Government task force tackles major headache for electric vehicle owners: 'Took way too long'
Americans struggle to move past gas-powered cars for many reasons. Now, one of those reasons is gone.
A consortium of stakeholders intends to roll out a universal plug-and-charge protocol for the electric vehicles in the United States this year, hybrid and electric car news site Green Car Reports said in a recent article.
What does this mean? It means no more app to download, no more fobs to access stations, and no more using chargers from an unfamiliar brand. A new initiative will make automatic authentication when EVs plug in at public charging stations possible.
EVs can help improve air quality by curtailing carbon pollution from the transportation sector, which constitutes one of the largest shares of U.S. pollution. However, there are obstacles to their adoption, such as the fragmentation of charging infrastructure networks.
The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), the Biden administration's Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, and the Electric Vehicle Public Key Infrastructure (EVPKI) consortium of automakers and charging networks decided to take the problem in hand.
Together, they announced the establishment of a new security framework as part of efforts "to shift reliance away from individual automakers or specific hardware or software variations and make plug-and-charge the norm," Green Car Reports said.
"Universal Plug & Charge levels up the electric fueling experience — making it even easier than filling up with gas," Gabe Klein, the head of the U.S. Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, said in a statement. "We are rapidly approaching a future where every EV driver can just plug in, charge up, and go; the network will talk to your car and process the payment seamlessly."
Green Car Reports, however, added that a Certificate Trust List (CTL) needed to be developed by the consortium members.
"It would essentially be a compendium of vehicles, hardware, and payment platforms that meet certain standards. The goal is to allow for quick authentication when a vehicle is plugged in to charge, by pre-clearing adherents to these standards."
When you think about owning an EV, what concerns you most about public charging stations?
Chargers not working
Chargers not being available
Charging being too expensive
Charging taking too long
Click your choice to see results and speak your mind.
If part of the online community questioned, in reaction to the article, the creation of "yet another standard" that will only apply to the U.S. — against those implemented in China or Europe, some observers claimed that it should have been thought long ago.
"About time. It's getting crazy with the various networks, their stupid apps and payment options," one commented.
"This should have been thought out before 10+ years of EVs being available. Took way too long," another said.
Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Boston Globe
42 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
Trump hails limited trade agreement with China after talks in London
Advertisement Less than two weeks after accusing China of violating a trade-war truce, Trump on Wednesday had nothing but praise for the Chinese leader. 'President Xi and I are going to work closely together to open up China to American Trade. This would be a great WIN for both countries!!!' the president wrote in a second Truth Social post. Under the renewed truce, the United States will impose a 55 percent tariff on Chinese goods, and China will hit American products with a 10 percent import tax, the president said. Those are both higher rates than before Trump took office, but lower than the triple-digit tariff levels that each nation imposed this spring. US and Chinese negotiators agreed late Tuesday to try again to implement the trade-war truce that collapsed amid recriminations on both sides just weeks after it was reached during an earlier round of talks in Geneva. Advertisement Speaking near midnight in London, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced what he called a 'handshake' deal to put into effect the terms of the May 12 US-China agreement that called for both nations to lower their tariffs and take additional steps to facilitate trade. 'We have reached a framework to implement the Geneva consensus and the call between the two presidents,' Lutnick told reporters, referring to a June 5 telephone conversation between Trump and Xi. 'I think it's really beneficial to the United States of America. It's very beneficial to the Chinese and the China economy.' Negotiators released no text of either the London framework or the earlier Geneva accord to de-escalate the US-China trade war. But Lutnick said both nations would remove new trade barriers they had erected as the truce broke down. That means China is expected to permit an increased flow of critical materials known as 'rare earths' for auto and defense production. As those shipments increase, the United States will lift measures that it imposed recently 'in a balanced way,' Lutnick said. 