ODOT's Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Plan Could Bring More EV Charging Stations To The State

The state of Oklahoma is being allocated about $66 million in federal funding to improve its electric vehicle infrastructure plan over the course of five years. The state is currently in year two of this five-year plan, with ODOT being a part of this private-public partnership between ODOT and private companies.

This past year, ODOT has been more focused on getting comments and feedback from Oklahoma residents about the electric vehicle infrastructure plan.

ODOT will not be constructing any of the electric vehicle charging stations, which will first start along the interstates. Instead, private vendors would build, run, own and operate these charging stations on private property.

ODOT's role is to take in requests for proposals from private companies, and then use the federal funding to reimburse the private companies that build the charging stations.

"We are going to bring federal funding to the table so they can access that federal funding and do a reimbursement. They will do the construction, request reimbursement up to 80% of their funding and up to $1.2 million based on the grant," Jared Schwennesen, the Multi-Modal Division Engineer for ODOT said.

However, ODOT is still looking for more feedback from residents because while ODOT has received some comments from Oklahomans, ODOT knows that even more feedback will help improve the plan further.

"We’re looking for more. There’s never enough. With the 4 million people in Oklahoma, I definitely don’t think we’ve gotten 4 million comments so we’re trying to get as many as we possibly can, and while we've gotten some, we need more before it closes up and we have to submit in August," Schwennesen said.

ODOT has also started accepting requests for proposals from private businesses and will continue to do so for about two months. ODOT expects to award the projects in November, and the construction could begin in early 2024.