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In the waning days of the Biden administration, the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus announced an award of $14.5 million in federal funds to build almost 200 EV charging stations across the Chicago area.
A few weeks later, after President Donald Trump had taken office, the funds were “gone,” as the caucus’ environmental initiatives director, Edith Makra, put it. One of Trump’s earliest actions was to suspend the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure grant program, which is where the money for the Chicago-area charging effort had come from.
The Metropolitan Mayors Caucus is forging ahead with its EV Readiness program anyway. Even without the funds, there’s much it can do to help Chicago-area towns and cities get more chargers in the ground and EVs on the road. In fact, the caucus has already been doing that work for the last three years, thanks to funding from the Illinois utility ComEd.
Leaders say it’s an example of how local programs can make progress even when federal dollars are ripped away. It’s also a way to help meet Illinois’ ambitious goal of placing 1 million EVs on the state’s roads by 2030, a major leap from the roughly 160,000 registered as of November.
This fall, the caucus launched its fourth EV Readiness cohort, wherein representatives of 16 municipalities will learn how to upgrade their permitting and zoning processes related to EV charging, raise awareness about EVs and state and local incentives, and craft mandates for charging access.
Since 2022, 38 communities have gone through the program, and state data shows that EV registrations in most of these communities have increased faster than in the state as a whole.
Cost is one of the core factors holding back EV adoption in Illinois, and beyond.
Trump administration policies have made that hurdle even higher. Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, rebates of $7,500 for new EVs and $4,000 for used ones expired in September, while the federal tax credit for EV chargers will disappear in June 2026.
But price is not the only factor, and as manufacturers manage to bring down costs, these other barriers will become even more crucial to address.
For example, many people hesitate to buy an electric vehicle because of range anxiety — the fear they will run out of battery and be unable to find a reliable charger. Or they may feel intimidated by the concept of an EV in general. That’s where the EV Readiness program comes in, helping municipalities increase charging stations and educate residents on EVs and the incentives that are still available.
Participating communities can achieve bronze, silver, or gold status by taking certain actions on a checklist of over 130 possible steps. These include nuanced zoning and permitting changes, like examining when chargers can be in the public right of way and processing permit applications for the equipment in 10 days or less.
Streamlining such regulations helps charging-station companies that want to do business in the area, and the owners of gas stations, apartment buildings, parking garages, corporations, and other locations who want to install ports.
Makra called EV-friendly zoning and permitting codes “a glide path for sensible development.”
“Municipalities have a big role to play in making charging infrastructure available to their communities,” added Cristina Botero, senior manager of beneficial electrification for ComEd, which funds the EV Readiness program as part of a state mandate called beneficial electrification. “This program is so effective because it’s helping the leadership of these communities understand what steps need to happen.”
The EV Readiness program also encourages municipalities to establish requirements for charging access in new construction and to train first responders to deal with EV battery fires. Participants can take steps to boost public awareness, too, informing residents about utility rate programs conducive to EV charging and creating a landing page about EVs on the town website.
“People sometimes think that the dollars are the only reason people are not transitioning to EVs,” said Botero. “But a big part of it is education.”
The EV Readiness program has so far attracted a wide range of municipalities, from the EV-friendly and relatively high-income Highland Park to smaller communities that otherwise “do not stand out from a sustainability or transportation standpoint,” noted Makra.
“What’s so gratifying is to see the diversity in jurisdictions,” she said. “They’re stepping forward and saying, ‘This would be good for our community.’”
That diversity is reflected in the new cohort, too, which includes the wealthy Chicago suburb of Winnetka and the small farm town of Sandwich.
Glen Cole, assistant manager for the city of Rolling Meadows, said the EV Readiness program helps local governments make it easier for building owners and businesses to comply with state law, which requires that all parking spaces at new large multifamily buildings and at least one space at new smaller residences have the electrical infrastructure needed to one day install an EV charger.
Rolling Meadows is a leafy suburb of about 24,000 people. Along with Chicago, it became one of three municipalities to earn gold status in the cohort that finished this summer.
Before that designation, Rolling Meadows already hosted a number of EV chargers on-site at corporate employers, including aerospace firm Northrop Grumman and the Gallagher insurance company’s global headquarters. Seven chargers are also under construction at Rolling Meadows’ city hall. The city adopted an ordinance in February mandating that new or renovated gas stations have one EV fast-charger for every four fuel pumps, and that parking lots with 30 or more spots have EV chargers.
Cole said the EV Readiness program helped advance the city’s progress
“The biggest part for us was putting in one place all these standards and expectations for an installer or investor or business, and incrementally easing into policy requirements to provide charging at public locations,” Cole said. “The availability of quick, easy, high-quality access to charging is a big determinant of whether people will take the leap to EVs, and it’s something the city can exercise a lot of control over.”
Multiple items on the EV Readiness checklist require collaborating with ComEd and making the public aware of the utility’s EV incentives and billing plans conducive to charging.
ComEd, whose northern Illinois territory is home to 90% of the state’s EVs, offers rebates for households that install “smart” Level 2 EV chargers and covers the cost of any electrical work needed. In 2026, the maximum rebate will be $2,500, and could change with market conditions, according to the utility. ComEd also covers the cost of fast chargers and the “make-ready” construction and prep work for businesses and public agencies, and offers rebates for EV fleet vehicles.
The utility has paid out over $130 million for more than 8,700 charging ports and more than 2,700 fleet vehicles since early 2024, with 80% of the funds spent in communities identified as low-income or equity-eligible, per state law prioritizing investment in underserved communities. Low-income and equity-eligible customers receive higher rebates, and Botero said the utility has done extensive outreach in those areas, where the tax-credit expiration will make it especially hard for people to afford EVs.
“The opportunities we offer are more important than ever,” Botero said.
Botero said that after the Trump administration ended EV tax credits, the utility “went back to the drawing board” and increased the rebates it had previously planned for 2026, though some of the amounts will still be lower than in 2025. Incentives for light-duty vehicles in non-equity areas will end, but the utility will increase rebates for some types of vehicles in equity areas. For example, the 2026 rebate for electric school buses in those areas will be $220,000 to $240,000, up from $180,000 this year.
The state of Illinois offers $4,000 rebates for low-income EV buyers and a $2,000 rebate for those who don’t qualify as low-income. The state also this month started accepting applications for about $20 million in grants for public charging stations. In the third quarter of 2025, Illinois logged a record number of EV sales, mirroring national trends as people scrambled to buy EVs before the tax credits expired in September.
Despite the troubling federal outlook, Botero said, “the silver lining is Illinois is extremely committed to EVs.”
