The Department of Transportation (DOT) has stopped funding for a significant program designed to build electric vehicle (EV) charging stations across the country. This program has a budget of $5 billion, and Tesla, the electric car company led by Elon Musk, has already received at least $31 million from it. Many experts and advocates believe that this halt in funding is illegal.
This action is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to reduce federally funded renewable energy projects nationwide. Supporting such projects has been a major focus for the administration since Trump returned to office and started issuing executive orders.
A growing concern is that Elon Musk’s political views are clashing with Tesla’s goal of helping the transition to renewable energy. By the middle of last year, Tesla had received about 6% of the total funding from the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, which has provided substantial financial resources to support the expansion of EV charging networks.
One of the first actions Trump took when he was back in office in January was to target programs that support charging infrastructure, including NEVI. Recently, the DOT sent a letter to state transportation officials indicating that new leaders within the department plan to review and revise the rules governing how the NEVI program operates. This means that no more funding will be distributed until these new rules are settled and made public, which the agency says will happen in the spring. This information was first reported by a news outlet specializing in electric vehicles, InsideEVs.
The NEVI program was established as part of a major infrastructure law passed by Congress in 2021, which set aside $1 billion each year for this initiative from 2022 to 2026.
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Organizations that advocate for clean energy are speaking out against these funding cuts. Beth Hammon, a senior advocate for vehicle charging at the Natural Resources Defense Council, stated that the Trump administration doesn’t have the authority to abruptly halt this funding. She warned that cutting off funds mid-project could lead to disarray and downtime for states, disrupt the work of companies that install these charging stations, and jeopardize jobs for their workers. She emphasized that the only beneficiaries of this chaos would be companies in the oil industry.
Katherine García, who directs the Sierra Club’s Clean Transportation for All initiative, echoed these concerns, calling the action illegal and a direct attack on the bipartisan funding that Congress had approved for these projects years earlier.
The Trump administration’s efforts seem to be a wide-ranging attempt to cut off funds that Congress had allocated for various projects—an action that legal experts believe breaches the constitutional system. Recently, the Office of Management and Budget announced a freeze on government spending which has faced multiple lawsuits. Although they later pulled back on that notification, it has been reported that some forms of funding freezes are still ongoing. Meanwhile, Elon Musk has reportedly been navigating through different government departments with a group of engineers and tech professionals, trying to gain access to payment systems and other sensitive information.
