One of the main purposes of the Indiana Department of Transportation’s public information meetings for INDOT’s Charging the Crossroads program is to get the word out about funding opportunities and target areas for electric vehicle charging stations.
Tuesday afternoon, the first of four two-hour planned public meetings for 2024 took place at Ivy Tech in Warsaw. The remaining three will be July 9 in Indianapolis, July 11 in Kokomo and July 16 in Vincennes. Locations were selected on where INDOT is trying to beef up the stations along the alternative fuel corridors (AFCs).
Charging the Crossroads is INDOT’s plan to invest nearly $100 million in federal funds to expand Indiana’s statewide electric vehicle charging network. Funded through the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, Indiana’s effort feeds into a national initiative to create a network of at 500,000 charging ports across the U.S., according to a video shown at the meeting.
Starting off a 35-minute presentation, Diane Newton, national practice consultant with program management consultant HNTB, who has been working with INDOT on the program, said, “The main reason we come out to these public meetings is to hear from you guys. We want to talk about what we’ve done with the program, but get your feedback.”
To gather feedback and provide information to the public there were a couple stations set up in the room.

    A map displayed at Tuesday’s public meeting at Ivy Tech in Warsaw on the Indiana Charging the Crossroads program shows where the Notice of Funding Opportunity round 2 target areas are in Indiana. Photo by David Slone, Times-Union
  

The first station was all about NEVI grant awards and the upcoming second procurement, she explained. There were target areas and she said they wanted to hear about where the electric vehicle (EV) charging stations should be.
The second station was all about equity in the program.
“Last summer, our engagement focused a lot on our first procurement. We released a draft NOFO (Notice of Funding Opportunity) for public comment. We did our plan update in public meetings associated with that. That kind of culminated in a webinar. We released the NOFO and the plan for public comment, and then we got public comments on both documents. We submitted the plan on Aug. 1. The NOFO was released on Aug. 31,” Newton said.
NOFO applications were due on Nov. 22. On March 28, selections for round 1 NEVI grants were announced.
Speaking on EV adoption and market trends, Newton said 2023 was a milestone year in EV adoption as it was the first year that EV sales passed 1 million nationally, as well as passed 10% of the sales market. Indiana’s numbers were relatively unchanged from 2022 to 2023. She said it’s anticipated that the battery-electric and hybrid will be around 30% of vehicle sales by 2030.
“So Indiana’s just lagging a little behind of where we are nationally,” she stated.
A map showed where the current DC fast chargers are in Indiana. Newton said there’s 543 stations in Indiana, with 120 of them providing DC fast charging. Of those 120, there’s 75 that have a CCS (combined charging system) fast-charging cord, which are the NEVI-compliant cords; 39 provide the NACS (North American Charging Standard) ports; and 52 provide at least one CHAdeMO port.
“But, as we know, there’s specific rules around NEVI, so of these 120 stations, actually 10 of the 120 are NEVI-compliant,” Newton said. “You would think from looking at this map that we’re all set, but when you look at the NEVI rules of power requirements and location relative to the alternative fuel corridors, really this is why the NEVI program exists to help fill these gaps and ensure the stations are available and reliable and accessible.”
The video on Charging the Crossroads and NEVI requirements, debuted by George McCue, INDOT ZEV program director, stated that the NEVI program requires charging stations to be located along the state’s federally designated AFCs. Indiana’s AFCs include interstates and major highways throughout the state.
Charging stations funded through Charging the Crossroads must be installed every 50 miles along a corridor and within a mile of an interstate exit or highway. Rest areas are not eligible locations. Each level 3 DC fast-charge station must be publicly accessible and provide four DC fast-chargers ports capable of providing 150 kW of power per port simultaneously.
Installation of the initial sites is anticipated to begin in 2025. A second funding opportunity for charging stations through Charging the Crossroads is expected later this year and will focus on addressing the remaining gaps of the state’s charging network, the video stated.
Projects funded by Charging the Crossroads require award recipients to cover at least 20% of the project costs.
McCue said Indiana started its NEVI program in 2022, beginning with putting out the plan for public engagement. In 2023, INDOT had its first round of applications, with awards made this past spring. This spring and summer, he said they’re approaching site procurement and contracting with the awardees so they can get work going on getting the chargers installed.
“Once that has occurred, then there is a five-year operations and maintenance phase where we’re still going to be involved to ensure that these chargers are running 97% of the time. So we still have involvement and data is going to be recorded to show that those chargers are reliably working,” he said.
While that’s all going on, McCue said they will continue to have rounds of further NOFOs so they can continue to fill in the gaps to get EV chargers throughout the state.
“So as you can see, it’s a program that’s going to run over the course of many years, and then once we have completed what’s called buildout to get all of those chargers within that 50-mile interval along our AFCs, then hopefully we will have some funds that will be available where there will be less strings attached to it, as far as being within one mile of the corridor, and we would like to continue to target those benefits within Indiana communities, especially our underserved and what we call DAC (Disadvantaged Community) communities,” he said.

      

Eleven companies were awarded funds for 39 sites in March for fast-charging stations in the first round, including BP Products North America (10 sites), Tesla (10), Pilot (six) and Loves Travel Stop (four), with seven other companies awarded one or two sites.
McCue said the NOFO round 2 will focus on the gaps where Indiana has areas that need to filled with sites.
He talked about the importance of equity with the program, reaching as much as they can with the NEVI program into DACs in the state.
“There is a federal program that was established by executive order 14008 called Justice40. It requires federal benefits to reach those DACs with a baseline of 40%. These areas, the population is characterized by a lack of access to a wealth of transportation, economically or equitably disadvantaged, carrying a negative energy burden or adversely impacted by fossil dependence, resilience or environmental and climate hazards,” McCue explained.
He said they want to make sure that stations are accessible to all of Indiana’s communities, in particular DACs.
Kaylee Dan, Greater Indiana Clean Cities executive director, discussed the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure (CFI) grant program. It’s a discretionary grant program that was also passed as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. It provides about $2.5 billion to facilitate EV charging infrastructure and other alternative fueling infrastructure. She said there’s some differences between CFI and NEVI and information on CFI also was provided at Tuesday’s meeting.
For more information, visit the website at chargingthecrossroads.com.