This story was first published by Grist.
Phillip Stafford has been converted. After two years of driving a Tesla, he says there’s no going back to gasoline — the money he saves on fuel alone makes that clear. And since his work as a crisis counselor takes him all over Richmond, Virginia, he charges often.
That’s made him picky about where he buys electrons. On a crisp fall afternoon last month, Stafford had his Model 3 plugged in at a Sheetz. A red-and-white Wawa sandwich wrapper on the seat hinted at where his heart lies in that convenience-store rivalry. Still, brand loyalty goes only so far when the battery is running low. Given a choice between the two, Sheetz wins. “It has more watts, so it charges a little faster,” he said.
The seemingly small question of where to spend 20 or so minutes topping off a battery reveals the transformation taking hold among fuel retailers. For more than 50 years, chains like Wawa, Sheetz, and Love’s Travel Stops have defined when and where people refuel. As EVs reshape mobility, these retailers are among those embracing charging.
Their challenge goes beyond providing power to turning the time that drivers spend plugged in into profitable foot traffic. Selling electricity alone won’t pay the bills; the real money lies in selling snacks. Making that work requires reimagining what a pit stop looks and feels like, even as costly infrastructure upgrades and shifting federal policies complicate the transition.
Wawa and Sheetz are two of the furthest along. The Pennsylvania-based companies have built out hundreds of chargers and enjoy fervent fanbases that make them two of the most popular convenience stores in the country. Their made-to-order sandwiches, vast array of snacks, and clean restrooms have made them regular stops for road trippers and commuters alike — and now, for EV drivers looking to recharge their cars and, often, themselves.
They offer a glimpse of the road ahead. As electric vehicles move ever further from niche toward norm, the focus for retailers like these could shift from which one offers the cheapest fuel to which one can make waiting for the car to fill up the best experience.
“The problem with a lot of current gas stations is [they’re] not that nice of a place to spend 15, 20, or 30 minutes,” said Scott Hardman of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis. “Hopefully in the future, we’ll see more of them turn into coffee shops, cafes — places you actually want to be.”
That future is slowly coming into focus. Retailers like Wawa and Sheetz have spent the past few years exploring what the transition from selling gasoline to selling electricity might look like. Even with the headwinds EVs face, at least 26 percent of cars on U.S. roads could be electric by 2035, and some projections suggest they could account for 65 percent of all sales by 2050.
The two chains offer a place to plug in at over 10 percent of their locations. Wawa has installed more than 210 chargers, while Sheetz provides more than 650 at 95 locations that have logged at least 2 million sessions. Clean amenities and expansive menus with offerings like Wawa’s turkey-stuffed Gobbler and Sheetz’s deep-fried Big Mozz have placed them near the top of convenience store satisfaction rankings.
Both say embracing cars with cords builds on what already attracts customers. Wawa frames it as an extension of its “one-stop” model for food and fuel. Its competitor calls charging “a seamless extension of the Sheetz experience.” The language differs, but the message is the same: Selling electricity works if it brings people like John Baiano inside.
The New York resident owns two Tesla Model Ys and travels throughout the northeast for his two businesses — a Bitcoin consultancy and a horse racing operation. He plugs in at Wawa because the stores are clean, offer plenty of amenities, and provide a comfortable place to check in with clients. “I use the bathroom, maybe get a snack,” he said. (He prefers the turkey pinwheel.) “I was a little nervous about the charging aspect of things. Once I started experiencing this, it was seamless.”
At the moment, most public quick chargers are tucked away in the far corners of shopping centers, inside parking garages, and other functional but hardly inviting places to spend 20 minutes. They’re fine when you’re out and about running errands, but not terribly appealing at night and not particularly conducive to a road trip.
Tesla dominates the space with its Supercharger network, which provides over half the country’s quick chargers, with Electrify America, EVgo, and ChargePoint together accounting for another 25 to 30 percent. Retailers like Love’s Travel Stops, Pilot Flying J, and Buc-ee’s are joining Sheetz and Wawa in working with those networks and others to add chargers alongside gas pumps. Their efforts signal how a system built for gasoline is starting to evolve for electricity.
Everything Stafford and Baiano like about plugging in at a convenience store reflects an Electric Vehicle Council study that ranked security, lighting, and 24/7 access as the three things drivers want most in a charging station. Another survey found that 80 percent of them will go out of their way to get it. Reliability is another concern — and a frequent complaint with the nation’s current charging infrastructure. As EVs become more common, drivers are going to be less willing to put up with malfunctioning or broken chargers than the early adopters were.
Ryan McKinnon of the Charge Ahead Partnership, which pushes for a comprehensive charging network, sees fuel retailers as a logical place to build out such a system because they already have the right locations and amenities. “What EV charging needs is a competitive and lucrative marketplace where folks can actually make money selling EV charging,” he said.
Therein lies the challenge. Buying and installing a quick charger can cost more than $100,000. Beyond that lie fluctuating prices from utility companies, which one leading charging provider said is a key factor in deciding where to locate the devices. Retailers won’t recover that by selling electrons alone, given that the machines might generate just $10,000 in revenue each year, Hardman said. EVgo noted in its second-quarter earnings report that it earned just under $12,000 per stall.
Making this work for retailers requires getting people out of their cars and into the stores. Just as gas retailers earn two-thirds of their profit selling sandwiches, snacks, and sodas, those selling electricity can expect to do the same. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that installing an EV charger increased spending by 1 percent, which would cover 11 percent of the cost of installing the charger. (Other studies have found similar benefits for surrounding businesses; Tesla Superchargers can boost revenue by 4 percent.)
For some retailers, chargers are a loss leader meant to pull customers into stores, said Karl Doenges of the National Association of Convenience Stores. Others see them as a way to secure increasingly scarce electrical capacity while it’s available. Some are moving “forward on a charging station, even though they don’t think [the market is] 100 percent ready,” he said.
Even the strongest business cases for installing the devices depended on Washington’s help to pencil out. Incentives that the Biden administration created through the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provided billions in grants, tax credits, and matching funds to help expand the fueling infrastructure of tomorrow, particularly in rural and low-income communities that a free market might overlook.
When Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, there was little doubt federal support for this ambitious effort would change. Yet the upheaval was more dramatic than expected. In February, the Trump administration paused the $5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure, or NEVI, program, the backbone of Washington’s effort to build a nationwide charging network. Fuel retailers, which have been some of the effort’s biggest beneficiaries, expressed concern.
The administration reluctantly reinstated NEVI, which had installed just 126 charging ports by the time Trump won his second term, in August. “If Congress is requiring the federal government to support charging stations, let’s cut the waste and do it right,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said at the time. But with most of the funding allocated, the program will likely expire in 2026.
