A Primer On NEVI Funds — And Why You Should Care About Them

Last Updated on: 29th June 2025, 11:53 am

Another US federal program is in jeopardy. Now it’s the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program. Administered from the US Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), NEVI has provided funding to states to strategically deploy electric vehicle (EV) chargers. It also established an interconnected network to facilitate data collection, access, and reliability. On Feb. 6, 2025, the FHWA sent a letter to states with the news that the Trump administration had frozen the NEVI program, which was part of the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

It meant that the $5 billion charging infrastructure funding that had been legally allocated to states’ DOTs by law could be gone.

But then, in a legal filing, plaintiffs asserted that the “agencies’ action represented an unlawful seizure of legislative authority under the separation-of-powers doctrine enshrined in the United States Constitution and an overextension of executive authority beyond what is permitted by law.”

States had to make detailed plans for how they would spend the money and get approval from the federal government before charger sites could be selected, permitting acquired, contractors lined up, and construction begun. Presenting their case, states explained the resources 14 states had dedicated to EV infrastructure based on the promised NEVI funding. They had already:

• lined up private-sector partnerships;
• solicited bids on construction projects; and,
• identified and secured sites where EV infrastructure would be built.

The states reminded the judge that delayed charging infrastructure rollouts would inhibit their ability to meet targets for cutting transportation-related carbon emissions, one part of larger efforts to slow the catastrophic effects of climate change.

As NPR outlines, NEVI program allocations are different from grant money, which involve competition and awards for likely best future practices. Grants would have given the executive branch discretion over whether NEVI funds are distributed or not. Instead, it’s what’s called “formula funding,” which means that Congress allocated it to states based on a calculation. Each state gets a certain percentage of the total NEVI pool, as long as they follow the required steps, including making detailed plans for where they’d put chargers and how.

The states did follow those steps, and their plans were approved under the Biden administration. So, they say in their suit, they had made agreements and contracts based on the expectation that they’d get the money allocated to them — expectations which have been disrupted. As US District Judge Tana Lin wrote, the freeze “has pulled the rug out from under them.”

Judge Lin determined that the president does not have the authority to freeze funds that had been allocated to states by an act of Congress. In other words, the government was illegally withholding billions of dollars. This injunction is stayed until July 1, 2025.

The Department of Transportation has already reacted to Judge Lin’s ruling, calling the judge “another liberal judicial activist” with a vendetta against Trump. The “nonsensical rulings from the bench” fail to take into account, the DOT insists, what a “disaster” NEVI has been, as it has “failed miserably to deliver EV chargers.”

Sure, it was a slow reveal — just 16% of the funds had been allocated by Trump’s inauguration — but the program was zipping ahead to distribute startup monies to EV charging operators across the US.

The Tenuous Future of NEVI

Roughly $1 billion in funding for 14 states (Washington, Oregon, Colorado, California, Arizona, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin) is at stake. The hope is that investments already dedicated to new EV charging should be able to move forward, even with the clean energy obstructionist policies of the Trump administration.

NEVI funding has been available for up to 80% of eligible project costs, including:

• the acquisition, installation, and network connection of EV chargers to facilitate data collection, access, and reliability;
• proper operation and maintenance of EV chargers; and,
• long-term EV charger data sharing.

There are several requirements built into the NEVI program. The EV chargers must:

• be non-proprietary;
• allow for open-access payment methods;
• be publicly available or available to authorized commercial motor vehicle operators from more than one company; and,
• be located along designated FHWA Alternative Fuel Corridors (AFCs).

Plug in America argues that the NEVI Formula Program provided economic stimulus throughout the US through job creation, boosted local economies through increased driver spending, and fostered technological innovation. It actively made charging infrastructure more accessible to millions of drivers and reduced transportation spending for families and businesses.

Final Thoughts

What does this court case and ruling mean for the future of NEVI? In a logical nation, businesses would be able to move forward with projects based on federal funding guarantees. Whichever party held the Executive Office would be irrelevant. Not anymore.

There is also another dimension here that has to be explored. Some factions might object to arguments that NEVI is important and relevant to transportation electrification; after all, surveys show that most EV drivers prefer to charge at home if they can. But that POV fails to address the need to appeal to new audiences of EV drivers who are accustomed to seeing a gas station on every corner. The frequency of fill-up possibilities is a comforting norm, and it’s one that intermittent EV charging infrastructure right now doesn’t begin to address.

Drivers in the US are not accustomed to planning their refueling. They want to get topped off on their way out of town to see the folks, or they want to know that, if they’re running late for an appointment, there will be a way to fill the tank nearby afterward.

NEVI has been the mechanism to begin to populate major cities and roads with EV chargers. It is an important part of more people adopting battery electric EVs because it builds in charging station frequency. Without NEVI, more surveys will be released which conclude that US drivers aren’t interested in EVs. That’s actually untrue — US drivers are fascinated by EVs, but they don’t want unexpected stress due to the inability to charge.

And it’s likely NEVI’s demise is critical to the Trump administration’s agenda to bolster the fossil fuel industry. EV competition, which is high-tech, clean, and a bit futuristic, has to be eliminated.

If the defendants do not appeal this Order, the injunction is scheduled to go into effect on July 2, 2025. It has been the practice through Trump 1.0 and 2.0 for the administration, however, to appeal nearly every court case in which the verdict does not fall in its favor. The expectation is that the NEVI unfreezing ruling will be appealed.