A SUGGESTION TO Refocus the Government’s National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Program

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Everyone who discusses Electric Vehicles from a demand/supply perspective generally agrees the #1 deterrent to EV growth is “Range Anxiety”;

An EV owner’s fear of being stranded without enough charge to get to the next charging station

As an EV owner who just completed a ~10K mile, 4-week drive across the US, I believe the optimal way to overcome this fear is NOT providing direct $’s to build the infrastructure of “more” charging stations; which the government is proposing in the recently announced $7.5B NEVI. 

The plan to build more charging stations is not completely misguided, but it is inherently flawed in its ability to increase the acceptance of EV’s as an ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) replacement; this program as designed is FIRE, READY, AIM.

What is needed is the infrastructure of the EV drivers knowing and easily locating where there are more “reliable and available” charging stations.

I do not claim to be an expert on this. I can say with our recent trip we are one of a handful of EV owners, without an agenda, but with direct and verifiable experience in what is needed.

On our trip, we learned:

If planned sufficiently, right now everywhere in the US can be reached safely and reliably with an EV:

  • There are a LOT of charging stations

  • It takes time, patience and willingness to continually learn where they are, what are their capabilities, and what is their current status

  • In our case, this was done with 1 person driving and the other spending a LOT of time accessing online systems and planning upcoming stops

  • This was fun in a “shared frustration” sort of way, but it is not scalable

We eventually used 8 different charging apps; and 6 different mapping/navigation apps to find EV charging stations, their capabilities/availability, and the routes/directions to them:

  • All of these apps were needed at some point; none did everything, none were useless.

  • We needed them to overcome differences in regionality, different charger types, and generally in the data and features they provided

  • They all had a learning curve that took extra time; and as with many apps was quickly forgotten if not used regularly

  • The ability of any of these to provide real-time charger availability was helpful, but not always reliable

We were often at the mercy of fellow drivers to provide updates in the apps “notes” sections for charger availability; which dropped off greatly based on how old the post was.

Based on this, and before the government provides money to put in more stations, I propose the DoT (hello Secretary Buttigieg) lead the effort to build a system/database of STANDARDIZED attributes such as the following (preliminary list) for every public charging station to provide:

  • What is the average charge time

  • What is the average entering and leaving charge %

  • What are the most recent charging KWh curves

  • What are the vehicle types using that station

  • What is the cost to charge; how many used a plan and how many charged “one-time”

  • How did people pay (credit card, token, Apple Pay…)

  • When was the last successful charge at a station

  • When was the last unsuccessful charge at a station

EV charging companies would gladly provide this data at $0 to get “into the system”

The participation in building this system would include offering a “seat at the table” to EV charging station providers, EV manufacturers, system developers (Apple, Google, SalesForce…), anyone else interested:

  • To buy a seat would require purchasing a zero coupon US bond (ie, for $100-500M)

  • This would help fund the project, ensure commitment of companies

  • The companies can decide the level and type of participation they want to provide (requirements, development, testing…)

The payback of the bonds, and eventually moving this to the private sector, would be the selling of the system.

The time of sale would be at some agreed upon point in the future (ie, a year after the sales of new EV’s is more than the sales of ICE’s):

  • Government gets the investment $’s back (some, all, profit…)

  • The participating companies have an interest to build something “sellable”

  • The free market takes over

  • Potentially there could be multiple “owners” of the data (like Equifax, TransUnion, Experian is for credit information)

For the ongoing system maintenance, growth and reliability:

  • The system would have a self-funding revenue stream by having different entities pay for the data

  • ·The most obvious would be UI builders who would make money by selling (1) subscription services with additional features, (2) advertising, (3) charge for the system use

    • These could be the initial participating and other private companies

    • Government entities (state/municipal governments, schools)

    • Other “communities of interest” (4-wheelers, Campers, “Mach-E owners of Phoenix” 😊

    • The amount of payment would depend on the data accessed

  • The data could also be of use (sold) to utility companies and others with interest in moving off ICE’s

The timing of this is also important as IF the Tesla network is going to be made available to “CCS” chargers, having it standardized seems pretty important.

A point to make is this is not “mobile dependent”, it should be available for any user interface; especially direct from the vehicle.

Okay, so how does this get done??

Hopefully EVERY EV owner does a like and this gets to the “powers that be” who can make this happen; Obviously it is the DoT (hello again Secretary Buttigieg), but also EV manufacturers, charging station owners, those interested in stopping ICE’s from our highways; anyone with a voice!

Before the checks for new stations start flowing, let’s put some planning behind this!