When it revived NEVI, the Trump administration updated recommendations for states, which administer the funds, in a way that seems to favor a national network run by big chains with highway operations. The Federal Highway Administration’s guidance explicitly recommended building charging infrastructure near fuel retailers.
Nonetheless, at least some of those companies see this as a difficult moment for EV charging. Joe Sheetz, executive vice chairman of the family-owned company, has said momentum is slowing because much of the funding has come from the government and big players like Tesla. Some smaller chains are backing away, but Sheetz said his company will keep at it.
Even as EV adoption grows, most people will continue to plug in largely at home. About 80 percent of charging occurs there, and some providers, like It’s Electric, are skipping partnerships with fuel retailers, focusing instead on slower and cheaper level 2 chargers that are convenient for apartments or homes without garages and do the job in four to 10 hours.
Charles Gerena, a lead organizer of the advocacy organization Drive Electric RVA, rarely visits a public charger in his Chevy Bolt. But on longer trips, he’s noticed more opportunities to plug in, especially in rural areas where fast charging was once scarce. On a recent road trip to Virginia Beach in his wife’s Ford Mustang Mach-E, he took advantage of the car’s ability to tap the Tesla Supercharger network and used the app PlugShare to find a reliable station — at a Wawa.
“I like Wawa’s food better than Sheetz,” he said. “I think I’m in the minority. My daughter actually likes Sheetz better.” Still, for Gerena, reliability trumps loyalty. “If it gets a lousy rating, I’d be wary of going to it, regardless of which gas station it was.”
Despite customer loyalty that can sometimes divide households, retailers are learning that sandwiches and snacks aren’t enough. Success will depend on providing plenty of opportunities to plug in, and making sure the hardware works when drivers need it.
Gas cars are sputtering, stuck in the slow lane — and battery-powered vehicles are gaining on them fast.
A massive shift has occurred in less than a decade. At their all-time high, in 2017, global sales of pure internal combustion vehicles hit 79.9 million units, per data from the International Energy Agency. Last year, 54.8 million internal combustion cars were sold, a 31% reduction.
Meanwhile, electric vehicles are ascendant. Nearly 11 million new EVs were sold worldwide in 2024, the vast majority in China, while consumers also bought 6.5 million plug-in hybrids — the ones with both gas engines and rechargeable batteries. Those figures represent enormous growth from just a few years ago. Back in 2017 when gas cars were at their peak, a measly 800,000 EVs and 400,000 plug-in hybrids were sold worldwide.
EVs are already more popular than fossil-fuel-guzzling vehicles in several places. And I’m not just talking about Norway. In China, the world’s largest EV manufacturer and auto sales market, around 60% of new cars sold this year will be electric. By 2030, the IEA expects that number to hit 80%.
Still, for the foreseeable future, the number of EVs on the road will pale in comparison to the number of gas-powered cars. (Older gas cars will likely be puttering around for a while even as EVs beat them out in sales.)
And the way forward is not necessarily smooth. In some countries, including the United States, the upfront costs of many EV models remain too high for consumers. Drivers are also still wary about charging infrastructure and range, even as chargers become more common. Plus, the Trump administration has eliminated U.S. policies encouraging EV adoption, causing analysts to revise down estimates of sales for what is one of the world’s largest auto markets.
But despite these speed bumps, the trend lines are tough to ignore. We’re well past peak internal combustion vehicles, and battery-powered cars are experiencing exponential growth. Eventually, that adds up to a world dominated by EVs, rather than by gas engines.
Back in May of 2021, Ford’s F-150 Lightning debuted with star-spangled flair. Then-President Joe Biden visited Ford’s sparkling new Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Michigan, where the company displayed the truck in front of a giant American flag alongside its gas-powered siblings. And after declaring that “the future of the auto industry is electric,” Biden even took the Lightning for a zippy test drive.
The picture is decidedly less bright today. A factory fire has forced Ford to pause production of the groundbreaking truck — and The Wall Street Journal reports that the company is considering halting production of the Lightning altogether after years of sluggish sales.
It’s not just the Lightning that has stalled. Electric trucks as a category have sputtered, largely due to their cost. A standard gas-powered F-150 starts at just shy of $40,000, while a Lightning with the lowest trim package starts at $55,000. Charging at home can help EV drivers recoup that cost difference, but it’s hard to ignore the initial sticker shock — especially given that federal EV incentives are now dead under President Donald Trump’s July budget law.
Politics may also be to blame. While the gas-powered Ford F-150 is among the most popular vehicles in counties that voted for Trump in 2020, the president’s repeated railing against EVs, coupled with Biden’s early endorsement, has put electric cars at the center of America’s polarized politics.
Still, even the Cybertruck, which carries a very different political connotation, isn’t doing so hot. Tesla sold just under 40,000 Cybertrucks last year in the U.S., while Ford sold about 33,500 Lightnings.
Consumers simply seem a lot more interested in electric sedans and SUVs than electric trucks. Even with sales supercharged as consumers raced to tap expiring EV tax credits, Americans purchased just about 60,000 electric pickup trucks through the third quarter of this year, but bought more than 900,000 electric SUVs, sedans, and sports cars.
But there might be a path forward for the electric truck yet, says Art Wheaton, an expert on transportation industries at Cornell University: small and cheap.
“Changing policies, lower demand, and higher costs have made electric trucks a harder sell,” he said. “Canceling the Lightning and replacing with a much lower-cost, smaller electric truck makes long-term sense given the current policies towards electric vehicles.”
A tale of two gas bans
Massachusetts and New York may be neighbors, but they’re seemingly heading in different directions when it comes to transitioning their buildings off of fossil fuels.
Back in 2022, Massachusetts created a pilot program that let 10 municipalities prohibit fossil-fuel hookups in new buildings and major renovations. Advocates tell Canary Media’s Sarah Shemkus that the program is already lowering energy bills and reducing emissions — and lawmakers are considering new legislation to bring another 10 cities and towns into the fold.
New York has also made big commitments to clean up its buildings, including enacting rules this summer that would require all-electric appliances in most new construction. But last week, 19 Democratic state lawmakers sent a letter to Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul urging her to postpone implementation of the All-Electric Buildings Act. And on Wednesday, the state agreed, pausing the rules from taking effect at the end of this year.
COP30 kicks off with a focus on climate resilience
Leaders and advocates from around the world gathered in Brazil this week for the beginning of the United Nations’ COP30 climate summit. The Trump administration didn’t send a formal delegation, but that was OK with many diplomats — and with California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who called the president a “wrecking ball” to climate action during one panel.
