America started the fourth quarter of 2024 with 46,100 DC fast chargers available to electric vehicle (EV) drivers and ended it with 49,604.
That growth — 7.6% in just three months, according to the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation — set a record. However, the future of EV charger growth will likely seem uncertain for a while as a new presidential administration casts doubt on federal funding for new EV chargers.
Related: EV Charging Stations — Everything You Need to Know
Counting slower Level 2 chargers as well, the office says the number of publicly available EV chargers has doubled since the end of 2020. “At the end of 2020, only 38% of the most heavily trafficked corridors had fast chargers at least every 50 miles. Now, families can travel 59.1% of the most heavily trafficked corridors and expect a fast charger at least every 50 miles. By the end of next year, an estimated 70% of those corridors will have charging spaced predictably at this same interval.”
Federal funding supports some of that growth, though private industry and electric companies also fund new chargers without government help.
Trump Pauses Funds, but Much of It Already Scheduled
President Trump took office Monday and immediately released a series of executive orders, some of which could slow down EV adoption nationwide.
One of the orders instructed federal agencies to pause distributing funds for new EV chargers.
But the outgoing Biden administration had already committed much of the available funding before Trump took office.
“The Biden administration awarded $635 million in EV charger grants just 10 days before Donald Trump takes office, leaving just $700,000 of the $2.5 billion from the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law unallocated,” Electrek explains.
In a press release 10 days before Biden left office, the Federal Highway Administration noted that it had “received 416 applications requesting a combined $4.05 billion in funding, more than six times the amount of funding available, demonstrating a strong desire for federal funding from applications across the nation.”
A Legal Fight Ahead Over Whether a President Can Refuse to Spend
Trump’s order could spark a legal fight. The President instructed agencies to pause the funding while they “review their processes, policies, and programs for issuing grants, loans, contracts, or any other financial disbursements of such appropriated funds for consistency with the law.”
Notably, that’s not an order to never distribute the funds.
The Trump administration may intend to test a legal theory that it can decide not to distribute funds already promised.
NPR explains, “Congress has the power of the purse. After funding disputes with President Richard Nixon, Congress passed a law in 1974 called the Impoundment Control Act that requires presidents to spend money as Congress directs.”
However, “Trump has said he plans to challenge that law,” arguing that it is unconstitutional.
TechCrunch notes, “It is not clear that Trump can legally stop the funding of awards that are already under contract.”
Public Projects Slowed; Private Projects Go
Any pause could slow some charger projects. Tina Wise-West, the city of Santa Cruz, California’s sustainability and resilience officer, told Santa Cruz Sentinel this week that dozens of EV chargers in her city “won’t likely be installed for another two to three years” while the dispute unfolds.
However, the nation’s charging network will likely continue to grow even if federal funding stops. The Boston Globe reported this week that “Massachusetts has 1,066 public fast charging ports in operation, according to data from the U.S. Department of Energy. That’s up from 666 at the end of 2023 and just 337 at the end of 2020,” even though the state has not yet disbursed a single dollar of $63 million in federal funding for projects there.