US gov’t may update EV charger subsidy rules for newly-certified NACS port
The Federal Highway Administration announced today that it will seek feedback on how government rules should be updated to account for the new NACS/J3400 charging standard, potentially unlocking $7.5 billion in federal subsidies for the Tesla-developed charging connector.
As part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the US government has allocated $7.5 billion in subsidies to expand EV charging access. $5 billion of that is through the NEVI program, which is intended to install a nationwide backbone of fast chargers at least every 50 miles along America’s major roads in order to make EV road trips seamless.
But one requirement of that law was that the chargers installed must be accessible by multiple brands of electric car – standard, not proprietary. This requirement is obviously reasonable, but it also seemed targeted at Tesla, a company that had built its own Supercharger network only accessible by Tesla vehicles.
In response to this, Tesla released specifications of its charging connector which it called the “North American Charging Standard.” This was somewhat of an absurd name at the time, given that Tesla was the only company using it.
However, since Tesla is a majority of the US EV market, Tesla’s argument was that most of the cars and most of the DC charging stations in America already used Tesla’s connector, so it should be considered a de facto standard anyway.
For a few months, not many people took this seriously. However, Ford shook up the industry by announcing it would adopt the NACS plug on upcoming vehicles. Soon after, GM made the same move, and now basically everyone else has – including one of the last holdouts Volkswagen, as of today.
But even after momentum was apparent, the White House threw cold water on NACS’ victory, reminding everyone that there are still “minimum standards” within federal charger subsidy rules, and it would have to examine how NACS fulfills those standards, to ensure that the charging network stay accessible and interoperable. A standard isn’t a standard just because one company says it is – it has to be treated like a standard with independent control and verification.
As of today, any DC chargers installed with federal money can have NACS connectors, but must also include CCS connectors.
This led SAE, the professional engineering organization that develops industry standards, to take up the flag of creating a real, independent standard that is no longer in the hands of Tesla, and Tesla obliged by allowing SAE to have control over the process of standardization.
The government will examine how to take advantage of the new SAE NACS/J3400 standard
And today, now that SAE has officially published its report on the J3400 charging standard (J3400 is SAE’s name for NACS), the government has simultaneously announced that it wants to re-examine its minimum standards in light of the new certification.
We covered how the new SAE/NACS standard will solve (basically) every charging problem in one fell swoop last week (click through to learn more about that, I promise it’s more interesting than an article about competing charging standards seems like it would be).
Today’s press release from the Federal Highway Administration announces that it “will soon publish a Request for Information (RFI) to solicit feedback from stakeholders on updating FHWA’s minimum standards and requirements for electric vehicle (EV) charging stations to allow for new technology and continued innovation.”
It also specifically calls out the news of the day, name-dropping Tesla and NACS as the reason for this call to update the government’s minimum standards:
With the implementation of J3400 TM, a new standard for charging EVs published by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), any supplier or manufacturer will now be able to use and deploy the Tesla-developed North America Charging Standard (NACS) connector, which a majority of automakers have announced they will adopt on vehicles beginning in 2025 with adaptors available for current owners as soon as next spring.
In addition to that, the Biden Administration and the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation (which worked with SAE to develop the J3400 standard) put out a press release today applauding the new standard, celebrating how quickly the process was finished, and pointing to its potential future inclusion in the FHWA’s requirements.
Electrek’s Take
Firstly, I’d like to make note of the issue that many Tesla fans had for a while about the White House not properly acknowledging Tesla. I always thought this was silly, more of a reflection of the massive chip on the shoulder of the egomaniac who is the titular head of the company in question than of actual reality.
When the Biden administration said “hold up, not so fast” early in the NACS process, it made many think that Biden was once again slighting Tesla, but today’s news I think shows that that was never the case. The government simply wanted it to be a proper standard, and now it is (and that process went really fast), and on the same day that it became a proper standard, the government announced that it’s ready to treat it like one. That all seems fair to me.
