There’s a bodega on the corner where I live in Brooklyn with a massive TikTok following and a thick cable almost always stretched out the front door and plugged into a Tesla. In a tiny parking lot around the corner, the local grocery store has a fast charger that looks like a mini gas pump. The parking garage down the hill has a line of public chargers.

Brooklyn looks different than the rest of America, but this mix of solutions for fueling up our battery-powered cars highlights an increasingly obvious fact about the future. As we continue to transition to electric vehicles, the gas station of the future won’t just be those big pavilions on the roadside with 20-foot-tall signs bearing an oil company’s logo. You’ll probably be able to buy fossil fuels at gas stations for decades, but you’ll also be able to charge your EV very quickly. And those familiar fueling destinations won’t be the only place you can charge.

The future of EV charging is already here. It’s everywhere and sometimes not where you’d expect it.

There are already hundreds of thousands of chargers in people’s garages, in supermarket parking lots, in national parks, and yes, even in old-fashioned gas stations. In the near future, if you drive an EV, you won’t worry about finding a place to charge your car. You’ll get to choose between multiple experiences, based on your needs and desires, and you won’t even need to open an app or get out a credit card to charge up and get on your way.

This forecast probably sounds a little bit fantastic in light of recent developments. The Trump administration suspended the rollout of the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program, which was established by the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and apportioned $5 billion for states to build public EV chargers. The goal was to ensure there were charging stations at least every 50 miles on certain corridors, especially those in rural or low-income areas.

It’s unclear how long Trump’s NEVI halt will last. Democrats in Congress were quick to call the administration’s actions illegal, and some states were allowed to keep spending the program’s previously approved dollars to build chargers. The Trump administration has asked states to submit new plans for approval, although it’s not clear if or when they will be approved. Meanwhile, the funding freeze is being challenged in court.........

© Vox