'We do absolutely expect that the topic of rare-earth minerals and magnets, with respect to the United States of America, will be resolved in this framework implementation,' Lutnick said. He did not specify which US measures would be lifted in response. But his department has implemented a number of restrictions on exports to China of aerospace technology and advanced semiconductor equipment, which Chinese officials urgently want removed. Lutnick described the diplomatic breakthrough as the first step toward expanding US-China trade, which topped $580 billion last year. The United States buys more than three times as much from China as Chinese customers buy from Americans, a trade deficit that the president has inveighed against for years as a measure of industrial decline. Advertisement 'We have an existing, significant trade deficit, and President Trump's fundamental goal is to reduce the trade deficit and increase trade. So this was the first step of the framework by which we will then approach and discuss growing trade . But first we had to sort of get the negativity out," Lutnick said. Briefing reporters outside Lancaster House, the 19th-century mansion in London's West End that hosted two days of talks, Lutnick credited the involvement of both presidents with producing quick results. 'You have to get things done if you're working for President Trump. I'm sure they felt they had to get it done because they were working for President Xi,' he said. The US delegation also included Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. Bessent left the talks a few hours early to return to Washington in time to appear before Congress on Wednesday. The Chinese team was led by Vice Premier He Lifeng, a close associate of Xi. In China, Li Chenggang, China's vice commerce minister, said the talks were 'professional, rational, in-depth and candid,' according to Chinese state media, and Beijing hopes the discussions will 'be conducive to increasing trust between China and the United States.' Yao Yang, an economist at Peking University, said the fact that Beijing and Washington engaged in negotiations amid bitter trade tensions is positive. 'The Chinese government's stance has always been, if you want to fight, we are going to take it. But the purpose of fighting is not just for the sake of fighting, it is to prepare for negotiation or to bring the other side to the negotiation table,' he said. Advertisement Yet even as the latest attempt to put US-China relations on a sound footing moved forward, Greer nodded to the long list of issues that divide the two sides. The Trump administration has complained about Chinese policies that fuel what it sees as excess production of manufactured goods, which depress global prices and hurt American factory workers. 'There are some things that the Chinese and US economies, they just don't fit together very well. Other things, maybe they do. And there'll be a time for broader conversations on that,' he said. The 90-day pause on triple-digit tariffs that amounted to a de facto US-China trade embargo expires Aug. 12. In response to a question about prospects for an extension, Greer said that would be up to the president. Further talks are expected, though no date has been agreed to yet. The Trump administration notched a legal win Tuesday when a federal appeals court ruled that many of the tariffs the president imposed on China can remain while the government appeals a lower-court ruling that found they were illegal. The Court of International Trade, a little-known specialized court in New York, ruled last month that Trump exceeded his authority by invoking emergency powers to impose tariffs on imports from China and other nations. The Trump administration quickly appealed and the appeals court temporarily paused the lower court's decision. On Tuesday, it said that pause could stay in place while the appeal was decided. Advertisement 'The court also concludes that these cases present issues of exceptional importance warranting expedited en banc consideration of the merits in the first instance,' the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said Tuesday. The appeals court said it would expedite the issue and hear arguments July 31.


Politico
an hour ago
- Politico
A good day to be a fossil fuel
The Trump administration is intensifying its efforts to boost the fossil fuel industry. Its latest move: proposing a free pass to pollute. The Environmental Protection Agency today announced it would roll back Biden-era limits on carbon and toxic air pollution from power plants. While the nation is the world's second-biggest climate polluter, lagging only behind China, EPA argues that the U.S. power sector's pollution does not contribute enough to global climate change to justify regulating it, write Alex Guillén and Jean Chemnick. That's even though the power sector alone emits more carbon pollution than most countries and accounts for one-quarter of U.S. greenhouse gases. Former President Joe Biden's climate rule for power plants requires new natural gas plants and existing coal-fired units to eventually capture and store their greenhouse gas emissions. Analysts had anticipated that the measure — which the Trump administration aims to repeal by the end of the year — would make a significant dent in power sector climate pollution. The administration does not plan to issue a replacement rule, a person familiar with the agency's plans told Jean and Zack Colman. EPA also announced today that it aims to repeal a separate rule that curbs toxic mercury pollution from power plants. The agency's moves build on a slew of other Trump administration efforts to decimate U.S. climate policy. Trump plans to sign a trio of resolutions Thursday to revoke California's national-leading vehicle emissions standards, writes Alex Nieves. The administration has also taken a sledgehammer to executive branch programs dealing with climate change, from NASA's climate research division to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's heat team. And congressional Republicans are weighing to what extent they will unravel hundreds of billions of dollars in tax credits for clean energy production from Democrats' 2022 climate law. Era of