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The Biden administration announced Aug. 27 that it would provide $521 million in grants to fund electric vehicle chargers and other alternative fueling infrastructure in several locations across the United States. Of the $521 million, $2.8 million is going to the City of Ann Arbor, providing money to install 48 EV chargers across the city in locations such as park-and-ride lots and multiunit dwellings. Ann Arbor is one of only two Michigan cities on the grant recipient list.
These grants seek to encourage more widespread use of electric vehicles in the United States to ultimately reduce carbon emissions caused by gas-powered cars. Expanding access to EV charging infrastructure is part of Ann Arbor’s A2Zero Plan to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030. According to the plan, new EV chargers will be placed in public spaces, with an emphasis on placement in lower-income areas, to ensure EV charging is widely accessible. While the city increased the number of EV chargers downtown in 2022, the new funding will enable the implementation of dozens more chargers and bring Ann Arbor closer to achieving its A2Zero goals.
In a press release, U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Ann Arbor, wrote that the investment was an important step to expanding EV charging nationwide.
“It should be as easy to charge your electric vehicle as it is to fill up at the gas station,” the press release read. “These funds are critical to making EVs more practical and accessible in our community.”
According to the A2Zero Plan, increasing the number of EV chargers in Ann Arbor will create more equitable access to alternative transportation options. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Missy Stults, Ann Arbor sustainability and innovations director, said the installation of EV chargers will focus on a few high-priority areas.
“That includes multifamily complexes, like housing,” Stults said. “We will also focus on key commercial corridors so that folks can feel more comfortable driving into the city, going to work and then topping off on the way home while they stop to go to the grocery store.”
Stults said the new EV chargers will ensure no one is left behind as Ann Arbor moves to electrify transportation and lean into more sustainable forms of transit.
“We want people to walk and bike and take buses, but we also know people still do need cars for many uses,” Stults said. “We want to make sure that range anxiety or inability to charge are not reasons people aren’t investing in a clean alternative, if that makes sense for them and their families. This helps us make sure that more and more people have access to charging, and it removes one of the common barriers that people have to moving forward with vehicle electrification.”
In an interview with The Daily, Rackham student David Wilkerson-Lindsey, whose degree focuses on ecology and evolutionary biology, said that while providing more infrastructure for EV charging is a good idea, he believes the solution to climate change does not lie solely with replacing all gas vehicles with electric ones.
“There’s plenty of gas stations around,” Wilkerson-Lindsey said. “It’s great to provide people alternatives, and that kind of infrastructure allows people to make the decision of whether they’re going to go electric or gas. But I think in terms of transportation solutions, moving towards public transportation is the idea for green transportation, rather than electric vehicles.”
Daily Staff Reporter Michelle Liao can be reached at mrliao@umich.edu.
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