
The Biden administration announced its first set of public and private commitments in its efforts to accelerate the production of affordable electric vehicles (EVs) at the end of March.
The announcement is part of President Biden’s goal of having 50% of all new vehicle sales be electric by 2030. According to the White House, 3 million EVs are now on the road, with over 132,000 public EV chargers across the nation.
Multiple companies have joined the administration’s EV Acceleration Challenge, including two focused on bringing EV charging to multifamily communities—SWTCH, an EV charging provider, and Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), a nonprofit organization of experts across disciplines working to accelerate the clean energy transition and improve lives.
SWTCH is committed to expanding equitable access to EV charging in underserved communities with the deployment of over 20,000 EV chargers primarily serving multifamily buildings by 2024.
“Many millions of dollars in federal and state funding are going to support public charging infrastructure, and, while that’s important, most EV drivers want to charge at home when it’s convenient for them. For the 40 million residents of multifamily buildings, it remains very difficult to get access to home charging,” says Samuel Bordenave, head of finance and strategy at SWTCH Energy.
According to Bordenave, SWTCH is committed to supporting multifamily owners, developers, and managers across North America by addressing very specific challenges for the industry.
“At the top of the list is managing the electrical capacity across both new and aging multifamily buildings, a factor which ultimately determines the maximum number of chargers that can be installed and managed safely using existing infrastructure,” he says. “Our solutions are versatile enough that we can work with a wide variety of partners, regardless of whether they are building or managing high-rise condominiums, garden-style apartments, or anything in between.”
Bordenave adds that SWTCH is focused on reaching out to affordable housing owners and developers.
“We see equitable access to EV charging as the most important factor in ensuring a just transition to electric mobility for all,” he says.
As more states issue policies requiring EV readiness, the firm also will be prioritizing older multifamily communities that were designed prior to EV acceleration.
“It’s also important to consider that over one-third of Americans live in multi-tenant properties, and more than half of all U.S. buildings are over 30 years old,” Bordenave says. “Owners and operators who move on this today will be at a massive advantage tomorrow, all while helping the overall real estate industry to be more equitable and sustainable.”
RMI, with funding from the General Motors Climate Equity Fund, is launching a new charging accelerator pilot program to help states develop solutions for EV charging in multi-unit dwellings (MUDs) and low-income communities.
Ellen Kennedy, an RMI expert on carbon-free transportation, says the work comes at an opportune time, with EVs becoming more affordable, legislation and regulation spurring increased adoption, and automakers making commitments to increase EV sales. However, she notes, that if someone doesn’t have an accessible place to charge, they’re less likely to buy an EV.
“RMI will develop technical and economic models for infrastructure deployment in multifamily housing, including exploration of ‘right to charge’ policies, public-private partnership approaches to infrastructure financing, utility engagement, standards process and procedures for HOAs, shared mobility business models, and infrastructure siting best practices,” she says. “RMI will develop these solutions in partnership with communities and community-based organizations in three different states where multifamily charging inequities are pronounced, then pilot recommendations to test and refine approaches to scale MUD charging infrastructure financing and deployment nationwide in 2024.”
RMI says the pilot is underway as it is in the process of identifying partners and focal geographies that are willing to collaborate to explore and address challenges faced when working to create EV charging options for residents. Once the pilot is complete, it will release a detailed report outlining lessons learned from the pilot states, which can help decisionmakers and state and local governments develop and implement pilots of their own.
“Stakeholders involved in siting EV charging infrastructure must do so in an equitable way—currently charging infrastructure is put in places with existing demand, which tend to be in middle- to high-income areas where residents have private garages and are often also able to charge at their workplaces,” she says. “To prepare for the inevitable growth in demand for electricity, decisionmakers need to adopt forward-thinking strategies that account for both current and future demand. A robust EV charging network will be one that serves people of all incomes and across all housing types.”
She adds that the multifamily housing industry is uniquely positioned to help build an equitable EV charging network.