inertia: If Trump's newest EPA rule repeal sticks, it will extend a 15-year-long streak of setbacks for regulators' and lawmakers' attempts to address one of the nation's biggest climate pollution sources, Zack, Benjamin Storrow and Annie Snider write: 'The years of whipsawing moves have left Washington with no consistent approach on how — or whether — to confront climate change, even as scientists warn that years are growing short to avoid catastrophic damage to human society.' It's Wednesday — thank you for tuning in to POLITICO's Power Switch. I'm your host, Arianna Skibell. Power Switch is brought to you by the journalists behind E&E News and POLITICO Energy. Send your tips, comments, questions to askibell@ Today in POLITICO Energy's podcast: Josh Siegel breaks down why Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, the top Democrat on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, thinks the GOP megabill will cost Republicans at the ballot box. Power Centers AI boom could boost 'forever chemicals'The artificial intelligence boom isn't only driving up demand for power, it's also spurring production of so-called forever chemicals used to build semiconductor chips needed for data centers, writes Miranda Willson. Chemical giant Chemours, for example, is pushing to expand production of forever chemicals to meet surging demand, raising concerns about whether the company can scale up its output without releasing more toxic pollutants. Heat déjà vuLast month was the world's second-warmest May on record, European scientists have found, writes Louise Guillot. The same scientists found that this April was also the second-warmest April globally on record. It followed a March that was the warmest on record. In Other News AI futures: Data centers are building their own natural gas power plants in Texas. Trash sucks: A Norwegian city uses vacuum tubes to whisk waste away. Subscriber Zone A showcase of some of our best subscriber content. Energy Secretary Chris Wright was put in the uncomfortable position of defending Trump's decision to save a New York offshore wind project that it had pushed to the brink of collapse. Federal employee unions secured a legal victory this week when a federal court issued an order blocking the Office of Personnel Management from giving DOGE access to its records. The Transportation Department is set to release a draft of its overhauled guidance for the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program later this month. That's it for today, folks! Thanks for reading.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Why Trump Is Losing His Trade War
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Donald Trump's trade war is fast turning into a fiasco. When the president started the war, Team Trump advertised it as certain to be fast, easy, and cheap. Trump would impose tariffs. The world would yield to his will. The tariffs would do everything at once. They would protect U.S. industry from foreign competition without raising prices, and generate vast revenues that would finance other tax cuts. Americans could eat their cake, continue to have the cake, and trade the same cake for pie—all at the same time. 'There's not going to be any pain for American workers,' Trump's press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, vowed in April. The advertising rapidly proved false. The U.S. economy is slowing because of the Trump tariffs; China's is thriving in spite of them. Team Trump falsely promotes vague five-page outlines with alienated former allies as big deals; China is successfully wooing some of its former rivals, such as Vietnam. America's standing in the world is measurably sinking; China's is measurably rising. Courts are ruling that Trump's tariffs are illegal; public opinion mistrusts the tariffs, regarding them as expensive and unproductive. The promise of huge flows of painless money from tariff revenues is evanescing as the fantasy it always was. Oh, and the country's largest chain of Halloween retailers canceled its traditional summer grand opening because of Trump-caused supply disruptions. What comes next, as things go wrong? Trump's first instinct is to blame the targets of his economic aggression for not cooperating with his wishes. On May 30, Trump accused China of violating an imaginary agreement with him. On June 4, he complained that Xi Jinping was 'extremely hard to make a deal with.' But Trump seldom chooses to quarrel with foreign dictators, saying in the same breath, 'I like President Xi of China, always have, and always will.' Today, in all-caps emphasis, Trump announced that a deal had been done, declaring that his 'RELATIONSHIP IS EXCELLENT' with the Chinese president-for-life. The lack of details in the announcement strongly suggests that Trump yielded more and gained less than his publicity apparatus wants Americans to believe. That's because, in reality, Trump's global trade war has always been subordinate to his domestic culture war. Trump much prefers to vent his rage against enemies within. Get ready for him to blame the failure of his trade war on fellow Americans who did not support him enough. The Trump tariffs will be ballyhooed as an act of patriotism, a necessary sacrifice to be laid on the altar of the nation. One of Trump's television talkers reminded viewers that Americans melted down their pots and pans to win the Second World War. If the president needs to ration dolls and colored pencils, how dare any true American raise a contrary voice? The coming call for national solidarity with Trump's Great Patriotic War against imported Halloween costumes deserves all the scoffing it will get and more. Trump