Electric vehicles aren’t just for California drivers. Other states are transitioning away from internal combustion engines, and they are investing in the infrastructure to make that possible.
The Missouri Department of Transportation recently submitted a draft Statewide Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Deployment Plan to the federal government for review.
The state submitted the plan to be eligible for federal funding. The National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program Guidance makes more than $7 billion available to build out a national network of 500,000 EV chargers in communities and along the nation’s highways, as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed last fall.
The Missouri plan provides a framework to develop a network of EV charging stations along key travel corridors. It notes that the state currently has only 6,740 registered all-electric vehicles. This represents a mere 0.66% of all-electric vehicle registrations nationally and 0.34% of all registered vehicles in Missouri.
That figure is expected to change. Existing projections anticipate EV growth to 5.02% of registered vehicles in Missouri by 2035.
The plan will be funded by $99 million in federal funds and nearly $20 million in state matching funds, for a total of just about $119 million. With those funds, the state hopes to build out an EV infrastructure with enough public charging stations that drivers will have to travel no more than 50 miles between stations for a charge along the interstate system.
The drive north to Montana from Missouri is a lot more than 50 miles, but EV owners will be able to get charged up there, too. The state has also submitted an EV infrastructure plan to the federal government for approval.
The Montana Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Deployment Plan proposes to establish a similar framework for expanding EV charging in the state. If approved, it could bring in about $43 million in federal dollars to support the effort.
The Montana plan has a similar goal of spacing public EV charging stations no less than 50 miles apart on major roadways. It notes that Montana has one of the lowest EV adoption rates in the United States. As of January, the state had just under 3,000 registered EVs, representing only about 0.18% of all light-duty vehicles registered.
However, that number is also expected to grow. The plan cites studies that project the number of EVs in Montana will reach 31,350, or 3% of the total number of vehicles, by 2030, and 87,900, or 9% of the total, by 2040.