Trump’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has issued a memo ordering states to suspend all state EV infrastructure deployment plans under the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program.
Trump’s FHWA orders NEVI suspension
The $5 billion NEVI program is the big rollout of EV charging infrastructure across the US that was funded by the Biden administration’s Infrastructure Act, and it’s already well underway.
Under the NEVI program, states have to send their plans to the FHWA annually, detailing how they’ll use the funds. During the Biden administration, the FHWA signed off on the first four out of five fiscal years of plans through 2025. However, not all of it has been “obligated” to EV infrastructure projects.
Trump’s FHWA has told states in this memo that they can’t commit funds that were already approved to new EV charging infrastructure. However, money that was already committed is not affected.
The memo reads:
Therefore, effective immediately, no new obligations may occur under the NEVI Formula Program until the updated final NEVI Formula Program Guidance is issued and new State plans are submitted and approved. Instructions for the submission of new State plans for all fiscal years will be included in the updated final NEVI Formula Program Guidance. Since FHWA is suspending the existing State plans, States will be held harmless for not implementing their existing plans. Until new guidance is issued, reimbursement of existing obligations will be allowed in order to not disrupt current financial commitments.
Electrek’s Take
I asked Loren McDonald, chief analyst at Paren, what his thoughts were on this latest cancellation, and he, among others (myself included), doesn’t think the FHWA has the authority to stop the NEVI program with a memo – it would need a change in law from Congress – and then the courts will settle it. (Who else is beginning to see a Trump administration theme here?) McDonald said:
I don’t believe FHWA has the authority to pause or rescind any aspect of NEVI. The Trump administration is clearly trying to stop or pause programs like NEVI for as long as they can, but I assume lawsuits from states will start soon, and this will go to court and Congress … but the Trump admin will succeed in just causing havoc and slowing things down for a while. In the end, the Trump administration will likely fail, as only Congress can fundamentally revise and stop the NEVI program.
But, as with everything else rolled back the last few weeks, this will cause chaos and delays. This will cause serious damage to businesses nationwide – from EV charging companies (including Tesla, one of the largest NEVI recipients) to convenience stores and other host sites – and will waste money and cost people jobs.
It should also be noted that NEVI is the very reason that the NACS charging standard exists in the first place.
NEVI was limited only to chargers that could serve multiple makes of vehicles – a reasonable step, that government wouldn’t want to do a giveaway to a single, proprietary company. This is what caused Tesla to release NACS as a standard in the first place, so that its chargers could access NEVI money.
Then, when the entire industry switched over to the NACS standard, that signaled a potential long period of leadership in EV charging for Tesla. The company could have been the primary energy provider for EVs in North America for years or even decades to come as a result.
Now, an administration that Elon Musk is involved in is killing the very program that could have led to his company’s dominance in energy delivery – after also firing the entire team that was responsible for making the NACS standard in the first place. What an awesome way to make America great again.
Read more: Q4 2024 update: 12,000 more US EV charging ports in 3 months
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