What's New for EV Charging in New Jersey?
The last few years have brought a bevy of new EV incentives across the United States. For interested EV drivers and property owners, some of the most important to keep an eye on are the state-level incentives: grants, rebates, and tax write-offs.
New Jersey, in particular, has made huge strides in this territory, offering several New Jersey-specific EV rebates and programs aimed at increasing the prominence of electric car charging stations across the state. What’s more, many of these programs are designed to work in tandem with each other, allowing prospective applicants to grab handfuls of grant money and rebates to offset the costs of installing EV infrastructure.
The end result is that New Jersey is poised to catch up with other EV-friendly states, like California, in very short order…especially given that New Jersey recently declared that buyers of electric vehicles don’t have to pay sales tax. Here, we’ll be collecting news about some of the more recent programs and incentives you should be aware of, with brief descriptions of each. First, though, let’s dive into why all this is happening.
Why All the Fuss?
You may wonder why New Jersey is putting so much effort into incentivizing EV adoption. Well, it’s not just being done on a whim. Rather, New Jersey recently passed a new law requiring these actions.
The law, passed in 2020, doesn’t have any kind of fancy name. But it does have a slew of requirements for EV adoption across the state. Namely: 330,000 plug-in EVs by 2025, 2 million by 2035, and 85% of all vehicles sold being plug-ins by 2040. There are other requirements too, including having 400 DC fast chargers spread across 200 locations, 1,000 level 2 chargers by 2025, making all of their state-owned light-duty vehicles plug-ins by 2035, and $30 million a year in spending on EV rebates over the next decade, in addition to other incentives like tax exemptions.
Following is a list of some of the bigger programs you should be aware of.
The Big Programs
As mentioned before, New Jersey has a wealth of incentives and EV rebate programs. The ones we list below are some of the most widespread and substantial, while also being representative of the different avenues that New Jersey is exploring to achieve their goals. Depending on who you are, you might find all three useful.
Atlantic City Electric’s “Make-Ready” Rebates
“Make-ready” rebates are a little different from other financial EV incentives, as they focus on the costs of making your property ready to install an EV charger. Such infrastructure changes can be especially expensive when one is considering installing level 3 chargers…that is unless you’ve got huge rebates like the ones offered by this program.
The Atlantic City Electric’s EVsmart Make-Ready program started in February of 2021 and targets “new” EV charging installations. It branches its offerings according to property types (including single residential properties, multifamily dwellings, businesses and public property) and offers substantial rebates for each, aimed at making your property ready for installing EV charging stations.
It Pay$ To Plug In
Easily one of the catchier names amongst financial programs, New Jersey’s “It Pay$ to Plug In” program, started in 2021, helps cover the other side of EV charger installation: installing the hardware, itself. This isn’t the only substantial difference between it and ACE’s program. This one is a grant system, meaning that you must complete the application and receive the finances before you order the installation of your new hardware. That said, its application system is shockingly straightforward and provides quite a bit of money: up to 100% of costs in most cases, with a cap of $750 per level 1 charger and $4,000 per level 2 charger.
There is a major catch to this program, however: It isn’t available to private residential dwellings, outside of multi-unit houses. Still, it’s available to businesses, governments, nonprofits and just about everyone else, meaning it can go a long way toward increasing the EV infrastructure available in New Jersey. As mentioned before, these programs can be used in tandem. So, you could, feasibly, use the Atlantic City Electric Program to prep your facilities for EV installation, then use It Pay$ to Plug In to defray the costs of the installation, itself.
ChargeUp New Jersey
New Jersey’s apparent love for EV charger incentives is being matched by another incentive program surrounded by a bit of controversy: ChargeUp New Jersey.
This program is very straightforward and aims at the driving side of the EV adoption equation by providing residents with money to buy electric vehicles. But there is a problem: The program keeps running out of money. This isn’t because New Jersey doesn’t have the funds. Rather, critics argue that the funding for this program is set too low to meet New Jersey’s EV goals. As such, the program — which once offered up to $5,000 to applicants — will decrease that number to $4,000 in order to spread the money among more people. However, the New Jersey Electric Vehicle Association has countered by stating the annual fund should be raised from $35 million for the state’s 8.8 million people (which comes out to about $4 per person) to $136.4 million.
Regardless of which direction they go with adjusting their funding, the program has done a lot of good work and is setting New Jersey on track to meet its goals.
How Are These Programs Faring?
For the most part, the prognosis here is good. The state recently saw 56% growth in EV registrations in a year, with most of them being battery electric vehicles rather than hybrids. And charging stations are popping up all across the state. That said, to reach their targets, they will have to maintain these growth levels over several years, which is a tall order. Nevertheless, that 56% growth in EV adoption is a great sign that these incentives are doing their job.
One way or the other, New Jersey seems to be following California’s example while finding new avenues to increase the adoption and spread of electric vehicles. If they continue at this pace, then New Jersey might become the next “good example” for the country.
Looking to level-up EV charging in New Jersey? Work with EV Connect as your next EV charging solution provider.
Sources
New Jersey Division of Taxation - Sales Tax Exemption - Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) (N.J.S.A. 54:32B-8.55)
Atlantic City Electric - EVsmart Residential, Multi-family, Public, Workplace & Fleet Rebates
New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection - It Pay$ to Plug In
NorthJersey.com - NJ To Lower Electric Vehicle Incentive, Wants To Spread $35M Among More Buyers
ChargeUp New Jersey - Homepage
State of New Jersey Legislature - State of New Jersey 218th Legislature
ChargeVC - New Jersey’s Electric Vehicle Law
ChargeVC - On the Road To Reach Our Goals: NJ Sees Strong Year for EV Sales