Digs at the U.S. were aplenty during the first days of the conference, as were discussions of the need to ramp up climate adaptation and resilience work as extreme weather events grow more frequent and more intense. Jamaica, for example, is facing as much as $7 billion in damages — a third of its gross domestic product — after last month’s Hurricane Melissa. But in the storm’s aftermath, Jamaica has also shown how resilience efforts pay off. The island has deployed more than 60 megawatts of rooftop solar power since 2015, and many solar-equipped homes became neighborhood hubs in the wake of Melissa’s destruction.
Fighting for climate funds: Clean-energy groups and the city of St. Paul, Minnesota, sue the Trump administration over $7.5 billion in cuts to climate-related projects in Democratic-led states. (New York Times)
Stretching coal shutdowns: The Trump administration is poised to order two Colorado coal power plants to stay open past their planned retirements this year, even as the costs of keeping a Michigan coal facility open skyrocket. (Canary Media)
Pacific petrol: The Trump administration considers opening California coastal waters to offshore oil drilling for the first time in four decades, drawing pushback from advocates and Gov. Newsom. (Washington Post)
More supply, more demand: The International Energy Agency says the world is on track to build more renewable-energy projects in the next five years than it has over the last 40 — but rising demand means the world will keep relying on fossil fuels, particularly gas, for years to come. (The Guardian, Associated Press)
Pipeline “betrayal”: New York and New Jersey issue the state-level approvals needed for a previously rejected natural-gas pipeline to move forward, leaving environmental advocates feeling “betrayed” but still determined to fight the project. (Inside Climate News)
Government restart: President Trump signs a funding bill that will reopen the government, sending furloughed federal employees back to work. (E&E News)
RGGI retreat: Pennsylvania’s Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro signs a budget bill that includes a provision to leave the Northeast’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a cap-and-invest program. (Inside Climate News)
Electric vehicle sales just hit an all-time high in the U.S. — but don’t expect the boom to last long.
For every 10 cars that automakers sold from July through September, one was an EV, according to fresh data from Cox Automotive. In other words, nearly 440,000 new battery-powered vehicles hit the nation’s roads during the third quarter of 2025. The previous single-quarter record, set in the final three months of last year, isn’t even in the same ballpark.
But the sales surge has a catch. Buyers flocked to EVs last quarter because it was their final opportunity to take advantage of a $7,500 federal tax credit that disappeared at the end of September under President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The incentive was previously slated to last until 2033.
Under these conditions, “the all-time sales and share records in Q3 were all but certain,” Cox wrote in a blog post accompanying the data. This quarter, by contrast, the company expects EV sales to “drop notably.”
Still, the U.S. electric vehicle market isn’t dead in the water without the tax credit. Already, automakers that have invested huge sums in the EV transition are making changes to try and keep sales going in America. Hyundai, for example, announced in early October that it will cut the price of its popular Ioniq 5 EV by nearly $10,000 next year. One week later, General Motors unveiled a $29,000 version of its Chevy Bolt.
Some state and local governments are taking action, too: Colorado boosted the discounts it offers for both new and used EVs. Burlington, Vermont, launched a similar program.
Meanwhile, the country’s public EV charging network is growing steadily, and the Trump administration is moving ahead with a $5 billion Biden-era program to build out charging infrastructure.
It’s clear, as Cox points out, that electrified vehicles are the future of transportation. Indeed, some countries are already living in that era: In Norway, more than eight in 10 new cars sold are fully electric. The roadblocks set up by the Trump administration might delay progress in the U.S., but it can’t stave off the inevitable.
Earlier this year in tiny Liberty, North Carolina, a multibillion-dollar Toyota plant began shipping batteries for use in the auto giant’s hybrid and electric vehicles. Expected to ultimately create at least 5,000 jobs, the facility is the largest investment to date in the Southeast’s burgeoning “battery belt,” which leads the nation in plans for the manufacturing of electric vehicles and their components.
The Liberty plant — along with other projects in the EV supply chain — was a bright spot in a recent assessment of the region’s electric transportation sector, which also highlighted record growth in EV sales and rapid deployment of fast chargers. The question is whether that momentum can survive gale-force federal headwinds, including today’s expiration of tax credits for EV buyers.
The two groups behind the report, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and Atlas Public Policy, say the answer now depends on key players outside of Washington, from utilities to consumers to automakers. But the organizations cast themselves as cautiously optimistic.
That may seem counterintuitive given that congressional Republicans, led by President Donald Trump, have dealt blow after blow this year to the policies meant to hasten the nation’s shift to clean transportation.
Generous tax credits for purchasing new and used electric passenger cars now end Sept. 30 instead of in 2032, as do inducements to buy commercial EVs, thanks to the GOP budget bill signed into law this summer. The measure also scales back incentives for manufacturing EVs and their components, like batteries.
In May, Congress voted to revoke California’s long-held authority to set its own tailpipe pollution standards, which have nudged automakers away from combustion engines and created demand for EVs nationwide. Trump signed the legislation in June.
At the same time, the Trump administration has moved to roll back the national version of those tailpipe rules and stalled the nationwide buildout of electric vehicle charging infrastructure — which was authorized in bipartisan fashion in 2021.
There are few state policies in the Southeast to counteract this federal backsliding. In fact, due to added registration fees and the like, EV owners across the region pay more into state coffers than do owners of combustion vehicles who drive the same amount. Of the six states covered in the new report, from North Carolina to Alabama to Florida, only the latter has no such punitive fees.
Advocates involved with the analysis are clear-eyed about these roadblocks for passenger EVs. But they also say there is cause for guarded hope — starting with consumer behavior.
The fact remains that EVs are gaining popularity in the region, growing in market share in each of the six years that the report has been produced. EV sales in Florida — hardly a bastion of clean-energy policy — have led the way, making up more than a tenth of new car purchases in the first half of 2025, above the national average. The state’s mild temperatures and flatlands are especially conducive to EV driving, but the growth is still telling.
What’s more, drivers appear relatively undeterred by state EV taxes. Florida leads the region, but Georgia and North Carolina are neck and neck in EV adoption, even though the former has higher fees.
“There’s no clear correlation between those taxes and buying an EV,” said Stan Cross, electric transportation program director at Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and a report author.
Publicly accessible charging ports are also rising sharply across the region, with fast chargers jumping 41% and slower Level 2 chargers increasing by 24% over the last year, according to the study. That growth appears poised to continue. After what critics said was an illegal pause by the Trump administration, money for the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program is set to start flowing again. As soon as it does, Cross predicts quick action.
