Until this week, there were no federal standards for EV chargers in the U.S. And it shows: existing chargers differ by type of connection, power of charge and payment method.

Now, the White House has unveiled new standards for federally funded EV chargers. The idea is to make it easy for drivers to find a charger without even thinking about it.

Standards create certainty, and investors like certainty. According to Jay Koh, managing director of the Lightsmith Group, a climate-focused private equity firm, “the next five to 10 years — now the trajectory has become a lot clearer.”

Another certainty: public funds. The infrastructure law invests $7.5 billion in EV charging, which is why we’re seeing companies like Tesla make a portion of electric chargers open to all EVs by the end of next year.

Koh said that certainty “creates a much larger landscape and shows that people are willing to play nice with others.” It also makes good business sense to be able to profit from charging all electric cars, not just Teslas. 

Another business opportunity lies in strategizing where new electric chargers should be. “You can pinpoint certain locations where people stop, you know, where they stop for certain amounts of time,” said Jessika Trancik, a professor at the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society at MIT. 

The Biden administration wants a network of 500,000 public EV chargers across the country by 2030, about four times the current number.