Yesterday the Obama administration announced “an unprecedented set of actions” to grow the U.S. plug-in electrified vehicle market.
The initiative represents a broad collaboration between federal agencies, state governments, major automakers, utilities, and others to aid the ongoing push to make electric cars viable alternatives to the internal combustion variety.
Perhaps chief in a laundry list of public and private sector agreements is up to $4.5 billion in loan guarantees for commercial scale charging — including fast charging — to create a nationwide network.
As a manufacturer, Tesla has nearly gone it alone with its Supercharger network. Nissan has provided Level 3 chargers as well
The Obama administration said the plan comes “on the heels” of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Sustainable Transportation Summit earlier this month.
Despite only making it 40 percent of the way toward a goal of one million plug-in electrified vehicles by December 2015, the administration says much progress has been made.
“In fact, in the past eight years the number of plug-in electric [including plug-in hybrid and battery electric] vehicle models increased from one to more than 20, battery costs have decreased 70 percent, and we have increased the number of electric vehicle charging stations from less than 500 in 2008 to more than 16,000 today – a 40 fold increase,” said the administration.
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