“States have already done the planning, and EV charging companies and the businesses hosting the chargers are chomping at the bit to compete for contracts, get the stations in the ground, and meet the charging demands of eager EV drivers,” Cross said.
The deployment of EVs aligns with the self-interest of the investor-owned monopoly utilities that dominate the region: Electric vehicles can both increase their sales and provide other benefits to the grid. For instance, plug-in cars and buses can act as batteries, storing power that can be discharged during times of high demand. Outlays by Southeastern utilities experimenting with these uses have lagged behind those in the rest of the country — representing just 7% of the nation’s $6.6 billion in approved investments. But utilities in the region, say advocates, are at least moving in the right direction.
Perhaps more than any other player, the automakers themselves will make the biggest difference in how EV deployment unfolds — in the Southeast and across the U.S.
One decision automakers face is on the front end: Do they retreat from, or double down on, the investments they’ve already made in battery and electric vehicle production? The report notes that companies have already canceled plans for seven facilities in the region, worth a total of $3.5 billion, in the last year. But others are proceeding more or less as planned, including the Toyota facility in Liberty.
If major carmakers continue their commitment to produce vehicles and their components in the United States, consumers will likely benefit from lower prices.
“The most expensive part of an EV is the battery,” said Matthew Vining, policy analyst at Atlas Public Policy and an author of the report. The Liberty plant, he noted, has already made Toyota cars produced in the U.S. more affordable.
That trend could persist since Congress spared incentives for battery manufacturing from devastating cuts in this summer’s budget law.
“From the federal government, there’s actually a good amount of support for the battery and the critical minerals industry,” Vining said. “That will have a downward pressure on the price of the vehicles, making them more appealing to drivers.”
Automakers also face choices on the back end. Riding high off a burst in sales from buyers rushing to take advantage of the expiring tax credit, they may keep their prices low for a while longer.
No matter what, transportation is electrifying across the globe. One in four new cars purchased this year will be electric, Vining said, and China already has about 60% of the market. The question is whether carmakers in the United States will try to catch up or retrench to fossil fuels, he said.
“Are these automakers going to rise to the challenge?”
Electric trucks can beat diesel-fueled ones on the cost of moving freight from California’s seaports to its inland distribution hubs — as long as the battery-powered vehicles can reliably recharge at both ends of their route. That fact is spurring a boom in the construction of truck-charging depots across the state.
On Thursday, EV Realty, a San Francisco-based charging site developer, broke ground on what will be one of California’s biggest fully grid-powered, fast-charging depots for electric trucks so far.
The company’s site in San Bernardino, located in a region known as the Inland Empire that’s crowded with distribution warehouses, will pull about 10 megawatts of power from the grid once it’s up and running in early 2026. It will be equipped with 76 direct-current fast-charging ports, including a number of ultra-high-capacity chargers capable of refilling a Tesla Semi truck in 30 minutes or less.
EV Realty has more large-scale depots in the works, including another in San Bernardino, one in Torrance near the Port of Long Beach, and a fourth in Livermore in Northern California. Thursday’s groundbreaking was accompanied by the announcement that the company had raised $75 million from private equity investor NGP, which also led a $28 million investment in 2022.
With that cash infusion, along with last year’s debut of a joint venture with GreenPoint Partners to develop $200 million in charging hubs, “we are fully capitalized against an underwritten, five-year business plan,” EV Realty CEO Patrick Sullivan told Canary Media.
That plan includes “five to seven more projects of the scale we have in San Bernardino, plus some smaller, more built-to-suit projects,” he said.
EV Realty does build and operate sites for passenger vehicles, such as the chargers it installed in a parking garage in Oakland, California, backed by power provider Ava Community Energy. But the company isn’t in the business of setting up open public charging sites that depend on drive-by traffic to earn money back, Sullivan said.
Instead, it’s signing deals with major freight carriers and fleet owners that want a dedicated spot to get their trucks charged and back on the road as quickly as possible.
That’s why EV Realty’s 76 chargers at its San Bernardino site are all dedicated to specific customers, he said. Of those, 72 are committed to those paying monthly rates on multiyear contracts. “Our customers will have stalls and amounts of power that are theirs 24/7, and we will have customers basing their operations out of that site,” he said.
The remaining four chargers, including those offering high-voltage megawatt charging systems, are “pull-through” slots where trucks towing trailers can get a quick recharge. “That pricing will be more of a pay-as-you-go, per kilowatt-hour — but all those trucks are registered at our site,” he said.
EV Realty is far from the only business building megawatt-scale truck-charging sites in California. Big EV truck depots are springing up around Southern California’s massive port complexes and along its major freight corridors, built by startups such as Terawatt Infrastructure, Forum Mobility, Voltera, WattEV, and Zeem; freight haulers like NFI Industries and Schneider National; and logistics operators such as Prologis.
Most of these depots are providing dedicated service to customers under contracts, but a few are starting to offer charging on a first-come, first-served basis. Greenlane, a joint venture of Daimler Truck North America, utility NextEra Energy, and investment firm BlackRock Alternatives, opened a 10-megawatt truck-charging site in Colton, a city neighboring San Bernardino, that’s meant to provide a more traditional “truck stop” service to vehicles needing to charge.
If anything, EV Realty has been “a little bit more slow and purposeful than others” in building its charging hubs, Sullivan said. But he insists that the broader truck-electrification project remains economically viable, despite the challenges erected by the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress.
There’s no doubt that electric trucking is experiencing a tough moment in California and across the country. The megalaw passed by Republicans in July cut short tax credits for commercial EVs and EV chargers that had been put in place by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. This has weakened support for purchasing battery-powered vehicles, which still cost two to three times more than their fossil-fueled counterparts, even if EVs’ lower fueling and maintenance costs can make them cheaper in the long run.
This summer, Republicans and the Trump administration also revoked Clean Air Act provisions that permitted California and 10 other states to set mandates forcing manufacturers to sell increasing numbers of zero-emissions trucks. Last month, major truck manufacturers sued California, seeking to extricate themselves from a clean-vehicle partnership agreement.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s trade policies have thrown “sand into the works” of the U.S. freight industry, Sullivan said. Imports are set to decline significantly under President Donald Trump’s tariffs on foreign-made goods, and the on-again, off-again nature of his taxes has scrambled long-term planning.
“Carriers, trucking, transportation companies are at the very front lines of a global trade war,” Sullivan said. “You have no predictability on how you can utilize your assets.”
