By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. states have built less than 400 electric vehicle charging ports through April under $7.5 billion federal infrastructure programs, the Government Accountability Office said Tuesday.
As of April 2025, 384 charging ports are operating at 68 stations in 16 states, GAO said, saying a joint office overseeing the program “has not defined performance goals with measurable targets and time frames for its activities.”
In May, California and 15 other states sued the U.S. Transportation Department, saying the federal government was illegally withholding at least $3 billion awarded to states for building EV charging stations under a 2021 infrastructure law.
The Transportation Department under President Donald Trump in February suspended the EV charging program and rescinded approval of state plans pending a review. The GAO noted that Trump wants Congress to rescind $6 billion in unspent EV charging funding.
Nationwide, there are about 219,000 publicly available EV charging ports, according to the Energy Department.
In June 2024, a Democratic senator criticized the previous Biden administration for deploying just seven EV charging stations with a few dozen ports calling it “pathetic.”
We’re now three years into this … That is a vast administrative failure,” said Senator Jeff Merkley. “Something is terribly wrong and it needs to be fixed.”
The Trump administration has taken a number of steps to discourage EV sales.
Trump signed legislation this month that will end the $7,500 EV tax credit and $4,000 used EV tax credit on Sept. 30.
Trump in January revoked a 2021 executive order signed by Biden that sought to ensure half of all new vehicles sold in the United States by 2030 were electric.
In March, the General Services Administration told federal agencies that existing charging stations for government-owned EVs “that are deemed not to be mission-critical should be disconnected from the network and turned off.”
GSA said in April it had canceled 32 electric vehicle charging projects worth over $23 million.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
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