DENVER ‒ A $7.5 billion Biden-era plan to build a massive network of electric vehicle chargers to address concerns about “range anxiety” has crashed to halt after installing fewer than 400 chargers nationwide.
President Donald Trump’s administration early this year blocked spending on the project, which aimed to put potentially thousands of chargers at gas stations, rest stops and other sites no more than 50 miles apart. A coalition of Democrat-led states and nonprofits has sued to get the funding restarted but there’s been no final decision yet, and the installations remain on hold.
“Halting the funding sets us all back, and it’s simply wrong,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, said in a Aug. 6 statement announcing the state was joining the ongoing lawsuit. “Electric and hybrid vehicles are no longer the technology of the future. They’re here now, and this technology is only becoming more important to our families and businesses.”
Funded by the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the plan aimed to make it easier for people to drive EVs on long road trips and reflected the Biden administration’s efforts to push people away from gasoline-powered vehicles. Industry experts say a major obstacle to widespread EV adoption is the lack of charging options while away from home.
Federal statistics show there are about 3.5 million electric vehicles registered in the United States, out of a total 287 million overall vehicles. The number of EVs on the roads, from Tesla sedans and Cybertrucks to GMC Sierra pickups and electric Hummers has been growing rapidly in part due to a generous federal tax incentive that ends in September. But many would-be purchasers have cited what’s known as “range anxiety” in their reluctance to switch over.
But federal statistics also show that 92.5% of all trips Americans take ‒ aside from commercial delivery trucks ‒ are less than 25 miles, well within the range of every EV on the market today. Biden’s plan focused on installing chargers on interstates and major highways, easing concerns about recharging during road trips.
Trump, who has long been hostile toward government mandated-EV purchases, has kept the charger funding on hold for months despite the lawsuit, industry experts said.
The pause has no effect on privately funded charging sites, like those built by Tesla. Trump also had a public falling out with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and in a July social media post said he opposes “ridiculous” efforts to make people drive EVs if they don’t want to. The Biden-era emissions standards would have forced manufacturers to shift their offerings to EVs and away from gas powered vehicles.
Program faced significant delays
A federal General Accounting Office report issued earlier this year raised significant questions about the success of the effort, noting that only 384 charging stations funded by the infrastructure act had been built by April.
The report noted that significant delays were caused by the complicated structure of approvals necessary to get charger installations going ‒ from state and federal highway officials to the permission of private property owners and even the time it takes to install new high-capacity overhead power lines to serve rural areas.
The report also indicated the process would likely become more efficient over time as state-level administrators learned how to manage the installations better.
“It was a federal program administered by 50 different state agencies and they all had different rules for procurement and for who was in charge of it,” said Ryan McKinnon, a spokesman for the Charge Ahead Partnership, a coalition of grocers, convenience stores and fuel retailers that lobbies for EV infrastructure. “It became this poster child for a nightmare of government inefficiency.”
Funding was a ‘drop in the bucket’
The GAO noted that as of May, there were about 77,000 publicly available charging stations nationwide, but most of them are a slower, older style that takes longer to charge up EV batteries. In comparison, there are about 150,000 gas stations nationwide, according to the National Association of Convenience Stores.
The Charge Ahead Partnership lobbies to have private businesses play a significant role in the development of a national charger network. McKinnon said the $7.5 billion in funding is only a “drop in the bucket” of what’s actually necessary to build out a network that’s convenient for customers.
But he said the partnership remains hopeful the federal government will ultimately release the withheld funding alongside new rules to make the money easier to access.
“At the end of the day, this is a pro-business startup grant that helps entrepreneurs who want to offer a new service get a foot in the door,” he said.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Massive Biden-era EV charger project put on hold by Trump