In the face of that uncertainty, cementing charging for electric trucks along established routes becomes more important than ever, he said. Like many of its charging depot competitors, EV Realty is inking partnerships with other parties in the broader freight-hauling industry, such as its August agreement with Prologis to share and streamline access and software systems across both companies’ networks.
With dedicated charging in hand, freight companies and their customers can start to realize the underlying competitive economics of electric trucks, Sullivan said. “A carrier bidding on freight on a lane is bidding whatever their marginal operating cost is, above or below the cost of fuel,” he said. “If you can move short and regional haul, point to point, with an EV, you’re bidding on a marginal cost that’s lower than diesel.”
Hyundai’s huge EV manufacturing facility in Georgia became the latest target of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown last week, with federal agents detaining 475 workers, most of them from South Korea.
The raid has delayed the opening of the complex’s battery factory, which the automaker is building with LG Energy Solution in the Southeast’s growing “battery belt.” And experts, including South Korea’s president, have warned the move could have a much broader chilling effect on foreign investment in U.S. factories — much of which has flowed to clean energy projects in recent years.
Hyundai broke ground on its Georgia complex three years ago after securing $2.1 billion in subsidies from the state and nearby counties, with strong support from Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. But that investment came with conditions, namely that Hyundai and its suppliers would hire at least 8,500 long-term workers by 2031.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement alleges those arrested were working illegally. But an attorney for several detained South Koreans says they have valid visas and were only working for a short time to get the facility’s battery operations up and running. South Korean President Lee Jae Myung defended the workers in a Thursday statement.
“When you build a factory or install equipment at a factory, you need technicians. But the United States doesn’t have that workforce, and yet they won’t issue visas to let our people stay and do the work,” he said. “If that’s not possible, then establishing a local factory in the United States will either come with severe disadvantages or become very difficult for our companies. They will wonder whether they should even do it.”
That could be an especially big problem for Georgia, which is home to about 100 Korean-owned facilities employing 17,000 people. That includes an SK Battery America EV battery factory, Hanwha Qcells’ solar panel plant, and a Kia EV manufacturing facility.
Last week’s raid is already having tangible ripple effects on U.S. manufacturing. Reuters reports that South Korean workers at other LG Energy Solution production sites and an LG/General Motors plant are preparing to depart due to visa worries — or already have.
Revolution Wind decision is imminent, Burgum says
Three weeks after the Trump administration halted work on a nearly complete offshore wind farm near Rhode Island, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum suggested that his department will soon decide whether Revolution Wind can restart construction. The administration is “in discussions” with state governors and the project’s developers, and is finishing its required reviews, he told CNBC on Wednesday.
A spokesperson for Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee (D) later told the Rhode Island Current that the governor hadn’t secured a meeting with President Donald Trump as of Wednesday, but McKee and Burgum have been texting. Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont (D) has meanwhile said that he is open to discussing power projects involving natural gas if the administration lets Revolution Wind construction resume.
Meanwhile, the future is clearer for the wind farm that Virginia utility Dominion Energy is currently building off the state’s coast. The New York Times reports that Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin is quietly lobbying the Trump administration to let the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind continue, and is so far finding success. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said that he has also lobbied Cabinet secretaries in support of the project.
Pairing solar with sheep, canals, and far-flung communities
This week, Canary Media reporters showcased solar power’s innovative potential. Jeff St. John started us off in California, where wildfire risks are making it harder for utilities to maintain the power lines that serve remote areas. But a 3,200-acre nature reserve now has reliable power at its far-flung guest house thanks to a solar-plus-battery-storage microgrid — an example of the “remote grids” PG&E has begun installing.
Also in California, the state’s first solar array covering an irrigation canal has come online, Maria Gallucci reports. Researchers hope the project will also help reduce evaporation in the drought-prone Central Valley.
And in Illinois, Kari Lydersen has the story of how grazing sheep have become the perfect partner for solar panels. There’s just one problem: The U.S. lamb market isn’t strong enough for the idea to take off.
An inconvenient truth: A new report finds that when it comes to removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, major companies are largely leaning on methods that are ineffective in the long term. (Grist)
Storage, multiplied: Tesla unveils the Megablock — a product that packages together four Megapack batteries and a transformer into an easy-to-deploy grid storage product. (Canary Media)
Derailing rural solar: In a South Dakota county, misinformation about solar power led to an ordinance that blocked a fourth-generation farmer from installing an array that would have supplied him with extra income — a scene that’s playing out across rural communities in the U.S. (The Guardian)
Catching a wave: No company has yet commercialized power generation from waves, but Eco Wave Power thinks it’s cracked the code with technology it just installed at the Port of Los Angeles. (Canary Media)
Solar’s dimming future: Solar and storage make up the vast majority of new power plant construction in the U.S., but face a“seismic shift” due to hostile Trump administration policies, which could ultimately lead to 21% less solar installed through 2030. (E&E News)
Tesla keeps falling: After years of accounting for over half of the U.S. EV market and reaching a more than 80% high, Tesla made up just 38% of total EV sales in August, marking an eight-year low, according to Cox Automotive data. (Reuters)
This article was copublished with The Daily Yonder, a newsroom covering rural America.
YARMOUTH, Maine — At a dock along the banks of the Cousins River, Chad Strater loaded up his small aluminum workboat with power tools and a winch. Strater, who owns a marine construction business, was setting out to tinker with floating equipment at a nearby oyster farm. On the quiet morning in August, with the sun already beating down hard, his vessel whirred to life, only without the usual growl of an oil-guzzling motor. The boat is all electric.
Just north of where the Cousins River meets Casco Bay, Willy Leathers was powering up his own electric watercraft, which had its first outing in July. Leathers uses his 28-foot boat for cultivating oysters at Maine Ocean Farms, where roughly 3 million of the animals grow in dozens of floating cages.
Both Strater and Leathers said they switched to electric workboats for several reasons. Their new watercraft are a cleaner alternative to the smelly, polluting petroleum-powered vessels that dominate Maine’s 3,500 miles of coastline. Electric propulsion is also significantly quieter than a gas or diesel motor. For Leathers, whose 10-acre sea farm is a significant presence in the cove where he operates, the swap is about being a good neighbor to the shoreside community.
“It’s an innovation born from necessity for us,” said Strater about his electric boat, which he docks each night at the Sea Meadow Marine Foundation, the nonprofit boatyard and aquaculture innovation hub he runs with several other small business owners. “[The boat] really works well for what we do with it, and we’re letting farmers use it to see how it could work for them.”
Battery-powered vessels are starting to catch on in the United States and worldwide as companies and maritime authorities work to reduce emissions and improve the experience of cruising waterways. The technology ranges from small outboard motors on workboats and recreational watercraft to powerful inboard systems on ferries, tugboats, and supply vessels for offshore wind farms and oil rigs.
