In Compliance The proposed infrastructure bill NFPA 70 + 70E Electrical Safety Why an up-to-date NEC is essential to create an EV infrastructure By Corey Hannahs T he Biden Administration has left little doubt as to its desire to embrace the development of electric vehicles (EVs). 48 | NFPA JOURNAL * FALL 2021 allocates $174 billion to electric vehicles, a portion of which will help fund a nationwide network of approximately 500,000 new charging stations. The timeline associated with this EV push can seem mindboggling. President Biden hopes to have all of those chargers built by 2030. Meanwhile, major automotive manufacturers have shared plans to convert a large portion of their vehicle production to electric-powered over the next 10 years. Some automakers have said they want to be fully converted to EV-only production in the next five years. Ensuring that the necessary EV infrastructure is built quickly and safely will rely on up-to-date building and electrical codes being key components in the process. But that's the problem-as of June, only 11 states were operating under the most recent edition of NFPA 70® National Electrical Code® , (NEC), an essential code for the creation of the nation's EV infrastructure. That means the rest are not operating based on the most current NEC code requirements, those included in the 2020 edition of the code. Some states were using editions of the NEC dating back to 2008. With electricity and energy storage forming the backbone of operating GETTY IMAGES