The week of January 30-February 2, 2023 the N.C. Department of Transportation (NCDOT) will be holding a series of roundtables to provide regional forums for capturing valuable feedback on different stakeholder considerations and interests to inform the deployment of North Carolina’s National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure, or NEVI, Program.

WHAT IS NEVI?

Originally established by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the NEVI program provides nearly $5 billion from July 2022-June 2027 to help states create a network of 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations along designated alternative fuel corridors. North Carolina expects to receive up to $109 million to build out electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure along its approved corridors.

The Federal Highway Administration’s Alternative Fuel Corridors program recognizes highway segments that have infrastructure (or plans for infrastructure) that support alternative fuel options, including electricity, compressed natural gas, liquefied petroleum gas and hydrogen.​ See the accompanying map for North Carolina’s current alternative fuel corridors. 

In September of 2022, the Federal Highway Administration approved North Carolina’s NEVI Program plan, along with those from all other states and territories.  Now that the plans are approved, states are moving forward with implementation as described in the “NEVI NEVI Land” blog on DSIREinsight. 

WHAT IS NORTH CAROLINA’S PLAN?

The NCDOT developed the statewide Electric​ Vehicle (EV) Infrastructure Deployment Plan​​​ using guidance provided by the NEVI program, and will support the development of the state’s public electric vehicle charging network.​​  In short, NC’s NEVI plan is in two phases, the first being completion of the priority corridors having DCFast chargers every 50 miles, the second phase being an intentional effort to include local communities to plan where their DCFast chargers should be located.

Now, NCDOT is taking industry stakeholder input to assist in the development of the NEVI program. Feedback from the roundtables held during NCDOT’s Electric Vehicle Infrastructure North Carolina Tour will be used to develop a request for information (RFI) to be released in February and will ultimately help inform the creation of a future request for proposal (RFP) from the NCDOT that will be used to implement the program.

Each roundtable is about 90 minutes long and will host utilities, electric vehicle equipment suppliers, site hosts and more. Registration is required for these roundtables and representatives can register online. 

The public is invited to attend open house sessions following the roundtables. Registration is not required for the open house sessions. 

Previously, on January 11th, the NCDOT held an information webinar session about the state’s NEVI Program deployment plan. A video recording of the session is now available for viewing.