Seven major automakers say they will join forces to build an electric vehicle charging network that were nearly double drivers charging capacity in the US and Canada.

It's a multibillion dollar investment here in Kentucky.

The Transportation Department has ambitious plans to expand electric vehicle infrastructure as this new technology becomes more and more popular.

We recognize that it's a chicken and egg situation.

Folks are reluctant to get electric vehicles because they're not sure that there are any places to charge.

And therefore, the folks that want to put chargers in are reluctant because there aren't very many electric vehicles.

So the two are going to have to kind of grow together.

Things are in pretty good shape in the big cities, but the rural areas are wanting seriously and we'd love to see more activity going on out in the rural communities so that this electric vehicle movement, you know, really will take root and and prosper.

We're on an ambitious, aggressive, but very doable schedule to implement our electric vehicle charging stations across the state of Kentucky.

Every interstate, every parkway.

It's 11 interstates and eight parkways are going to have charging stations every 50 miles and at every 50 miles there will be stations with four ports.

And these ports then will be accessible by our traveling public.

We really do need to advance on two fronts what we call the level two chargers, which are places like libraries or a coffee shop, someplace where you're going to spend an hour or two and you'll get a chance to top off a charge, not completely charge.

And then the Chargers that we need out on the highways.

These vehicles will typically go 200 plus miles on a single charge.

But going down to Pikeville, we're not going be able to get down there and back on a single charge.

So we need to have some fast chargers out there.

And that's those are the kind of chargers that the federal government is offering to put in.

Phase one of the project is the parkways and the interstates and so forth.

As it relates to eastern Kentucky, that would include 64, Interstate 64, the Hal Rogers Parkway and the Mountain Parkway.

So that's within phase one, which is the next two years.

Then we'd be looking at phase two, which would represent a buildout of other of our roadways and other destinations as well.

With the two major plants in Kentucky being built today in Elizabethtown outside of is planned course in Glendale and in Bowling Green.

The two battery manufacturing plants, electric battery manufacturing plants, with those allowing Kentucky to really claim being the electric battery manufacturing capital of the United States.

When we get our own implementation of our electric vehicle charging stations in place and we do a good job at that, then, you know, there's a lot of enthusiasm associated with that because we are becoming first in class, best of class, and that's a big deal.

According to Secretary Gray, the number of electric vehicle owners in Kentucky has more than doubled in the last two years, growing to over 7000.