By 2030, up to half of all new global car sales are expected to be electric. To support these cars in the U.S. alone, we would need to build 35 million EV chargers — up from the 4 million we have now. We are nowhere close to being on track to meet the demand.
In 2021, the Biden administration introduced the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program, which pledged $5 billion for states to build out a national EV charging network.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration moved to freeze those funds, halting already-approved deployment plans. But in June, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to release the funds to 14 states.
This latest development is a win for EV infrastructure. But the reality is, even if every dollar is released tomorrow, it won’t fix the real bottleneck: permitting.
Permitting, the silent killer of EV infrastructure support
I’ve spent over a decade in the world of construction and development, and EV chargers are some of the most unnecessarily difficult projects — often harder to move through the permitting process than bigger projects, like hotels or offices. Out of the 500,000 chargers planned to be funded under the 2022 NEVI program, less than 150 have been completed.
The reasons for the delays are varied, but often come down to outdated processes and codes within local jurisdictions that aren’t updated to take EV chargers into account. Zoning rules vary block by block. Some departments treat chargers like bike racks; others treat them like industrial infrastructure requiring public hearings, traffic studies, or special-use permits.
The result is a process that’s messy, fragmented, and costly. Even the most simple, well-funded projects can sit unfinished for months or need to be reconfigured entirely.
What needs to change, now
At this pace, permitting — not consumer demand or funding — could be what breaks the back of U.S. automotive electrification.
There’s room for hope, though, because while the challenges blocking EV infrastructure are real, they are solvable if we make the right moves now. The fact is, most EV charger installations are simple, repeatable projects that should not be difficult to approve. We need local cities and counties to direct their efforts toward modernizing their processes to speed up EV charger deployment.
Los Angeles County has set an example with a fast-track process for EV charger approvals. It’s not a radical idea, as many cities already have fast-track permitting processes for other types of projects like utility poles or streetlights. EV chargers should be treated the same way everywhere. By pre-approving standard EV installations, municipalities can eliminate the need for case-by-case reviews and speed up deployment.
States and federal agencies can also speed up the process by enforcing response timelines for EV permit reviews; this is similar to California’s policy requiring local and county health departments to review health permits for food establishments within a certain number of days. No charger install should sit untouched in a queue for 90-plus days.
Utility companies, one of the biggest sources of delay — and one of the least accountable — also need to be part of the change by standardizing upgrade requirements, assigning EV-specific points of contact, and improving transparency.
But in the meantime, as long as the permitting process remains complicated, developers must prepare for it: engage local agencies early, centralize documentation and workflows to avoid mistakes, and view every project as unique. Fast approvals often come down to strong preparation and internal coordination.
And we don’t have time to waste; state-level climate and EV-related deadlines are looming. California is requiring 100% of new car sales to be zero-emission by 2035, and other states have followed suit. Across the Atlantic, the European Union passed a law banning the sale of new gas-powered vehicles starting in 2035.
It’s not just policies creating a sense of urgency for automakers to build more EVs, though; it’s customer demand, too, with EVs hitting record sales year over year. The real missing piece is the charging infrastructure to support this growth. Without a dramatic shift in how we permit and deploy EV charges, red tape will continue to slow progress at a time we should be sending it into overdrive.
The faster we permit, the faster we build, and the faster we realize the EV future we’ve committed to.
Andreas Rotenberg is the COO of Pulley, a platform to accelerate permitting. The opinions represented in this contributed article are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the views of Latitude Media or any of its staff.
