By Will Atwater
Ron Ross, 70, has spent decades in Charlotte’s Historic West End watching traffic thicken on nearby I‑77 and working alongside his neighbors to fight for cleaner air and a healthier future — one that includes electric cars.
Now Ross and his neighbors are battling a North Carolina Department of Transportation plan to add elevated toll lanes along I‑77 South, a proposal critics warn would burden communities along the corridor with higher levels of air pollution, including particulate matter and carbon monoxide. The push to expand lanes along this already-busy interstate, Ross said, only intensifies the need to promote zero‑emission vehicles.
Last month, state Sens. DeAndrea Salvador (D-Mecklenburg) and Caleb Theodros (D-Mecklenburg), whose districts include the I‑77 South corridor, wrote Gov. Josh Stein asking him to pause procurement on the express lanes project, saying the state is moving ahead without enough transparency or analysis of how more lanes could affect nearby residents’ health and risk of being displaced.
Against that backdrop, and despite the loss of rebates that once helped people afford EVs, Ross has kept working to spread awareness, saying it “doesn’t preclude us from sharing with the community, informing them of the advantages of purchasing electric vehicles” — changes he hopes will help improve the air in his neighborhood.
The West End, where Ross lives, is a historically Black community that lost homes, businesses and community institutions to highway construction during the urban renewal era that started in the 1960s. Now the area is working to attract new investment and promote green infrastructure. The district sits near one of the busiest stretches of I‑77 South, where about 160,000 vehicles travel daily and emit tailpipe pollution that drifts over homes where thousands of people live.
National EV funding fight, local consequences
As a member of the Historic West End Green District, Ross has worked with the City of Charlotte and other partners to bring electric‑vehicle charging options, including a PoleVolt charger at The Ritz at Washington Heights, a popular park and gathering spot in the neighborhood.
The National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program aims to help by funding a nationwide network of public charging stations to make driving electric more practical. In January, a federal judge blocked the U.S. Department of Transportation from withholding NEVI funds, clearing the way for the program to move forward so more communities can see new charging stations built along major roads.
The Southern Environmental Law Center was among the legal groups representing a coalition of states and advocacy organizations that intervened in the lawsuit to defend the program, including North Carolina-based CleanAIRE NC and the West End Revitalization Association.
“Tailpipe pollution is a public health crisis — fueling asthma, heart disease, and respiratory illness in communities already overburdened by environmental harm,” wrote Jeff Robbins, executive director of CleanAIRE NC, in a statement released when a national coalition of groups filed their lawsuit.
The clash over EV charging money and Clean Air Act protections highlights a broader decision point for the country. One path speeds the shift to cleaner vehicles and offers some relief for communities living next to highways. The other doubles down on fossil fuels and slows cleaner energy, a course scientists and environmental advocates warn will intensify climate‑driven extreme weather and the health risks that come with it.
“For people across the nation, this decision clears the way for long-delayed EV charging to finally be built,” said Megan Kimball, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, in a statement released after federal judge Tana Lin made her ruling. “NEVI-funded stations will make long trips and everyday travel safer and more reliable — especially in places that have too often been passed over for infrastructure investment.”
Andrew Whelan, communications director at CleanAIRE NC, said federal air quality regulations play a vital role in protecting communities like the Historic West End.
“Federal standards provide the legal floor that prevents vehicle manufacturers from producing dirtier cars,” he said. Without those protections, he warned, “cars and trucks become less efficient and more polluting.”
“A warmer climate leads to higher formation of ground level ozone or smog, which is a very dangerous air pollutant,” Whelan said. “Vehicle exhaust also emits high levels of fine particle pollution, also known as PM 2.5 or soot — and PM 2.5 is our nation’s deadliest air pollutant.”
Highway pollution and public health risk
Tiny particles such as PM 2.5 — matter small enough to penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream — are linked to asthma attacks, heart disease, stroke and premature death, especially in children, older adults and people with respiratory or cardiovascular illness.
