It’s no Route 66.
But the roughly 80-mile stretch of U.S. Route 50 that snakes across Virginia from the nation’s capital to the West Virginia border is rich in American history and culture. The mostly two-lane, winding mountain road features vineyards, battlefields, high-end resorts, and more. And just like the iconic route from Chicago to California, U.S. 50 is increasingly making way for the future of American road trips: electric vehicles.
The tiny town of Middleburg, Virginia, is a case in point: Officials there installed a fast charger nearly 18 months ago to serve EV drivers in the wealthy, bucolic region just 45 miles west of Washington, D.C.
Named for its equidistance between Alexandria and Winchester, Middleburg has long been at the center of foxhunting and steeplechases. These days, the town of less than 1,000 people is also surrounded by wineries and boasts a film festival, a 168-room five-star resort, and a Christmas parade replete with horses and hound dogs.
“Since colonial times it has been a stopping place, and it’s continued to be a place where people come from all over the world, as well as from the greater D.C. area,” said Lynne Kaye, chair of Middleburg’s sustainability committee.
As electric vehicles have become more prevalent, so too has “EV tourism”: towns off the beaten path seeking to lure travelers with charging infrastructure. While visitors juice up — often for free at relatively slow Level 2 chargers – they might browse local art galleries and shops, grab some dinner, or visit another attraction they may have otherwise missed.
But Middleburg is part of Loudoun County, the nation’s richest, with some of the most robust EV adoption numbers in Virginia. The town has ample attractions, so the idea to install a charger was less about drawing in new visitors than it was about keeping those already passing through happy.
“When we walked around town, we were noticing a bunch of EVs,” said Kaye. “We wanted to make sure that we didn't accidentally become unappealing to people who were driving them.”
Reducing the town’s climate footprint was also a consideration. Kaye and others reason that cars driven by visitors and residents are the leading contributor to its planet-warming emissions.
“We only have 673 residents. We can only create so much carbon,” she said. “But when you have 20,000 people come to an event, that’s a lot of carbon all at once.”
When town leaders were in the planning stages of adding their charger, they also noticed a lack of devices in the region that could fill up a car battery in an hour or less. “Not everybody wants to spend however many hours getting their EV charged,” Kaye said.
For all these reasons, the decision to install a fast charger in the heart of town was an easy one. But bringing that choice to fruition wasn’t as simple.
An expansive bay with 10 or more chargers, an increasingly common feature at gas stations, wasn’t logistically feasible in the tiny Town Hall parking lot. And most charging companies Middleburg approached wanted to install no fewer than six fast chargers.
“Getting this huge bank of chargers didn’t fit a historic town,” Kaye said. “There wasn’t really space for it, and we weren’t sure that we were going to get enough traffic to use the chargers effectively.”
XCharge North America came to the rescue. The charger manufacturer was “willing to work with us and come up with a way to have the one charger,” Kaye said. “And it’s been a success.”
Initially called Current Electric, the startup had recently been acquired by a European equipment maker. Its business proposition: making fast chargers cheaper by using a 208-volt system rather than the global standard of 480V.
While Middleburg had already wired its new Town Hall to accommodate the industry standard, XCharge still leapt at the opportunity to showcase its hardware, said company cofounder Alex Urist.
“This was very much a way for us to get early applications in the U.S.,” said Urist, who lives in New York City. “The proximity to D.C. is great as well. Selfishly, I go to D.C. to visit the in-laws frequently enough, so I can always check in on the charger. I like to take them over there and show off that I actually have a job,” he quipped.
Typical direct-current fast-charging units can run between $30,000 and $120,000. In Middleburg’s case, XCharge provided its hardware for free while the town covered the installation. The two entities share the revenue from charging sessions, and the company can learn from how the fast charger performs as it explores other markets.
“It's not really a charger on a high-throughput area,” Urist said. “But what is interesting about it is, it's kind of dead in the middle of Virginia wine country. It's along this rural corridor where the perceptive availability of chargers is very important.”
Between March 2024, when the charger was installed, and February 2025, 181 sessions were logged. Since then, there’s been an uptake, with 268 sessions logged as of May 2025, according to XCharge.
“It's a really interesting use case for us to see. How does it help with the local economy? Are they going to also see any ancillary impacts of it beyond just the revenue coming in?” Urist said.
Indeed, that’s one of the expectations behind an initiative called Virginia Green Travel, which helps the state’s towns, especially those with carbon-reduction goals, attract environmentally minded tourists, said Alleyn Harned, executive director of Virginia Clean Cities.
“Electric vehicle chargers have been part of green tourism in Virginia,” said Harned, whose group is among the backers of the Green Travel initiative.
Virginia Clean Cities, a U.S. Department of Energy-funded entity that’s based at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, is what brought Middleburg and XCharge together. The town’s success with its fast charger was a bright spot for the organization after President Donald Trump stalled the rollout of $5 billion for charging infrastructure launched under his predecessor.
“This is a positive story in getting something done,” Harned said, “because this stuff really improves our economy.”
As the Trump administration moves toward releasing National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure funds after losses in court, more towns across Virginia may have the chance to follow Middleburg's lead.
Kaye says they should know that fast charging is possible for them. “I think it's important for other small towns to realize that there is an opportunity, if they want to take it,” she said.
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