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Last Updated on: 3rd March 2025, 11:01 am
President Trump is determined to convert the US into a Soviet-style, fossil-fueled satellite of Russia. Whether or not he fails is up to the courts right now, since Republican leadership in Congress is uninterested and the voting public doesn’t get another try until 2026. Meanwhile, clean tech stakeholders in the US continue to hold the decarbonization fort, and that includes building out the nation’s network of EV charging stations.
The EV Charging Station Plot Thickens
As indicated in a memo from the US Department of Transportation, on February 6th Trump suspended the $5 billion NEVI program, which provides federal funds for states to install EV fast charging stations on major highways. The suspension was a significant disruption but not a complete one. As of November, nine states already installed their first NEVI-funded EV charging stations.
Among those states is Pennsylvania. On February 26, just 20 days after Trump suspended NEVI, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation celebrated the official opening of three additional NEVI-funded stations. In a press release announcing the three new stations, PennDOT went out of its way to ensure that everyone knows NEVI paid for the new stations. The words NEVI, or federally funded, or both occur in all but two of the 14 paragraphs in the press release, along with the exact amount of federal NEVI funds that went to each station.
PennDOT further noted that the state now has a total of eight NEVI-funded stations under its belt.
One of the newly announced EV charging stations is located at a Sheetz in Carlisle, and that’s where things get interesting. A Sheetz located in Scranton, Pennsylvania, is also getting a new fast charging station, but not necessarily with an assist from NEVI. This one is coming from IONNA, a consortium of leading automakers that does rely heavily on NEVI funding.
Last year IONNA beta-tested a new, stylish model for EV charging called Rechargery. It generated a lot of buzz in the automotive press, leading to a national rollout is this year.
The Scranton station is just one piece of IONNA’s bigger EV charging puzzle. On December 11, IONNA announced a new collaboration with Sheetz, aimed at installing at least 50 Rechargeries at Sheetz locations in the next two years. The partnership is concurrent with Sheetz’s expansion plan, aiming for a total of 1,000 locations by 2028.
On February 4, barely two days before Trump suspended the NEVI program, IONNA also released details about its plans to install Rechargeries all over the US, with the goal of more than 30,000 charging bays by 2030.
The Tip Of The EV Charging Station Iceberg
Another one of those three new NEVI stations in Pennsylvania is located at a Pilot/Flying J facility in New Milford. Like Sheetz, Pilot is also tapping into the opportunity to attract EV drivers with or without NEVI funding. In 2023 Pilot paired up with GM and EVgo, aiming to install charging stations at 500 of its locations (check out a review of one station by CleanTechnica reporter Jennifer Sensiba).
The third NEVI station is located at a shopping center in Chambersburg, installed under the umbrella of an up-and-coming startup called Francis Energy. The company surfaced on the CleanTechnica radar in 2023 when it ordered 1,000 EV chargers from the firm SK Signet, indicating ambitious plans for expanding its existing network. Francis bills itself as the operator of “one of the largest privately held EV charging networks in the U.S.”
“Francis Energy is expanding significantly with over 1,200 sites secured under long-term leases for DC fast charging stations across 40 states,” the company says of itself.
EV Charging & The “Virtual Depot” Of The Future
Another factor that keeps the EV charging station momentum alive is is fleet electrification. A new wrinkle in that area surfaced last week, when the EV charging services firm AmpUp announced a strategic partnership with the startup Curo, aimed at enabling fleet managers to skip the expense of building their own EV charging stations. The idea is to deploy a “Virtual Depot” consisting of a network of host stations, which lease their chargers to fleet EVs for use during off-hours.
“This partnership addresses critical challenges that impede fleet electrification: the high cost of building dedicated charging infrastructure, the need for numerous fleets to distribute their operations, and the underutilization of existing charging stations,” AmpUp explains.
The company launched in 2018 and has supported more than 1,500 charging networks since then, working with such as JLL, CBRE, Domino’s Pizza, Goodyear, Under Armour, and Hilton among others.
US States Step In Where Trump Flails
The fleet electrification angle meshes with bidirectional EV charging, which is becoming a key element in the appeal of EVs a well as another factor in the EV charging station momentum. A bidirectionally equipped EV is essentially a rolling energy storage platform. Its batteries can run electric tools and home appliances, and it can discharge to the grid or a microgrid.
On February 25, the California-based global firm Nuvve announced a four year, $400 million fleet electrification and bidirectional charging deal with the State of New Mexico, in support of the state’s “Vehicles as a Service” program.
Of the total, $150 million is reserved to electrify New Mexico’s school bus fleet, which counts more than 2,000 buses on its roster. The remaining $250 million will cover the electrification of other state-owned fleets, totaling more than 3,500 buses and other vehicles.
The deal enables New Mexico to sell its aging ICE fleet to Nuvve for retirement, and to lease new EVs. Along with the lease service, Nuvve provides a soup-to-nuts EV charging station sevice. The station buildout includes major highways and other corridors for inter-city travel, as well as local bus routes.
Bidirectional charging is another focus of the contract. Integrated with solar energy and stationary energy storage in microgrids, V2G fleets support resiliency and optimize use of available renewable energy and energy storage resources. They also enable the fleet manager to participate in wholesale electricity markets as well as local distribution. Nuvve anticipates developing 24 V2G hubs in New Mexico under the contract.
What’s That About American Energy Dominance Again?
As a follow-on benefit, Nuvve anticipates that the stationary energy storage element will support grid modernization and resiliency efforts among local utilities. It’s yet another indication that solar-plus-storage systems are competing on a value basis against natural gas for a share of the utility-scale power generation pie.
It’s also yet another demonstration that Trump’s “American Energy Dominance” plan is nothing more than a ball and chain that freezes the US back into an abusive, 20th-century energy economy while the rest of the world moves on. Trump’s boot-licking performance in the White House last Friday pleased his audience in Russia, but he accomplished nothing of benefit to the US. A wholesale realignment of international relations is now under way with Europe, Canada, and Ukraine united to defend their sovereignty against the US and Russia.
If you have any thoughts about that, drop a note in the comment thread or better yet, find your representatives in Congress and tell them what you think.
Photo (cropped): Electric vehicle stakeholders continue to move the needle on EV charging stations, despite Trump’s disruption of the federal NEVI program (courtesy of US Department of Energy).
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