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The Biden administration is racing to approve funding for the US EV charging network before Trump takes office.
The government announced it would invest $7.5 billion toward charging infrastructure in 2021, with the aim of building 500,000 electric vehicle chargers by 2030.
The money is distributed through two programs: the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, which apportions $5 billion out to individual states over five years to deploy EV chargers initially on highways, and the $2.5 billion Charging and Fueling Infrastructure (CFI) grant program.
Those programs are now under threat, however, with the incoming president, Donald Trump, blasting the government's EV charger rollout and vowing to scrap incentives to promote the adoption of electric vehicles as president,
A spokesperson for the Department of Transportation told Business Insider that $2.4 billion of the funding for the NEVI program had been approved so far.
As of late November, 37 states had received approval for a third round of funding under the program, the department said, unlocking an additional $586 million for the 2025 fiscal year.
Funds for the additional 13 states plus DC and Puerto Rico are expected to be approved before the end of the year.
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Kelsey Blongewicz, a policy analyst at Atlas Public Policy, told Business Insider that if those funds are released before Trump takes office on January 20th, as they have been in previous years, then it is unlikely the new administration could revoke them.
"If that funding is released before then, in theory, it is safe," Blongewicz said.
"It would be not impossible, but very hard for the new administration to claw that back," she added.
If the funding is approved, an estimated $3.3 billion of the total pot for the NEVI program will be committed, according to a Department of Transportation breakdown, effectively putting it beyond the reach of the Trump administration.
The Biden administration has also awarded over $1.3 billion of the $2.5 billion in funding for the CFI program so far, according to the Department of Transportation, with bidding for another $779 million in grants currently open.
Blongewicz said that the new administration will likely be able to take steps to slow down or frustrate the rollout of those remaining funds, especially for the competitive grants of the CFI program.
Scrapping both programs entirely would require congressional approval, however. NEVI is an advanced appropriations budget authority that can only be undone by Congress.
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It seems likely that the incoming administration may still try to claw back some of the already approved funds.
Vivek Ramaswamy, who along with Elon Musk is set to head a Department of Government Efficiency that will scrutinize government spending, said officials were approving funding and new regulations "to get ahead" of January 20th on Wednesday.
"All midnight-hour expenditures & new regulations will get special scrutiny and should be rescinded where appropriate," he wrote in a post on X in late November.
The NEVI and CFI programs, introduced as part of the $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in 2021, were key pillars of the Biden administration's plan to build a national network of EV chargers.
Despite being announced with much fanfare, that rollout has been criticized for proceeding slowly.
The DoT says that over 24,700 federally funded chargers are "underway" across the country, but only 31 NEVI-funded charging station sites are currently operational, according to the program's latest quarterly update.
A DoT spokesperson said the department expects to have hundreds of federally funded chargers operational this year, with thousands more coming in 2025.
That push could be put at risk under Trump. The president-elect has vowed to cut back government support for electric vehicles and is reportedly set to scrap a $7,500 tax credit for new US-built EVs.
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Blongewicz said the loss of federal support would be a blow to the development of a national EV charging network, and EV charging startup executives told BI the question marks over funding were already fuelling uncertainty in the industry.
"We had this big, clear framework, and that is all going to go down now," Tiya Gordon, cofounder and COO of Brooklyn-based urban charging startup ItsElectric, told BI.
"A lot of the funds that have already been awarded are protected and out there in the world. With the other funding that has yet to be deployed, there is definitely a lack of clarity right now in terms of what can happen," she added.
Carter Li, CEO and cofounder of EV charging startup SWTCH, said that it was likely that much of the initiative for building America's charging network would move to the states.
"I suspect that if there is a drop in terms of federal incentive dollars, we will potentially see a pickup at state level. That's something we saw in the last Trump administration as well," he said.
Some states have already pledged to replicate EV subsidy schemes that could be ditched under Trump, with California governor Gavin Newsom suggesting the state will revive its own EV-buyer credit if the incoming president scraps the $7,500 subsidy.
That raises the prospect that Americans will have to deal with a fragmented landscape when it comes to buying and charging their EVs, which could put consumers off from going electric.
"Adoption of electric vehicles will slow because of the fact that there's be conflicting messages that are happening on a government level versus on a business or a consumer level," said Gordon.
"We're going to have a more state-by-state solution rather than a national solution," she added.
