Will Oregon and New Jersey Require Public EV Charger Attendants?

One odd difference between putting energy in your vehicle in the states of Oregon and New Jersey and the other 48 states in America is that Oregon and New Jersey require that you let an attendant put the energy in. Of course, this is an employment scheme that has carried over from our days of using fossil fuels to power our cars. If you missed the news, that’s changing.

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Oregon and Washington are among the dozen or so states that have copied California’s EV mandates. These states are known as ZEV states. As in zero-emission vehicle states. These states adopt a carrot and stick approach to force automakers to move towards EVs. To be clear, this author has no issue with that. It would be convenient if all of our states had the same emissions and vehicle laws, but we are a collection of states, and that means local fiefdoms doing their own thing.

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EVs need energy just like any other vehicle does. In the case of battery-electric vehicles, the energy is most often dispensed into the vehicle at the home of the EV owner. A smaller percentage of the energy is found at public chargers like those from ChargePoint, EVGo, or electrify America. A lot of it is also supplied by Tesla’s private EV charging network of Superchargers.

All of the reasons why Oregon and New Jersey require an attendant to pump your gas are imaginary. As proven by the 48 other states’ 315,000,000 residents who don’t light themselves on fire or drop dead from fumes on a daily basis. So, we are not trying to suggest that EV chargers should have attendants. That would be preposterous. It would be a ridiculous waste of money and resources. Just like having gas attendants is.

However, programs like the gas attendant requirements in Oregon and New Jersey must make sense to somebody, otherwise, in a functioning democracy, they would have been discontinued. We are trying to start a dialogue to see how many folks support EV attendants, and why. If you are a supporter of having a person plug in and monitor your EV while it charges, please feel free to make your case in the comments below.

Image of Chevy Bolt charging by John Goreham

John Goreham is a long-time New England Motor Press Association member and recovering engineer. John's interest in EVs goes back to 1990 when he designed the thermal control system for an EV battery as part of an academic team. After earning his mechanical engineering degree, John completed a marketing program at Northeastern University and worked with automotive component manufacturers, in the semiconductor industry, and in biotech. In addition to Torque News, John's work has appeared in print in dozens of American news outlets and he provides reviews to many vehicle shopping sites. You can follow John on TikTok @ToknCars, on Twitter, and view his credentials at Linkedin

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