Gas Station Owners Are Smiling At The Return Of NEVI — And So Are EV Advocates

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Last Updated on: 17th August 2025, 07:28 pm

Change is unsettling to humans. We like to understand the world around us and to seamlessly be able to deal with what comes our way. Change is out of our control, though, and it can often happen very quickly. Transitions help us psychologically to make sense of change. Here’s an example. The Trump administration has done another TACO and relinquished funds for the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program after all. Yeah, it’s got a few caveats, some dilution of former language, but federal funding for EV charging infrastructure is back on the proverbial table for US states.

This is important for many reasons. NEVI will offer existing EV drivers more and more confidence to charge reliably when they’re away from home. The new NEVI language encourages states to give their money to charging locations where the businesses that own the stations also own the ground below it. That NEVI provision has piqued the interest of gas station and convenience store owners.

Why is this turn of events interesting? Because it offers more opportunities for diverse drivers to see EV charging in action, at their neighborhood stops, by people who seem like they’re enjoying their electron refills. Transitions are the key to accepting change. Smoothly-introduced change can make a difference in adjusting everyday people’s mindsets.

So, NEVI will introduce new audiences to EVs in a familiar surrounding. Yeah, sure, gas stations aren’t ideal spaces, often dirty and smelly, and they do perpetuate the myth of endless low-cost energy. But gas stations and their associated convenience stores will offer one more way for consumers to make sense of the systemic change to all-electric transportation. Do you think the Trump administration realizes this?

That’s a transition and paradox that is another nail in the inevitable fossil fuel coffin.

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The $5 billion in funding for US EV fast chargers will keep gas stations relevant as more and more consumers switch to EVs.

Why gas stations? The Trump administration says it wants to “accelerate project delivery.” Long-distance travelers will recognize truck stop operators like Pilot Flying K, Love’s Travel Stops, and TravelCenters of America that are now part of NEVI charging infrastructure discussions. Convenience store chains like Sheetz, WaWa, and Kwik Trip are possibilities. Walmart’s name has been tossed around.

What EV driver doesn’t like to locate a fast charger in one of these brightly-lit parking lots that also features a marketplace, restaurant, restrooms, and indoor/outdoor seating? It’s very civilized. It’s made all the difference in my own long-range EV road trips.

The Charge Ahead Partnership, a group that represents several convenience stores, truck stops, and fueling groups, endorsed moving ahead with the program because it promotes flexibility and can lead to charger growth. “Prioritizing chargers at locations where the site host is also the operator eliminates the step of the applicant having to find a site host, and it promotes greater accountability once the charger is operating,” spokesperson Ryan McKinnon elaborated.

Trump’s surrender to NEVI is definitely part of a much bigger picture. It’s been clear for several years that industrialized nations have been facing a triple challenge: increasing environmental degradation, socio-economic tensions, and political-cultural polarization. Even the Trump administration is tossed by this turmoil.

The NEVI About Face

The reopened federal program to fund the installation of high-speed EV chargers along freeways nationwide comes after a six-month freeze in funds and a legal battle with states. Threatened with cancellation, NEVI is ready to go, albeit with a few alterations. Of course, the Trump administration has removed any references to giving women or other underrepresented groups any advantage in the process — let’s keep propping up the white guys and calling it equity. Also, no longer do states have to worry about those pesky emergency evacuation plans or consumer protections as they’re assigning money for the charger installations.

The new Trump administration guidance does seem mostly like the original NEVI language. Sierra Club clean transportation head Katherine García poo-poohed the idea of any great revelation from the NEVI reissue, saying it’s just reiterating the existing law, and the freeze was really little more than the Trump administration’s attempt “to try to stall electric vehicle momentum.”

Insisting differently, the Federal Highway Administration (FHA) says it wants fewer hurdles for the companies that build charging stations. In that way, it can be a quicker turnaround from initial proposal to a whole slew of new charging stations open-and-ready for business.

States that already had plans in place now need to submit revised iterations for using the charger funding within 30 days. That’s a fast turnaround but workable if you want the cash. And states do. Aside from the core matter of EV sales, there is no topic more instrumental to the transition to electric vehicles than the topic of EV charging. It’s one of the first things anyone without an EV asks EV owners about, and it’s one of the most important factors everyone considers before going electric.

Why did it take the states so long to get new chargers up and running when Joe Biden was president? Federal money like this is accompanied by a whole list of rules and requirements around everything from reliability to interoperability, to where stations can be located, to what certifications the workers installing the chargers need to have. In other words, as our mothers told us, good things take time. The newly revised NEVI paradigm gives a leg up to gas stations and truck stops, which don’t have to go through a lengthy lease negotiation.

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 would put chargers and how.

We’re not hearing many of the derisive “electric vehicle mandate” phrases being bandied about anymore. Now it’s up to the states, many of whom won legal cases that promised funding must be forthcoming.

Moreover, there is also the stark realization that more than half of clean energy projects since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act were located in red states. Oops. The loss of investment and jobs had the real potential to hurt communities, and citizens turn quickly on their elected representatives once their wallets start to sting.

Add into that dynamic a White House under Biden that had championed an accelerated transition to clean energy. It seemed then that the world was at a tipping point following the buy-in of the Paris Agreement to keep the world warming no more than 1.5°C by 2030. NEVI also establishes an interconnected network to facilitate data collection, access, and reliability.

But the US, in its former Biden-era enthusiasm and energy, failed to provide everyday folks with adequate introductions, tutorials, modeling, and 1-to-1 trainings about all things renewable. It seemed to many people like social and technological processes and participatory governance were going amok. EVs became an easy target for profitable gas companies. But change is a-comin’.