TLDR
Illinois opened a fourth NEVI funding round on July 8: $30 million with a streamlined, photo-and-map application due July 20. JCP&L's EV Driven program, which covers up to $7,000 in combined make-ready costs for a home Level 2 charger, closes July 15, two days after this issue. WattEV opened its seventh California heavy-duty truck charging depot in Fresno on June 30, adding Tesla Megawatt Charging System hardware to its freight corridor network. Alexandria, Virginia's DASH transit agency broke ground on the DC region's first en-route bus chargers, 360 kW pantograph units that recharge buses in five to twenty minutes without pulling them from service. And starting July 31, every Lucid Air gains access to more than 23,500 Tesla Superchargers through a $220 adapter.
Illinois Opens a $30 Million NEVI Round With a Streamlined Application
The Illinois Department of Transportation opened a fourth round of its NEVI charging station program on July 8, making roughly $30 million available for new DC fast and Level 2 charging sites anywhere in the state. Applications are due July 20, and IDOT expects to announce selected locations by the end of August.
The application itself is deliberately simple. IDOT streamlined the process for this round to require only site location information: a map, a basic site schematic, photos, and answers to a short set of project questions, rather than the fuller technical package earlier rounds required. IDOT held an informational webinar on July 8 to walk applicants through it.
Projects can serve standard passenger vehicles or medium- and heavy-duty trucks, and proposed sites are not restricted to Illinois's federally designated highway corridors, so property owners off the interstate network are eligible.
What this means for Illinois property owners. This is the most accessible NEVI application Illinois has run: a lighter paperwork burden and a two-week runway. If you have a commercial site anywhere in the state with grid capacity and traffic to support a charging installation, this round is worth a look before July 20.
JCP&L's Home Charger Incentive Window Closes July 15
Jersey Central Power and Light's EV Driven program, which helps residential customers cover the cost of preparing their property for a Level 2 charger, closes to new applications July 15, two days after this issue.
The program covers two pieces of make-ready work: up to $1,500 in customer-side electrical upgrades per charging port, and up to $5,500 in utility-side work per site, such as new poles, transformers, or service wires, for a combined ceiling around $7,000 per qualifying installation. Enrolled customers with a program-qualified Level 2 charger also get a small ongoing credit, about $0.02 per kWh, for charging during off-peak hours.
This is a separate program from the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities' Charge Up New Jersey suite covered in last week's issue. JCP&L runs EV Driven independently as a utility program, on its own funding and its own calendar, which is exactly the pattern this newsletter has been tracking since 30C expired: state and utility incentives don't move together, and a homeowner has to track more than one calendar to catch them all.
What this means for JCP&L customers. If you're a JCP&L residential customer planning a Level 2 charger install, July 15 is the real deadline, not a soft target. Get your application and site details in before then; the make-ready incentive amounts are the largest piece of this program and they don't carry forward once the window closes.
WattEV Opens Its Seventh Heavy-Duty Truck Charging Depot
WattEV opened a new heavy-duty electric truck charging depot in Fresno, California, on June 30, its seventh site in the state and part of a planned freight corridor connecting the Ports of Oakland and Stockton to inland warehouses in the northern San Joaquin Valley.
The Fresno site sits on the Highway 99 corridor and combines standard DC fast chargers with new Tesla Megawatt Charging System (MCS) hardware built for Class 8 trucks, drawing on a requested electrical interconnection of 3.6 megawatts to support the site. WattEV says the MCS units bring truck charging "dwell times" down to around 30 minutes, in range of a comparable diesel refueling stop.
What this means for commercial property owners. Fresno is a data point on what heavy-duty charging infrastructure actually requires: multi-megawatt interconnections, not the few-hundred-kilowatt service a typical DC fast-charging site for passenger cars uses. If your property sits on a freight corridor and you're evaluating truck charging as a use case, the electrical scope is a different category of project from a passenger car fast-charging site, and it starts with a conversation with your utility about interconnection capacity long before equipment selection.
