More EV charging stations coming nationwide, electrifying 75K miles of highways

Instead, the Department of Transportation and the Biden administration announced yesterday that America greenlit a plan to invest $5 billion over the next five years to create a more reliable charging network by installing EV chargers in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.

This significant advancement in EV charging infrastructure comes a little more than a week after the US Departments of Energy and Transportation appointed the first executive director charged with leading the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, Gabe Klein.

In a press release announcing Klein's new role, DOE and DOT said Klein was specifically brought in to oversee efforts to "build a national electric vehicle (EV) charging network with a focus on filling gaps in rural and disadvantaged communities and hard-to-reach locations.".

However, part of a robust infrastructure includes ensuring that charging stations are reliable and function when the drivers arrive, another consumer complaint that the new funding also seeks to address.

Last year, Georgia Institute of Technology climate and energy policy expert Omar Asensio reported with his research team in the Cell Press journal Patterns that AI could help states track the functionality of charging stations.

Asensio told Ars that the new charging infrastructure funding would help address current user concerns his analysis found over uneven distribution of charging stations. His team analyzed millions of EV charging reviews and concluded that "based on the rate of consumers leaving reviews at charging stations across the United States, we find that the deep-learning algorithms can detect the functioning of a certain station, daily.".

He shares Biden's views that expanding EV charging infrastructure is key to reaching US climate goals, considering, as the DOT press release noted, that the transportation sector is currently "our country's largest source of greenhouse gas emissions." He vowed to be a driving force pushing the country to embrace greener roadways.

"I will seize the opportunity to steward a critical shift in our transportation economy from fossil fuels to clean, electric energy systems, as there has never been a more important mission in our recent history than solving the climate crisis," Klein said in DOE's press release