Electric vehicles (EVs) will play an important role in America’s clean energy future.
Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response
April 10, 2024
minute read time
Electric vehicles (EVs) will play an important role in America’s clean energy future. Public and private investments to electrify the roadways, driven by the Biden-Harris Administration’s programs, have already put over 5 million EVs on the roads and catalyzed the installation of more than 175,000 publicly available EV charging stations across the country. This includes more than just passenger cars; school buses, freight trucks, postal trucks, and other medium- and heavy-duty vehicles are adding to the fleet of zero-emission vehicles in the U.S.
To ensure local and long-distance EV travel is an option for all Americans, billions of federal dollars are being invested to build a convenient and equitable network of charging stations and integrate them into the electric grid by 2030. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law established the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation (Joint Office), a coordinated effort by the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Department of Transportation to work with industry partners to achieve this goal of providing convenient and safe charging for all, supported by $7.5 billion in federal grants to build out EV charging infrastructure.
With this increase in use and adoption of EVs, however, comes an increase in cybersecurity risks across EV supply equipment (EVSE) and the wider EV charging infrastructure ecosystem. Malicious actors could infiltrate the devices or networks to access user data, interrupt charging, or even cause a black out of the grid. Experts from across the private sector and government agencies, including DOE’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER), are actively working to help secure the EV charging ecosystem and grid from cyber attacks.
CESER funds new cybersecurity research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) of tools and technologies that will make charging infrastructure safer for zero emission vehicles like EVs. In 2023, CESER directly funded $5 million in projects across DOE's national laboratories to work on issues and risks identified by experts in the EVSE and cybersecurity fields. These collaborative projects will lead to innovative solutions – from updated or new technologies to standard harmonization – that will help ensure the future of EV charging across the country is secure, reliable, and accessible. There’s even a funding opportunity open now, jointly funded by CESER and DOE’s Vehicle Technologies Office (VTO), to support RD&D to improve cybersecurity for smart and secure EV charging.
In a new blog series, we’ll highlight some of these RD&D projects and partners, like DOE's VTO, Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, Office of Technology Transitions, and DOE national labs.
Read parts 2 and 3 of the Securing EV Charging Infrastructure blog series.