Building 8 EV Charging Stations Under $7.5 Billion Investment for Them Is ‘On Track’

During CNBC's “Squawk Box” broadcast Thursday, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the construction of eight electric vehicle charging stations so far is “on track” under the Controlling Inflation Act's $7.5 billion investment in electric vehicle charging stations, as the bulk of the construction is scheduled to take place in the second half of the decade.

co-host Joe Curnen asked.[O]Have the plans for the electrification of the automotive industry been realigned? I'll give you just one example, but can you explain why? The Inflation Control Act allocated $7.5 billion for the construction of these charging stations. The latest information is that with the $7.5 billion allocated, eight charging stations were built. By 2030, we are supposed to have 500,000 of these charging stations. What's the problem? Have you looked into it and understood why it happened?

Buttigieg responded, “Yes, that's true. There are about 190,000 publicly available charging stations in the United States right now, which is about double what there were when President Biden took office. But the problem is that there are some gaps in the market that can't be built by the private sector, which has been building chargers up until now. So the bill funds federally supported chargers that are supposed to be online by 2030. Right now, most of that construction is going to happen in 2027, 2028, but I think we'll actually have a significant amount by 2026. As you said, there are actually some that are already up and running. But it's going to be the second half of this decade that we'll really see.” And the installation of federally supported chargers is very important because there are places along roads and in city centers and apartment complexes and other places where it's still not profitable for private companies to install chargers at a profit. About 80% of EV charging is done at home, but the new EV landscape that we're working through, as we move toward the president's goal of having about half of all EVs sold by the end of the century, will require a lot of charging equipment by the end of the century, and as of 2024, they just don't exist.”