EV stocks finally got some good news on Thursday: find out more

EV charging stocks are trending up in premarket on Thursday after the Transportation Department announced new funding to expand the network of chargers across the United States.

DOT awards $149 million to EV chargers

The U.S. Transportation Department committed nearly $149 million today to repair or replace close to 4,500 electric vehicle charging ports in 20 states.

DOT wants the nationwide network to comprise of 500,000 EV chargers by the end of this decade. On key highways, its goal is to install a charging port at every 50 miles. Shailen Bhatt – the Federal Highway Administrator told Reuters this morning:

We know there’s going to be more demand for the technology. We anticipate reliability being less of an issue going forward.

Shares of Blink Charging, ChargePoint, and Evgo Inc are in the green on Thursday.

New funding may help resolve range anxiety

The new funding announced today for the nationwide network of EV chargers is a part of the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure programme.

NEVI binds states to operate federally-funded electric vehicles chargers for at least five years. It also required that the charging ports are functional at least 97% of the time.

The initiative is expected to help resolve range anxiety – one of the prominent reasons why electric vehicle sales have been slow in recent months.

Note that the U.S. currently has a network more than 170,000 charging ports for the public. Nationwide availability of the public EV chargers has increased by over 70% under President Biden.