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As we race to an electric future, slower charging is stuck in 2015.
Breaking news: America’s electric vehicle charging infrastructure continues to disappoint. In other news, water is wet, the sky is blue (unless it’s orange), and nine out of the 10 people who might occupy the White House in 2025 probably aren’t going to do a damn thing about climate change.
It’s been that way for years, so why is it still the case now? Besides Tesla’s excellent charging network, EV infrastructure hasn’t ever been up to snuff, but there’s a now baffling incongruency between that and the actual EV market. Despite some fits and starts, this year is expected to be a record one for EV sales. New electric cars are coming out all the time and across every part of the pricing spectrum.
Why does our charging experience feel stuck in 2015, back when EVs were few and far between on the roads and mostly driven by early adopters?
One area in particular that’s lacking is Level 2 charging. Faster than a wall outlet but slower than the DC fast chargers that can fill up a compatible vehicle in 20 to 30 minutes, Level 2 chargers can juice a car overnight or add some miles during daily errands. And they’ll be crucial to an EV future — even if drivers don’t quite think of it that way yet. (Level 2 chargers are the ones you can have in your home garage, by the way.)
DC fast charging gets the lion’s share of attention in part, I believe, because so many new EV drivers are used to the gas station model. To them, getting gas is getting gas; there’s really only one way to do it and it takes about five minutes, tops. Adding more DC fast chargers, in theory, will not only enable longer trips but also ease that charging anxiety by making EVs more convenient to own.
But the truth is, we’ll need both fast charging stations for road trips and quality Level 2 charging for when our cars are parked at the office, shopping malls, movie theaters or anywhere else we might go. For starters, a gas car can’t get energy while it’s parked, so a good Level 2 charger is an immediate upgrade in convenience from internal combustion right now — if you can find one.
Second, there’s the energy consumption issue. Besides being expensive and labor-intensive to build, DC fast chargers use a staggering amount of electricity to charge cars quickly. Matt McCaffree, the VP of Utility Marketing Development at Austin-based Level 2 charging company Flash, gave an example of a DC fast charger station with 16 ports where each offers at least 150-kilowatt charging.
“If you multiply 150 times 16, then you end up with 2.4 megawatts of energy being pulled from the grid,” he said. “That’s the equivalent of about two 14-story buildings.” Put two such stations together, McCaffree said, and you get energy use on par with some landmarks in Denver where he lives: “That's the equivalent of a stadium,” he said. “That's the equivalent of Mile High or Ball Arena downtown.”
(By the way, relying too much on fast charging is bad news for your battery, too; that’s a ton of heat that can degrade performance over time, so it’s best not to use these on a daily basis.)
Given the fact that EVs are meant to solve energy and climate concerns, you’d think someone would step up and make Level 2 chargers better by now. But you’d sadly be wrong.
A study released last week by auto industry marketing and research firm J.D. Power and must-have charging app PlugShare reveals that even with much wider EV adoption, the problems around charging aren’t getting better. According to the firm’s data, it’s actually getting worse. Customer satisfaction with public Level 2 charging in particular is at its lowest point in the three years the study has been conducted. Fast charging fared better overall. But even in California, where charging is ubiquitous for the country’s biggest EV market, a staggering 25% of respondents said they found public charging unreliable.
If California can’t get this right, what hope is there for the rest of us?
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What’s going wrong here is nothing new. Many Level 2 chargers are still hard to find, shoved off to the sides of parking lots or other inconvenient places. Then you have the challenges of uptime, whether they’re actually working or not; the question of who’s responsible for fixing them, the charging company or the owner of the property where they sit; and the abundance of apps to pay for different charging networks, often through depositing money into a digital wallet before you can begin.
If gas cars were a new invention in 2023, and gas stations worked this way, we’d still be a horse-centric society.
Level 2 charging also doesn’t seem to be a huge focus of the federal government; though there is a grant program to fund such chargers in certain communities, more than twice as much funding is going toward DC fast charging. “[Federal] funding is disproportionately focused on the roadside charging and on the transportation corridors,” McCaffree said. “Again, that is an important use case that we need to have out there. But it is not the only charging solution that we should provide.”
To make matters worse, the $5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program that offers grants for public chargers has rules around uptime. Specifically, grant recipients have to guarantee their chargers will be functional 97% of the time. But those only apply to the DC fast chargers — grants for Level 2 chargers are under a separate program and have no such strings. This means that while the federal government will require DC fast chargers to get better, Level 2 chargers may only do so if “the market” forces things that way via competition.
Of course, no businessman screams out for more regulation, but McCaffree thinks the whole charging industry would do well to follow those DC charging uptime rules on their own as a “baseline” for how to operate. “If the industry starts to just say, ‘Okay, we're going to stick to this,’ then I think that that will be sufficient. And that's a standard that is very reasonable.”