ordered the nation into economic warfare. He did not do any of the things necessary to create any hope of success in that war. The impending defeat is his personal doing, entirely his own fault. [Jonathan Chait: The good news about Trump's tariffs] Recall the classic Norm Macdonald bit in which the comedian marvels that in the 20th century, Germany decided to go to war with 'the world,' twice. That was meant as a joke. Trump adopted it as his actual strategy. Trump's rationalizers invoke anxiety about China as his justification. Yes, China numbered among the targets of Trump's 'Liberation Day' tariffs. But so did Australia. So did Brazil. So did Canada. So did Denmark. So did Egypt. And on and on, through the whole alphabet of American allies and trading partners. The United States is by far the planet's strongest national economy, producing slightly more than one-quarter of the planet's goods and services. Including its historic and recent partners, the United States could potentially lead a group of nations sufficiently influential to write economic rules that everybody would need to take into account. That fact underpinned the Trans-Pacific Partnership concept of the Obama years: Form a large-enough and attractive-enough club, and China will have no choice but to comply with the founding members' terms. Trump's alternative concept is for a quarter of the world economy to cut itself off from the other three-quarters, and then wait for the three-quarters to beg for mercy from the one-quarter. Unsurprisingly, that concept is fast proving a stinker. But suppose the president sincerely believed that the U.S. had no choice: The one-quarter must fight the three-quarters as a matter of national survival, or 'liberation,' from the tyranny of foreign goods and services, foreign fruits and vegetables. Crazy, but suppose he did. What would follow? A rational president would grasp that a U.S. economic war against the rest of the world would be a big, protracted, and painful undertaking. Such an enormous commitment would require democratic consent from a large majority of the public, all the more so because the United States is starting the war itself. Trump's trade conflict is very much a war of choice. The president must explain why he chose it. A rational president determined to fight an economic war would try to mobilize broad support from the public and from Congress. He would seek allies in Congress, and not only from his own party. He might, for example, compromise on some of his other goals. If he also wanted to tighten immigration at the same time as waging a global trade war, or to roll back DEI programs, or to cut taxes for the wealthy, or to relax anti-corruption measures, or to pardon the crimes of his violent supporters, or to plan any other ambitious but divisive project, he might think twice about pursuing them. You can't ask your opponents to pay more and do without if you won't forgo even a scrap of your partisan agenda. You can ask anyway, but don't be shocked when they answer with a Bronx cheer. That president would also lead from the front. A president seeking to inspire Americans to endure hardship for the greater good would certainly not throw himself a multimillion-dollar birthday parade at public expense. He would not accept lavish gifts from foreign governments, would not operate a pay-for-access business that collected billions of dollars for himself and his family from undisclosed favor-seekers. While asking other Americans to accept less, he would not brazenly help himself to more. He certainly would not troll, insult, and demean those who may not have voted for him, but whose cooperation he needs now. This president has, of course, done the most egregious version of every item above. His economic war is adjunct to his partisan culture war. He did not seek broad support. He gleefully offends and alienates everyone outside his base. Which works for him as long as times are prosperous, as they were in the first three years of his first administration. Allow things to get tough, though, and it's a different story. Trump cannot ask for patience and trust, because at least half the country has unalterably judged him as untrustworthy and out only for himself. [David Frum: The ultimate bait and switch of Trump's tariffs] Trump bet his presidency on the theory that trade wars are 'good and easy to win,' as he posted during his first term. His second-term trade war, however, is proving not so easy, and not so good, either. He is fighting it alone, without global allies or domestic consent, because that's his nature. It's now also his problem. In the 1983 movie WarGames, a computer thinks its way through dozens of terrifying nuclear scenarios and concludes: 'The only winning move is not to play.' In other words, the only safe way to conduct a nuclear exchange is never to have one. The same could be said of trade wars, at least when fought by one nation, however big and rich, against all the others, all at once. Trump decided he did not care about Americans' support for his economic war. He did not ask for their backing. He did not make any effort to win it. He willfully alienated at least half of the public. Now that he's losing, his supporters want to scold the country because it rejects the whole misbegotten project as stupid and doomed. Don't listen to their reproaches. This is Trump's war, and his alone. The only way to win now is to end Trump's trade war as rapidly as possible. And then end the excessive, unilateral trade powers of a corrupt president who blundered into a pointless and doomed conflict without justification, plan, or consent. Article originally published at The Atlantic