate what’s known as “range anxiety,” the concern that an electric vehicle owner can’t venture too far from home or an urban area where charging stations are more common.

But it also helps non-EV owners feel more comfortable about a technology and a fuel they’ve never used before, said Jacob Bolin of Advanced Energy, a nonprofit energy consulting firm .

“Even if you’re filling up with gasoline, if you see these charging stations in places where you are driving and commuting, I think that goes a really long way to giving people a sense of confidence about the opportunity to drive and charge in those places,” Bolin said in an interview.

A second phase of NCDOT’s NEVI program will help install charging stations in communities not yet served by the private sector. Those will be a combination of fast chargers and so-called Level 2 chargers that take four to eight hours to fully charge a vehicle.