While we don’t yet know what the minimum standards will change to, it seems clear that this is an effort to update them to coalesce around NACS. Which is great news, because charging will only get better when everyone just rips the band-aid off and goes with one charging standard – and a more robust one than J1772 at that.
But this leads to the question: will the government fully embrace NACS, thus potentially leaving some of the installed base of CCS-enabled cars out of luck in the longer term? Or will it hamstring deployment to some extent, requiring CCS (which is effectively now a dead standard) and therefore not full taking advantage of the NACS standard’s myriad solutions to charging problems?
But as I stated in that last article, this decision point is also a little ironic, considering NACS’ existence seems to have been spurred on by NEVI in the first place. When the government offered billions of dollars to companies that installed chargers with the requirement that those chargers be useable with multiple vehicles, that’s what got Tesla to finally offer a “standard.”
At the time, it wasn’t really a standard because only Tesla was using it, and it was somewhat of a last-ditch effort to save the Tesla connector. Then, when Ford decided to use NACS, that’s what started all the other dominos falling.
Now, NACS is dominant, but it only happened because of NEVI in the first place – and NEVI now has the difficult decision over whether to embrace the (positive) situation it caused, even if it will give some of the installed base an effective “use-by” date as a shift to NACS will inevitably mean fewer CCS/J1772 chargers over time.
We wish that all of this would have been figured out long ago so we could be done with it by now, but it looks like the solution to all our charging problems is finally nearly at hand.
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Just like it says on the tin – retailers are advertising killer deals on the fun-to-drive Kia Niro EV, with one midwest auto dealer reporting more than $10,000 off the sticker price of the Niro EV Wind. That’s nearly 25% off the top line price!
SKIP THE STORY: get straight to the deals.
The Kia Niro EV gets overshadowed by its objectively excellent EV6 and EV9 stablemates – both of which are currently available with substantial lease cash and 0% APR financing, in fact – but that doesn’t mean it’s not an excellent little electric runabout in its own right.
The last time I had a Niro EV tester, my kids loved it, I liked that it was quicker and more tossable than I expected it to be, and my wife liked the fact that “it doesn’t look electric. It looks normal.” And, with well over 200 miles of real world range (EPA-rated range is 253 miles), it was more than up to the task of commuting around Chicago and making the trip up to the Great Wolf Lodge in Gurnee and back without even needing to look for a charger.
It’s not the primary family hauler I’d choose – but as a second car? As a primary car for a slightly smaller family (1-2 kids, instead of 3-4)? The Kia Niro EV Wind, with a $42,470 MSRP, seems like a solid, “can’t go wrong” sort of choice. You know?
You won’t even have to pay that much, though. Raymond Kia in Antioch, Illinois is advertising a $42,470 Niro EV for $32,431 (that’s $10,039, or about 24% off the MSRP), and several others are advertising prices in the $33,000 range.
And, while we’re at it:
Kia Niro EV gallery
SOURCE | IMAGES: CarsDirect, Edmunds, Raymond Kia.
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Many school districts who used EPA funding to help purchase Lion Electric school buses are now stuck with broken down or unsafe vehicles – but Lion’s new Canadian investors seemingly have no plans to make things right.
“All four Lion buses that we own are currently parked and not being used,” Coleen Souza, interim transportation director of Winthrop Public Schools, told Jay Traugott over at Clean Trucking. “Two of them are in need of repairs which would cost us money which we are not willing to invest in because the buses do not run for more than a month before needing more repairs.”
The story is much the same at other US school districts who deployed Lion Electric buses over the last few years – and the trouble they describe isn’t isolated to a single component or system. One district we spoke to had onboard chargers that failed almost immediately after being plugged into a L2 AC charger. Another that spoke to Traugott reported emergency door gaps, power steering failure, loss of power, and braking issues.
As bad as the revelations of safety and drivability issues and $250 million in unresolved debt have been, it’s the objectively stupid design choices that have been the most shocking.
