TLDR
Colorado's new retail EV charging regulations took effect July 1: public chargers that bill by the kilowatt-hour must now display price and energy delivered and register with the state, the same oversight category as gas pumps, with enforcement starting July 1, 2027. ChargePoint and travel plaza operator Onvo announced a partnership on July 13 to bring 500 kW Express Plus chargers to 12 sites along Pennsylvania and New York highways. In the same week, Pilot Travel Centers crossed 300 DC fast-charging locations and GM-backed Ionna crossed 120, both milestones in the highway travel-center charging buildout. And new Q2 data shows US EV sales stabilizing, up 14.7% from Q1 but still down 20.5% from a year earlier.
Colorado Now Regulates Public EV Chargers Like Gas Pumps
New retail electric vehicle charging regulations took effect in Colorado on July 1, putting publicly accessible, pay-per-use chargers under the same kind of oversight that already applies to gas pumps and other weighing and measuring devices. The rules come from the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment's Division of Oil and Public Safety, under authority in Colorado Revised Statutes 8-20-102 and 8-20-107.
What the rules actually require. Any public charger that bills a fee specifically for the electricity it dispenses must display the unit price in dollars per kilowatt-hour and the total energy delivered during the transaction. New equipment installed after July 1, 2026, must be tested and placed in service by a state-registered service agent and registered with the Division within 30 days of going live. Existing chargers installed before July 1 have until January 1, 2027, to register. New equipment must also carry ENERGY STAR certification.
Enforcement is phased in. The Division will start inspecting stations later this year, but it will not pursue enforcement action until July 1, 2027, giving operators a runway to come into compliance. Free charging stations, private residential chargers, and wholesale electricity delivery are all exempt.
What this means for property owners. If you operate a paid public charger in Colorado today, or you're planning to install one, the registration and pricing-display requirements apply to you, and the January 2027 and July 2027 dates are real deadlines, not suggestions. This is also a signal for every other state watching Colorado's approach: as public charging matures from novelty to utility, the same consumer-protection rules that apply to fuel pumps are starting to apply here too, which is ultimately good for driver trust in the technology.
ChargePoint and Onvo Bring Ultra-Fast Charging to 12 Northeast Travel Plazas
ChargePoint announced a partnership on July 13 with Onvo, a Scranton, Pennsylvania-based travel plaza and convenience store operator, to install ultra-fast DC charging at 12 Onvo locations along major highways in Pennsylvania and New York.
The buildout targets real travel corridors. Sites are positioned along Interstates 80, 81, and 78 in Pennsylvania and Interstate 90 in New York, all routes with existing Onvo travel plazas offering food and retail alongside fuel. Onvo operates 42 locations total across Pennsylvania and upstate New York, so this initial 12-site rollout leaves plenty of room to expand within its own footprint.
The hardware is ChargePoint's top-tier platform. Each site gets ChargePoint's Express Plus system, a modular DC fast charger capable of delivering up to 500 kW to a single port. ChargePoint CEO Rick Wilmer said the goal is "enabling fast, reliable charging at highway rest stops" to make long-distance EV travel more seamless.
What this means for commercial property owners. The pairing of ultra-fast charging with an existing food-and-retail destination is now a well-established site model, not an experiment. If you're evaluating a highway-adjacent property for charging, look at what amenities are already on site before you assume you need to build them from scratch; a partnership model like this one lets the property owner add charging without taking on the food-and-retail build-out themselves.
Pilot Crosses 300 Fast-Charging Locations as Ionna Passes 120
Two more highway charging networks hit visible scale milestones the same week as the ChargePoint and Onvo announcement, underscoring how fast the travel-center charging buildout is moving.
Pilot Travel Centers passed 300 DC fast-charging locations in mid-July, after adding 50 new sites in the first half of 2026. The network, built in partnership with EVgo, now spans 309 stations and 1,323 individual charging stalls across 25 states, more than a third of Pilot's total locations. That is a roughly 50% increase in charging locations in under a year.
Ionna, the fast-charging network backed by BMW, GM, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis, and Toyota, passed 120 locations the same week, reaching 122 "Rechargery" sites and 1,166 charging bays across 31 states. Every Ionna site delivers up to 400 kW and offers both NACS and CCS1 connectors. The network launched in February 2024 and has roughly 60 more locations under construction.
What this means for commercial property owners. Three separate networks, ChargePoint and Onvo, Pilot and EVgo, and Ionna, each announced meaningful highway-corridor progress within days of each other. If you're weighing an exclusive site agreement with any one operator, it's worth checking how many competing networks already have committed sites near your exit before you sign, because the map is filling in faster than it was even six months ago.
EV Sales Stabilize in Q2, But Still Down Sharply From a Year Ago
New Q2 2026 data from Cox Automotive, based on Kelley Blue Book estimates, shows US battery-electric vehicle sales leveling off after three straight quarters of year-over-year decline, though the market remains well below where it was a year ago.
The numbers show stabilization, not recovery. Americans bought an estimated 247,226 BEVs in Q2 2026, up 14.7% from a revised Q1 total. But that is still down 20.5% from Q2 2025, the third consecutive quarter of annual decline, though a smaller drop than Q1's 27.3% and much smaller than Q4 2025's decline of more than 36%. EVs made up about 5.8% of new vehicle sales in the quarter. Tesla still accounts for roughly half of all US EV sales, with the Model Y remaining the best-selling EV by a wide margin.
What this means for property owners. The steep sales declines that followed the federal 30D purchase credit's expiration on September 30, 2025, appear to be easing into a plateau rather than continuing to worsen. That matters if you're weighing the timing of a charging investment: the data doesn't support reading the past year's declines as a sign that EV charging demand is disappearing. It looks more like a market settling into a smaller, steadier share of new car sales, still a substantial and growing population of vehicles that need somewhere to charge.
By the Numbers
July 1, 2026: Effective date of Colorado's new retail EV charging regulations requiring price and energy-delivered display and state registration for public chargers; enforcement begins July 1, 2027.
12: Onvo travel plaza sites in Pennsylvania and New York getting ChargePoint Express Plus chargers, up to 500 kW per port, announced July 13, 2026.
300+: Pilot Travel Centers' DC fast-charging locations nationwide as of mid-July 2026 (309 stations, 1,323 stalls across 25 states), up from 200 in under a year.
122: Ionna Rechargery charging locations nationwide (1,166 charging bays across 31 states) as of mid-July 2026.
247,226: Battery-electric vehicles sold in the US in Q2 2026, up 14.7% from Q1 but down 20.5% from a year earlier.
5.8%: EV share of new US vehicle sales in Q2 2026.
Sources: Colorado Department of Labor and Employment and Division of Oil and Public Safety (Retail Electric Vehicle Charging program guidance and July 1, 2026 press release), Swift Communications regional coverage (SteamboatToday, SummitDaily, AspenTimes, PostIndependent), ChargePoint and Onvo (Business Wire release, July 13, 2026), Electrek (July 14 and July 19, 2026), electrive.com (July 17 and July 18, 2026), EV Infrastructure News, evchargingstations.com (Pilot first-half 2026 update), GM Authority and FuelCellsWorks (Ionna network update, July 13, 2026), Cox Automotive and Kelley Blue Book (Q2 2026 EV sales report), InsideEVs. evcharginghelp.com is editorially independent and receives no compensation from any company mentioned.
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