“When we talk about air pollution, we’re talking about the air that fills a child’s lungs on the playground or drifts through a bedroom window — especially for kids who live near power plants, factories, highways and port,” said Afif El-Hasan, a doctor and asthma specialist, during a national media call on toxin exposure. “Anything in the air that’s not supposed to be there creates a risk for their health.”
On busy roads, a large share of those particles are produced by tailpipe emissions. Exhaust from internal combustion engines is a cocktail of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, along with fine particulate pollution that harms people’s hearts and lungs. Taken together, cars, trucks, motorcycles, boats and other vehicles make transportation one of the largest contributors to U.S. climate pollution.
As temperatures rise and extreme heat becomes more frequent, communities already burdened by highway traffic, such as Charlotte’s Historic West End and Durham’s Hayti neighborhood, face compounding risks: more days with unhealthy air, higher energy bills and greater strain on people with existing health problems.
Those mounting health and climate risks, in recent decades, have been driving state and federal efforts to get more electric vehicles on the road.
Policy efforts to promote EV adoption
At the federal level, programs like NEVI and the Environmental Protection Agency’s $5 billion Clean School Bus Program established under the Biden administration were designed to speed a shift away from fossil fuels by expanding charging infrastructure and helping school districts replace diesel buses with electric models, with extra support for low‑income, rural and Tribal communities.
In addition, North Carolina received more than $92 million from the national Volkswagen Clean Air Act Civil Settlement and, between 2018 and 2024, used nearly all of it for grants and rebates to clean up transportation. However, no new grant rounds are expected, according to the state Department of Environmental Quality. More than $41 million went to replacing older diesel school buses with cleaner diesel, propane, and 48 electric buses in 22 counties and for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. The upgrades are expected to prevent about 10,220 tons of greenhouse gases and 165 tons of nitrogen oxides over the buses’ lifetimes, according to NC DEQ data.
The settlement also helped expand charging infrastructure by funding both DC fast chargers and Level 2 stations, including more than $1.7 million for state agencies to install 151 Level 2 ports that can serve fleet, employee and in some cases public vehicles, with 30 projects still in progress.
NEVI’s national clean‑energy initiatives align with goals established by former Gov. Roy Cooper. His 2018 Executive Order 80 directed state agencies to cut greenhouse gas emissions and increase clean transportation. The order included a goal of at least 80,000 registered zero‑emission vehicles by 2025. The state reached that milestone two years early, surpassing 80,000 ZEV registrations in November 2023.
Cooper later expanded those ambitions with Executive Order 246, which calls for 1.25 million zero‑emission vehicles on North Carolina roads by 2030 and for ZEVs to make up half of new car sales by the end of the decade — a shift advocates say will depend not only on private car buyers, but also on public fleets such as state vehicles, city buses and school buses. As of 2024, there were more than 100,000 plug‑in hybrid and battery‑electric vehicles registered in North Carolina and more than 4,400 EV charging ports, according to the Governor’s Office.
Those efforts now collide with a competing vision from the Trump administration, which has prioritized expanding oil, gas and coal production while rolling back climate rules and support for electric vehicles — part of a broader push to weaken protections that limit greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.
“Automakers know electrification is the future, and they know China is winning that race,” SELC Senior Attorney Garrett Gee told NC Health News. “Policies that were designed to put us on competitive footing with China and keep the American auto industry strong are now being rolled back, and that’s already slowing or canceling EV and battery projects — including in the Southeast and here in North Carolina, where a lot of those supply‑chain jobs were supposed to land.”
Even as those policy shifts inject uncertainty into the pace of change, North Carolina’s transition has continued on the ground — from school districts adding electric buses and charging infrastructure to pilot projects that put zero‑emission vehicles directly onto the streets.
Electric vehicles are still a small share of the cars on North Carolina roads, but they’re starting to show up in other parts of public life. The Town of Cary recently added the East Coast’s first electric fire truck to its fleet. Officials said it will cut emissions and make the job quieter and safer for firefighters.
Back in Charlotte’s West End, Ross and his West End neighbors envision a transformed community with greenways, more electric school and city buses, and accessible EV charging stations. They will also have to make room for new technologies, as Waymo announced this past month that it’s bringing electric, self‑driving cars to the Queen City’s streets.
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