However, the Trump administration has made funding at the federal level difficult for states to access. In February, the Trump administration suspended funding from the $5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program. Several states and nonprofit organizations, including Earthjustice, the Sierra Club, and Plug in America, have since sued the government for withholding the funds, which were authorized by Congress in 2021.
On May 22, the Government Accountability Office found that the Department of Transportation, which administers the program under the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), does not have the authority to suspend NEVI and that the agency must continue to carry out the requirements of the program. The court case brought by states and nonprofits is still pending.
Funding for NEVI is designed to be allocated to states over a five-year period. The FHWA has allocated a total of $3.3 billion of NEVI funding to states through fiscal year 2025. States had awarded or obligated $527 million when the Trump administration suspended the program, and an estimated 57 NEVI-funded charging stations had opened across 15 states.
Of those NEVI-funded charging stations, 19 are in Ohio, where Paren’s chief technology officer, Bill Ferro, said many are in rural areas. This has to do with Ohio’s major interstate highways that run north-south and east-west through rural counties. In November and December 2024, when traffic increased during the holiday season, utilization rates spiked for Ohio’s rural EV chargers. Ferro said the stations are an example of how NEVI projects can be successful in rural areas.
“We would say they were the best use of NEVI funding in that they were outside the major cities, and they were intended to allow that great American road trip to go,” said Ferro.
Another hotspot on the map is in La Paz County, Arizona, where there are 140 ports, more than any other rural county in the country. Like in Ohio, an interstate is responsible for the build-out, Ferro and McDonald said. Interstate 10 connects Los Angeles to Phoenix, and one Tesla Supercharger station right off the highway has 84 ports.
As of early June, states are still waiting to see how the future of NEVI is resolved, and some have paused the application process for the next cycle of funding. While the program’s freeze has been a blow to rural areas looking to build out their charging infrastructure, McDonald stressed that NEVI is not the only source of money available to communities.
“Almost every charging station in America has some type of incentive, grant, or tax credit,” McDonald said. “NEVI gets all the headlines, but there are lots of other sources of incentive and grant money to offset costs.”
Utility companies and states have “make-ready” incentives to prepare sites to power EV charging stations. Some programs will cover the cost of getting sites connected with the utility and any construction that’s needed before the ports go in. Other programs offer rebates for the hardware, helping to facilitate the build-out of EV charging stations in places where private investors would otherwise not be interested in installing charging ports.
McDonald sees the government’s role in funding EV chargers as a way to ensure Americans have access to services regardless of where they live. He compared the current build-out of EV infrastructure to the Rural Electrification Act, which provided federal loans for the installation of rural electrical systems in the 1930s. In that era, the government stepped in to ensure communities had access to electric services in places where private investors didn’t see a way to make a profit.
“There are some things that literally require government help, or otherwise it’s never going to happen,” McDonald said.
Across the U.S., EV sales grew in 2024, increasing the share of EVs among all car sales, according to the International Energy Agency’s annual report released in May. The report projects that the number of EVs on the road is expected to continue growing in the U.S. in 2025 and beyond, despite current political and trade headwinds imposed by the Trump administration.