“Lion built an auxiliary diesel heater to heat the bus, essentially writing the manual as they went,” explained a school superintendent in the midwest, who asked not to be named. “It was fascinating to watch but there were design flaws with the heater. For example, the intakes pointed downward and we’re driving across rural roads and the intake sucks in that dirt.”
“Using a diesel-powered heater to warm an electric bus also somewhat defeats the purpose of going 100% zero-emissions,” added Traugott.
Despite a new electric school bus rebate and a fresh cash injection from Vincent Chiara, president of Quebec real estate powerhouse Groupe MACH, and Lion director Pierre Wilkie, however, it seems like no help is coming.
It just gets worse and worse
Despite early speculation – some of it my own, in fact – that the new investors would take the Canadian government up on its offer to help subsidize more electric school bus production and honor the company’s outstanding warranty claims, it appears the only vehicle line the new investors are interested in reviving are the the Class 8 electric semi manufacturing operations in Saint-Jérôme, Quebec.
The US school districts who spent tens of millions of taxpayer dollars in the hopes that Lion buses would help decarbonize their fleets and reduce students’ exposure to harmful diesel emissions? Many of them are back to using diesel, while others are trying to get their deposits back so they can buy something else.
Here’s hoping any school districts on the fence for electrification recognize that their are very real, very well-engineered, and very financially sound electric school bus manufacturers out there who can deliver on their promises.
SOURCES: Chicago Tribune, Clean Trucking, Electrical Business.
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Mitsubishi is partnering with Ample and Yamoto Transports to deploy an innovative new battery swap network for electric cars in its Japanese home market — but it’s not just for electric cars. Mitsubishi Fuso commercial trucks are getting in on the action, too!
Despite a number of early EV adopters with an overdeveloped concept of ownership, battery swap technology has proven to be both extremely effective and extremely positive to the overall EV ownership experience. And when you see how simple it is to add hundreds of miles of driving in just 100 seconds — quicker, in many cases, than pumping a tank of liquid fuel into an ICE-powered car — you might come around, yourself.
That seems to be what Mitsubishi thinks, anyway, and they’re hoping they’ll be your go-to choice when it’s time to electrify your regional and last-mile commercial delivery fleet(s) by launching a multi-year pilot program to deploy more than 150 battery-swappable commercial electric vehicles and 14 modular battery swapping stations across Tokyo, where the company plans to showcase its “five minute charging” tech in full view of hundreds of commercial fleets and, crucially, the executives of the companies that own and manage them.
A truck like the Mitsubishi eCanter typically requires a full night of AC charging to top off its batteries, and at least an hour or two on DC charging in Japan, according to Fuso. This joint pilot by Mitsubishi, Mitsubishi Fuso Trucks, and Ample aims to circumvent this issue of forced downtime with its swappable batteries, supporting vehicle uptime by delivering a full charge within minutes. The move is meant to encourage the transport industry’s EV shift while creating a depository of stored energy that can be deployed to the grid in the event of a natural disaster — something Mitsubishi in Japan has been working on for years.
Trucks like the eCanter already serve a number of roles throughout the global truck market, including municipal waste collection, regional delivery support, and more.
The pilot is backed by Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s “Technology Development Support Project for Promoting New Energy,” with local delivery operator Yamato Transport testing swappable EVs for delivery operations on both its eCanter light-duty trucks and Mitsubishi Minicab kei-class electric vans.
Electrek’s Take
Electrifying the commercial truck fleet is a key part of decarbonizing city truck fleets – not just here in the US, but around the world. I called the eCanter, “a great product for moving stuff around densely packed city streets,” and eliminating the corporate fear of EV charging in the wild just makes it an even better product for that purpose.
Here’s hoping we see more “right size” electric solutions like this one (and more battery swapping tech) in small towns and tight urban environments stateside somewhat sooner than later.
SOURCES | IMAGES: Mitsubishi, Fuso.
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