In recent decades, Norway, with its extensive coastline and ample government funding, has spearheaded the transition globally. China, which is both the world’s largest shipbuilder and battery manufacturer, has rapidly deployed hundreds of battery-powered vessels over the last several years. Falling battery costs, better technology, and stricter environmental rules are compelling some vessel owners to install partial or fully electric systems, primarily for watercraft that operate near the shore or on fixed routes. For commercial fishing in particular, customers are helping to drive the push to clean up.
“Everyone’s more concerned now with where their food comes from, and we’ve seen that [consumers] are looking for that complete sustainable supply chain,” said Ed Schwarz, the head of marine solutions sales in North America for Siemens Energy, which has built electric propulsion systems for U.S. ferries.
Electrification has only very recently come to America’s aquaculture sector. In Maine, the small but fast-growing segment includes nearly 200 farms for shellfish, fin fish, and edible seaweed. Strater and Leathers are among the first in their business to trade gas motors for electric propulsion — a switch they say they’re hoping to accelerate. Oil-guzzling motors are among the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions for the state’s multibillion-dollar seafood sector.
Still, electrifying commercial watercraft can be a difficult course to navigate, given the higher up-front costs of electric motors and the lack of charging infrastructure — and grid infrastructure in general — in rural waterfront communities.
Early adopters like Strater and Leathers said they hope the experiences gained from their demonstrations can help pave the way for decarbonizing Maine’s blue economy. With the help of the Island Institute, a Maine-based nonprofit that works on marine-related energy transitions, Leathers is collecting performance data from his vessel to share more broadly with the industry.
“People say it looks cool and shiny and looks like it operates great,” Lia Morris, the Island Institute’s senior community development officer, said of electric boats. “But we really want to be able to prove out the [business] case.”
Electric boats can cost between 20% and 30% more than a gas- or diesel-powered vessel of a comparable size. However, owners can save on maintenance and fuel over the long term, Strater’s business partner Nick Planson said.
“The high-level math that we’ve come up with” is a financial break-even point of “about four to five years, and then over a 10-year time span, you’re definitely coming out way ahead based on the vastly reduced maintenance cost, replacement cost of failed equipment, and fuel costs,” said Planson.
But the initial price tag presents a significant hurdle. Strater and Planson’s sleekly designed, no-frills watercraft cost $100,000 to build and outfit with a single electric outboard motor. Leathers’ boat, called Heron, cost about four times more. It has two electric outboards and a ramp for unloading and hauling more than 10,000 oysters at a time from the sea farm to distributors waiting on the dock. Its hull is also equipped with a small cabin and toilet.
Both operations relied on grant funding to defray the expense of going electric.
For their part, Strater and Planson used about $50,000 from a larger U.S. Department of Agriculture small business grant they got in 2024 to establish a use case for electric workboats in the aquaculture industry. Leathers’ business, Maine Ocean Farms, was included on a collaborative $500,000 U.S. Department of Energy grant last year that earmarked about $289,000 for boat building and propulsion systems, in addition to other funds for charging infrastructure and data collection.
The prospects for funding future projects are now much murkier under the Trump administration, maritime policy experts say.
The DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, which awarded the money to Maine Ocean Farms and its partners, is facing significant budget cuts in the next fiscal year. The GOP-backed spending law that passed in July rescinded some unobligated grant funding for cleaning up marine diesel engines. While other programs were spared, it’s unclear whether the current Congress will approve new funding for initiatives ranging from electrifying huge urban ports to deploying low-emissions ferries in rural communities.
But federal grants aren’t the only way to address the higher cost of electric boats. Strater and Planson also worked with Coastal Enterprises Inc., a Maine-based community development financial institution focused on climate resilience, to establish a “marine green” loan program that can make the up-front costs of switching to electric propulsion more accessible to small businesses.
“The more electric engines that are being employed in Maine helps lift the whole tide for everyone,” said Nick Branchina, director of CEI’s fisheries and aquaculture program. As part of its marine green lending, CEI offers loans starting at $25,000 for small businesses to make the switch to electric propulsion and comfortably afford the cost of batteries or a shoreside charging installation.
Planson said that as electrification moves beyond initial grant-funded projects, the challenge is keeping systems affordable. He said he wants to see other small business owners able to “take a reasonable swing” at electric propulsion.
Buying a boat, of course, is only the first obstacle. Electric vessel owners must also learn how to use their new propulsion systems and find a place to charge them.
This summer, Leathers said he’s had no trouble making the nearly two-mile round trip from the slip where he docks Heron in South Freeport, Maine, to his farm on Casco Bay. With a full charge, he can make trips slightly farther to meet distributors closer to Portland. But as temperatures drop this winter, Leathers said he’s not sure how far the outboards’ two batteries will take him. Cold weather can reduce battery capacity and impact performance, shrinking an electric motor’s range. It’s a part of Leathers’ demonstration to find out what the impacts are in practice.
Like Leathers, Strater and Planson also work year-round. They said they’re both impressed with how their boat performed last winter after launching in the fall of 2024. For Planson, who markets battery-powered equipment to aquaculture farmers as part of his startup, Shred Electric, a boat’s ability to run through the year’s coldest months is a key selling point.
“The proof is in the pudding,” said Planson. “When you’re working with … waterfront applications, it really needs to work every day and all year.”
Strater and Planson said their boat’s range was an important consideration when they partnered with the startup Flux Marine to build the electric outboard motor. With limited shoreside charging infrastructure in place, the boat has to make it out and back on a single charge, sometimes to aquaculture operations seven miles away. In the 10 months since the boat’s launch, Strater has learned range correlates to speed. He can modulate the boat’s pace depending on how far he wants to go.
“We can go really fast for a short distance. We can go really slow for a long distance, and it works for what we do with it,” he said.
Soon, Maine’s early adopters will have shared access to a higher-capacity Level 2 charger that will be installed at the Sea Meadow Marine Foundation and can charge batteries in little over two hours, or three times faster than the current system. The startup Aqua superPower was awarded a portion of the DOE funding last year to install additional marine chargers there and at a wharf in Portland owned by the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. Island Institute also helped with grant funding for the charger at the Sea Meadow boatyard.
Maine will need much more high-capacity charging infrastructure for the marine industry to transition to electric propulsion, said the Island Institute’s Morris. As the state’s aquaculture and fisheries industries look to grow beyond small-scale operations, other businesses will need to charge more frequently to make longer, farther trips up and down the coast.
