The Biden administration is opening up federal subsidies to Tesla charging stations—but only if they carry US’s own fast-charging standard for electric vehicles. 
 

On Friday (June 9), the White House said that EV charging stations using Tesla’s standard plugs—the North American Charging Standard (NACS), as Tesla christened it last year—would be eligible for billions of dollars in federal subsidies. But they must include the “combined charging system” (CCS) to qualify. 
Tesla’s charging ports are so rapidly becoming the norm, as legacy carmarkers like Ford and GM embrace it, that US government is unable to resist its ubiquity. The White House’s announcement marks the first time the administration has explicitly included Tesla in its $7.5 billion plan to build new, high-speed charging stations on 7,500 miles of the nation’s busiest highways. 

“Public funding must continue to go towards open standards, which is always better for the consumer,” a displeased CharIN North America—an industry body that promotes CCS—had said after Ford became the first major US automaker to jump on the Tesla charger bandwagon last month. “Public EV infrastructure funding…should continue to only be approved for CCS-standard-enabled chargers per federal minimum standards guidance.”