DC Metro Breaks Ground on Its First En-Route Electric Bus Chargers
DASH, the public transit agency serving Alexandria, Virginia, broke ground on two overhead pantograph chargers at the former Landmark Mall site, the first en-route electric bus chargers in the Washington DC metropolitan region. Construction is expected to wrap in 2027, funded in part by more than $1 million in federal appropriations.
The chargers deliver up to 360 kW through an overhead arm that connects to a receptor on the bus roof, letting buses top up during a five- to twenty-minute layover instead of returning to a garage for hours of plug-in charging. That "opportunity charging" model is different from depot charging, where a fleet parks overnight to recharge on lower-power equipment.
What this means for commercial and fleet property owners. Opportunity charging is a niche today, built for transit and other high-utilization routes where a vehicle can't sit idle for hours. But the underlying idea, very high power delivered in short bursts tied to a natural dwell time, is the same logic behind DC fast charging at a retail site: match the charging window to how long the vehicle is already going to be there. If you operate a property with a fleet, rideshare, or delivery use case with predictable short stops, that's the model worth studying, not overnight depot charging.
Lucid Air Gains Tesla Supercharger Access on July 31
Starting July 31, every Lucid Air, regardless of model year, gains access to more than 23,500 Tesla Superchargers in North America through a Lucid-approved adapter. The adapter connects the Air's native CCS1 port to NACS (SAE J3400) Superchargers on the V3 network and above, priced at $220, and Lucid says charging is capped around 50 kW through the adapter, well below what the Air can pull on native CCS1 hardware.
Lucid joins a growing list of automakers whose CCS1 vehicles now reach Tesla's network through an adapter rather than a native NACS port, following Stellantis's rollout of Supercharger access to Jeep and Dodge EVs earlier this year.
What this means for property owners planning a DC fast-charging site. The adapter wave doesn't change the calculus on which connector to install today: NACS is the standard for new hardware, and CCS1 vehicles increasingly reach it through adapters rather than the other way around. But it's a reminder that connector compatibility is now closer to universal than it was even a year ago. A well-specified NACS site with a CCS1 cable or adapter on hand covers nearly the whole market.
By the Numbers
$30 million: Illinois's fourth NEVI funding round, opened July 8, 2026, applications due July 20 with a streamlined site-only application.
$7,000: Maximum combined make-ready incentive under JCP&L's EV Driven program ($1,500 customer-side per port, $5,500 utility-side per site), which closes to new applications July 15, 2026.
7th: WattEV's heavy-duty electric truck charging depot in California, opened in Fresno on June 30, 2026, on a 3.6 MW interconnection.
360 kW: Power output of the two pantograph bus chargers DASH broke ground on in Alexandria, Virginia, the DC region's first en-route bus charging installation.
$220: Price of the Lucid-approved NACS adapter giving every Lucid Air access to Tesla Superchargers starting July 31, 2026, at up to 50 kW.
74,265: Public DC fast-charging ports nationwide as of July 1, 2026, up 27% from a year earlier.
Sources: Illinois Department of Transportation (NEVI Round 4 release, July 8, 2026), WSIU and Effingham Radio (IDOT funding round coverage, July 8-10, 2026), FirstEnergy/JCP&L (EV Driven Program Guide and FAQ), Alternative Fuels Data Center (JCP&L residential EV charging rebate listing), Malfettone Electric (JCP&L deadline coverage), WattEV (Fresno depot opening release, June 30, 2026), electrive.com (July 3, 2026), Ampcontrol (WattEV Fresno interconnection details), DASH and the City of Alexandria (groundbreaking release), Electrek (July 3, 2026), Lucid Group (Lucid Air Supercharger access release), EVChargingStations.com (DC fast-charging port count, July 2026 update). evcharginghelp.com is editorially independent and receives no compensation from any company mentioned.
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