Expanding charging stations north of Casco Bay represents what Morris calls a “chicken and egg” problem: a dynamic where chargers are either installed before demand gets high, and sit unused, or electric boats hit the water and there’s not enough charging infrastructure, stalling future adoption.
This challenge is compounded by both New England’s aging grid infrastructure and the remote nature of some of the region’s waterfront access points. Getting the right amount of power to a charging station on the shore can be costly, even in Yarmouth, which sits on Casco Bay. Often it’s the last mile that can be the most expensive. At Sea Meadow Marine Foundation, three-phase power, which can accommodate higher loads, is limited by the dirt road that separates the boat launch from the more heavily trafficked U.S. Route 1.
“There are a lot of complicated questions,” Morris said. “I don’t think it’s unique to Maine, it’s any rural area, but complicated questions and conversations with the utilities and the rural municipalities are going to have to be solved for.”
Back on the water, Leathers docked his electric boat, Heron, alongside the sea farm’s barge, where thousands of oysters pass through for processing on harvest days. He switched the motor off and hopped onto the floating platform. For a moment, the bay was calm to the point of near silence. Then Leathers picked up an oyster cage with a rattle, turning it over in his hands as water splashed out. The sounds of the workday began.
“As a whole industry, I think it’s going to take proving that someone like us can do it,” Leathers said. “And then the next person kind of snowballing after that.”
It’s no Route 66.
But the roughly 80-mile stretch of U.S. Route 50 that snakes across Virginia from the nation’s capital to the West Virginia border is rich in American history and culture. The mostly two-lane, winding mountain road features vineyards, battlefields, high-end resorts, and more. And just like the iconic route from Chicago to California, U.S. 50 is increasingly making way for the future of American road trips: electric vehicles.
The tiny town of Middleburg, Virginia, is a case in point: Officials there installed a fast charger nearly 18 months ago to serve EV drivers in the wealthy, bucolic region just 45 miles west of Washington, D.C.
Named for its equidistance between Alexandria and Winchester, Middleburg has long been at the center of foxhunting and steeplechases. These days, the town of less than 1,000 people is also surrounded by wineries and boasts a film festival, a 168-room five-star resort, and a Christmas parade replete with horses and hound dogs.
“Since colonial times it has been a stopping place, and it’s continued to be a place where people come from all over the world, as well as from the greater D.C. area,” said Lynne Kaye, chair of Middleburg’s sustainability committee.
As electric vehicles have become more prevalent, so too has “EV tourism”: towns off the beaten path seeking to lure travelers with charging infrastructure. While visitors juice up — often for free at relatively slow Level 2 chargers – they might browse local art galleries and shops, grab some dinner, or visit another attraction they may have otherwise missed.
But Middleburg is part of Loudoun County, the nation’s richest, with some of the most robust EV adoption numbers in Virginia. The town has ample attractions, so the idea to install a charger was less about drawing in new visitors than it was about keeping those already passing through happy.
“When we walked around town, we were noticing a bunch of EVs,” said Kaye. “We wanted to make sure that we didn’t accidentally become unappealing to people who were driving them.”
Reducing the town’s climate footprint was also a consideration. Kaye and others reason that cars driven by visitors and residents are the leading contributor to its planet-warming emissions.
“We only have 673 residents. We can only create so much carbon,” she said. “But when you have 20,000 people come to an event, that’s a lot of carbon all at once.”
When town leaders were in the planning stages of adding their charger, they also noticed a lack of devices in the region that could fill up a car battery in an hour or less. “Not everybody wants to spend however many hours getting their EV charged,” Kaye said.
For all these reasons, the decision to install a fast charger in the heart of town was an easy one. But bringing that choice to fruition wasn’t as simple.
An expansive bay with 10 or more chargers, an increasingly common feature at gas stations, wasn’t logistically feasible in the tiny Town Hall parking lot. And most charging companies Middleburg approached wanted to install no fewer than six fast chargers.
“Getting this huge bank of chargers didn’t fit a historic town,” Kaye said. “There wasn’t really space for it, and we weren’t sure that we were going to get enough traffic to use the chargers effectively.”
XCharge North America came to the rescue. The charger manufacturer was “willing to work with us and come up with a way to have the one charger,” Kaye said. “And it’s been a success.”
Initially called Current Electric, the startup had recently been acquired by a European equipment maker. Its business proposition: making fast chargers cheaper by using a 208-volt system rather than the global standard of 480V.
While Middleburg had already wired its new Town Hall to accommodate the industry standard, XCharge still leapt at the opportunity to showcase its hardware, said company cofounder Alex Urist.
“This was very much a way for us to get early applications in the U.S.,” said Urist, who lives in New York City. “The proximity to D.C. is great as well. Selfishly, I go to D.C. to visit the in-laws frequently enough, so I can always check in on the charger. I like to take them over there and show off that I actually have a job,” he quipped.
Typical direct-current fast-charging units can run between $30,000 and $120,000. In Middleburg’s case, XCharge provided its hardware for free while the town covered the installation. The two entities share the revenue from charging sessions, and the company can learn from how the fast charger performs as it explores other markets.
“It’s not really a charger on a high-throughput area,” Urist said. “But what is interesting about it is, it’s kind of dead in the middle of Virginia wine country. It’s along this rural corridor where the perceptive availability of chargers is very important.”
Between March 2024, when the charger was installed, and February 2025, 181 sessions were logged. Since then, there’s been an uptake, with 268 sessions logged as of May 2025, according to XCharge.
“It’s a really interesting use case for us to see. How does it help with the local economy? Are they going to also see any ancillary impacts of it beyond just the revenue coming in?” Urist said.
Indeed, that’s one of the expectations behind an initiative called Virginia Green Travel, which helps the state’s towns, especially those with carbon-reduction goals, attract environmentally minded tourists, said Alleyn Harned, executive director of Virginia Clean Cities.
“Electric vehicle chargers have been part of green tourism in Virginia,” said Harned, whose group is among the backers of the Green Travel initiative.
Virginia Clean Cities, a U.S. Department of Energy-funded entity that’s based at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, is what brought Middleburg and XCharge together. The town’s success with its fast charger was a bright spot for the organization after President Donald Trump stalled the rollout of $5 billion for charging infrastructure launched under his predecessor.
“This is a positive story in getting something done,” Harned said, “because this stuff really improves our economy.”
As the Trump administration moves toward releasing National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure funds after losses in court, more towns across Virginia may have the chance to follow Middleburg’s lead.
Kaye says they should know that fast charging is possible for them. “I think it’s important for other small towns to realize that there is an opportunity, if they want to take it,” she said.
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