There’s also Tesla riding to the rescue of the whole EV industry by opening its charging network to other EVs, including its Level 2 “Destination” chargers. “It may provide a boost in fast-charging satisfaction among owners of EVs from other brands as they begin to use Tesla’s Supercharger stations,” J.D. Power’s EV chief Brent Gruber said in a statement. Then again, as great as the Supercharger network is, I question the wisdom of relying on one company to solve what’s about to be a national infrastructure challenge — especially a company run by, you know, that guy.
So it’s clear that as EVs get cheaper, faster, better and more capable of driving longer distances, public Level 2 charging needs to up its game too. I have some ideas on how to start:
National uptime requirements and pricing transparency. I’d be in favor of bringing the federal hammer down here, even if most charging companies aren’t. So far, EV charging has been a barely regulated free-for-all; if the gas station industry can thrive under such red tape, so can the electron business. I’d like to see Level 2 chargers beholden to those 97% uptime rules, with prominent displays for pricing — people often don’t even realize this.
An end to the proprietary payment apps. Whether it’s credit card point of sale, digital pay accessibility or, hell, even cash somehow, the “every charging network has its own app” madness has to go. This is another federal grant requirement for DC chargers, though it’s unclear how it’s going to be implemented.
Better education. This comes in on the part of the federal government, the charging companies, the automotive industry — really everyone involved. We cannot have EV charging exist under the gas station paradigm forever, and that means teaching drivers what types of charging they need for different situations and where to find them. Otherwise, you’ll have waves of new drivers pulling up to an “EV charger” in need of immediate juice, only to find charging will take eight hours. (I’ve done that myself in the past; the learning curve is real here and it is steep.)
An industry focus on making this work. McCaffree said much of the EV charging market was, until fairly recently, a “land grab”: getting as many chargers out there with as much brand recognition as possible, and not focusing as much on quality and customer service. Those days are over. “I think we as an industry… now, we have to focus on creating that consumer confidence in what has already been built.”
If they can’t, they won’t survive what’s coming any more than a car company that refuses to invest in electrification.
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The Loan Programs Office is good for more than just nuclear funding.
That China has a whip hand over the rare earths mining and refining industry is one of the few things Washington can agree on.
That’s why Alex Jacquez, who worked on industrial policy for Joe Biden’s National Economic Council, found it “astounding”when he read in the Washington Post this week that the White House was trying to figure out on the fly what to do about China restricting exports of rare earth metals in response to President Trump’s massive tariffs on the country’s imports.
Rare earth metals have a wide variety of applications, including for magnets in medical technology, defense, and energy productssuch as wind turbines and electric motors.
Jacquez told me there has been “years of work, including by the first Trump administration, that has pointed to this exact case as the worst-case scenario that could happen in an escalation with China.” It stands to reason, then, that experienced policymakers in the Trump administration might have been mindful of forestalling this when developing their tariff plan. But apparently not.
“The lines of attack here are numerous,” Jacquez said. “The fact that the National Economic Council and others are apparently just thinking about this for the first time is pretty shocking.”
And that’s not the only thing the Trump administration is doing that could hamper American access to rare earths and critical minerals.
Though China still effectively controls the global pipeline for most critical minerals (a broader category that includes rare earths as well as more commonly known metals and minerals such as lithium and cobalt), the U.S. has been at work for at least the past five years developing its own domestic supply chain. Much of that work has fallen to the Department of Energy, whose Loan Programs Office has funded mining and processing facilities, and whose Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains hasfunded and overseen demonstration projects for rare earths and critical minerals mining and refining.
The LPO is in line for dramatic cuts, as Heatmap has reported. So, too, are other departments working on rare earths, including the Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains. In its zeal to slash the federal government, the Trump administration may have to start from scratch in its efforts to build up a rare earths supply chain.
The Department of Energy did not reply to a request for comment.
This vulnerability to China has been well known in Washington for years, including by the first Trump administration.
“Our dependence on one country, the People's Republic of China (China), for multiple critical minerals is particularly concerning,” then-President Trump said in a 2020 executive order declaring a “national emergency” to deal with “our Nation's undue reliance on critical minerals.” At around the same time, the Loan Programs Office issued guidance “stating a preference for projects related to critical mineral” for applicants for the office’s funding, noting that “80 percent of its rare earth elements directly from China.” Using the Defense Production Act, the Trump administration also issued a grant to the company operating America's sole rare earth mine, MP Materials, to help fund a processing facility at the site of its California mine.
The Biden administration’s work on rare earths and critical minerals was almost entirely consistent with its predecessor’s, just at a greater scale and more focused on energy. About a month after taking office, President Bidenissued an executive order calling for, among other things, a Defense Department report “identifying risks in the supply chain for critical minerals and other identified strategic materials, including rare earth elements.”
Then as part of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, the Biden administration increased funding for LPO, which supported a number of critical minerals projects. It also funneled more money into MP Materials — including a $35 million contract from the Department of Defense in 2022 for the California project. In 2024, it awarded the company a competitive tax credit worth $58.5 million to help finance construction of its neodymium-iron-boron magnet factory in Texas. That facilitybegan commercial operation earlier this year.
