Texas plans to place charging stations for electric cars every 50 miles on most interstates

[Elderberry]

Texas Tribune by Reese Oxner June 20, 2022

With $408 million in federal funds, the state wants to build enough charging stations to support 1 million electric vehicles.

Texas is planning to add enough electric vehicle charging stations throughout the state to support 1 million electric vehicles with dozens of new stations to allow for easier long-distance travel.

In a draft plan released this month, the Texas Department of Transportation broke down a five-year plan to create a network of chargers throughout the state, starting along main corridors and interstate highways before building stations in rural areas.

The plan is to have charging stations every 50 miles along most non-business interstate routes.

In most other areas in the state, there will be charging stations within 70 miles, according to the plan. Each station is designed to have multiple stalls so there will likely be one available whenever someone stops to charge.

The chargers will be high-powered at 150kW, able to bring most electric vehicles from 10% to 80% in about half an hour, according to the report.

The funding is coming from the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed last year, which is estimated to allocate about $408 million over five years to Texas for the purpose of expanding its electric vehicle charging network. No funds from the state budget will be used. Nationally, the goal is to create a network of 500,000 convenient and reliable electric vehicle chargers by 2030. In total from the infrastructure act, Texas is expected to receive about $35.44 billion over five years for roads, bridges, pipes, ports, broadband access and other projects.

Less than 1% of Texans’ registered vehicles are electric. As of May 31, there were 129,010 electric vehicles registered in Texas, according to the report.

More: https://www.texastribune.org/2022/06/20/texas-electric-vehicle-charging-stations/

[Elderberry]

Major U.S. utilities plan coast-to-coast, EV-charging network

E&E News By Peter Behr | 12/07/2021

https://www.eenews.net/articles/major-u-s-utilities-plan-coast-to-coast-ev-charging-network/

More than 50 U.S. power companies have joined forces to build a coast-to-coast fast charging network for electric vehicles along major U.S. travel corridors by the end of 2023.

The National Electric Highway Coalition was announced today by the Edison Electric Institute. Fifty EEI members; the Tennessee Valley Authority; and Midwest Energy Inc., a Kansas-based electric cooperative, make up the coalition. It also combines two existing EV charging groups formed in the Midwest and in Southern and Eastern coastal states, the Electric Highway Coalition and the Midwest Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Collaboration.

Although the coalition did not set a numerical goal for charging station installations in this decade, it said its first actions would be to fill in gaps in the steadily growing EV charging infrastructure along the Interstate Highway System.

EEI said it expects the number of battery-powered EVs to grow from roughly 2 million last year to at least 20 million by the end of this decade. The number of public fast-charging stations, around 10,000 in the U.S. currently, will also have to expand tenfold, said Kellen Schefter, EEI’s director of electric transportation. This summer, the EV share of light-duty vehicles climbed to over 20 percent of passenger vehicle sales, according to reports (Climatewire, Sept. 24).

“Charging infrastructure needs to lead electric vehicle adoption,” Schefter said, at least in the immediate future. “We want to see that charging infrastructure is not a barrier,” even if longer trips are not the daily drive for most EV owners.

[Kamaji]

So, where will the electricity to power all of these charging stations come from?  Will there be abundant unicorns placed in proximity to each charging station, so they can be fueled with the farts thereof?