The Department of Transportation (DOT) has paused funding for a $5 billion EV charging infrastructure program that Tesla has received at least $31 million from. The move is widely viewed to be illegal.
It’s the latest attempt from the Trump administration to hack away at federally funded renewable energy projects around the country, a clear priority for the president in his first few weeks back in office.
It’s also more evidence that Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s politics are increasingly at odds with his car company’s goal of advancing the transition to sustainable energy. By the middle of last year, Tesla had won around 6% of all awards from the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program in question, netting millions of dollars in the process.
One of the first executive orders Trump signed in January took aim at charging infrastructure programs, including NEVI.
Now, a letter sent Thursday to the directors of state DOT offices says that the “new leadership of the Department of Transportation” wants to “review the policies underlying the implementation of the NEVI” program.
The Federal Highway Administration, the DOT agency that wrote the letter, said it will update the guidance for NEVI and publish it for public comment in “the spring.” The DOT division says no new funding can go out until that new guidance is finalized. InsideEVs was the first to report the letter.
NEVI was part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law signed into law in 2021. Congress had appropriated $1 billion annually to the program from 2022 to 2026.
Beth Hammon, senior vehicle charging advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement that the Trump administration “does not have the authority to halt it capriciously. ”
“Stopping funding midstream will result in chaos and delays in states across the nation. It will throw state efforts into turmoil, wreak havoc with the companies that install the chargers and risk the jobs of their workers,” she said. “The only winner from this chaos is the oil industry.”
Sierra Club’s Clean Transportation for All director Katherine García also said the action was illegal and was an “attack on bipartisan funding that Congress approved years ago.”
The Trump administration is trying to stop the flow of money appropriated by Congress all across the government — which legal experts say is a major breach of the constitutional order.
His Office of Management and Budget announced a government-wide spending freeze that has already been met with a number of legal challenges. It then rescinded that memo, though it’s been reported that some payment freezes continue. Musk, meanwhile, is marauding around multiple government agencies with a team of engineers and tech executives and wresting computer access to the payment and other sensitive systems.