The finished magnets will be bought by General Motors for its electric vehicles. But even operating at full capacity, it won’t be able to do much to replace China’s production. The MP Metals facility is projected to produce 1,000 tons of the magnets per year.China produced 138,000 tons of NdFeB magnets in 2018.
The Trump administration is not averse to direct financial support for mining and minerals projects, but they seem to want to do it a different way. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum has proposed using a sovereign wealth fund to invest in critical mineral mines. There is one big problem with that plan, however: the U.S. doesn’t have one (for the moment, at least).
“LPO can invest in mining projects now,” Jacquez told me. “Cutting 60% of their staff and the experts who work on this is not going to give certainty to the business community if they’re looking to invest in a mine that needs some government backstop.”
And while the fate of the Inflation Reduction Act remains very much in doubt, the subsidies it provided for electric vehicles, solar, and wind, along with domestic content requirements have been a major source of demand for critical minerals mining and refining projects in the United States.
“It’s not something we’re going to solve overnight,” Jacquez said. “But in the midst of a maximalist trade with China, it is something we will have to deal with on an overnight basis, unless and until there’s some kind of de-escalation or agreement.”
A conversation with VDE Americas CEO Brian Grenko.
This week’s Q&A is about hail. Last week, we explained how and why hail storm damage in Texas may have helped galvanize opposition to renewable energy there. So I decided to reach out to Brian Grenko, CEO of renewables engineering advisory firm VDE Americas, to talk about how developers can make sure their projects are not only resistant to hail but also prevent that sort of pushback.
The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Hiya Brian. So why’d you get into the hail issue?
Obviously solar panels are made with glass that can allow the sunlight to come through. People have to remember that when you install a project, you’re financing it for 35 to 40 years. While the odds of you getting significant hail in California or Arizona are low, it happens a lot throughout the country. And if you think about some of these large projects, they may be in the middle of nowhere, but they are taking hundreds if not thousands of acres of land in some cases. So the chances of them encountering large hail over that lifespan is pretty significant.
We partnered with one of the country’s foremost experts on hail and developed a really interesting technology that can digest radar data and tell folks if they’re developing a project what the [likelihood] will be if there’s significant hail.
Solar panels can withstand one-inch hail – a golfball size – but once you get over two inches, that’s when hail starts breaking solar panels. So it’s important to understand, first and foremost, if you’re developing a project, you need to know the frequency of those events. Once you know that, you need to start thinking about how to design a system to mitigate that risk.
The government agencies that look over land use, how do they handle this particular issue? Are there regulations in place to deal with hail risk?
The regulatory aspects still to consider are about land use. There are authorities with jurisdiction at the federal, state, and local level. Usually, it starts with the local level and with a use permit – a conditional use permit. The developer goes in front of the township or the city or the county, whoever has jurisdiction of wherever the property is going to go. That’s where it gets political.
To answer your question about hail, I don’t know if any of the [authority having jurisdictions] really care about hail. There are folks out there that don’t like solar because it’s an eyesore. I respect that – I don’t agree with that, per se, but I understand and appreciate it. There’s folks with an agenda that just don’t want solar.
So okay, how can developers approach hail risk in a way that makes communities more comfortable?
The bad news is that solar panels use a lot of glass. They take up a lot of land. If you have hail dropping from the sky, that’s a risk.
The good news is that you can design a system to be resilient to that. Even in places like Texas, where you get large hail, preparing can mean the difference between a project that is destroyed and a project that isn’t. We did a case study about a project in the East Texas area called Fighting Jays that had catastrophic damage. We’re very familiar with the area, we work with a lot of clients, and we found three other projects within a five-mile radius that all had minimal damage. That simple decision [to be ready for when storms hit] can make the complete difference.
And more of the week’s big fights around renewable energy.
1. Long Island, New York – We saw the face of the resistance to the war on renewable energy in the Big Apple this week, as protestors rallied in support of offshore wind for a change.
2. Elsewhere on Long Island – The city of Glen Cove is on the verge of being the next New York City-area community with a battery storage ban, discussing this week whether to ban BESS for at least one year amid fire fears.
3. Garrett County, Maryland – Fight readers tell me they’d like to hear a piece of good news for once, so here’s this: A 300-megawatt solar project proposed by REV Solar in rural Maryland appears to be moving forward without a hitch.
4. Stark County, Ohio – The Ohio Public Siting Board rejected Samsung C&T’s Stark Solar project, citing “consistent opposition to the project from each of the local government entities and their impacted constituents.”
5. Ingham County, Michigan – GOP lawmakers in the Michigan State Capitol are advancing legislation to undo the state’s permitting primacy law, which allows developers to evade municipalities that deny projects on unreasonable grounds. It’s unlikely the legislation will become law.
6. Churchill County, Nevada – Commissioners have upheld the special use permit for the Redwood Materials battery storage project we told you about last week.