States have spent only 2 percent of the billions of dollars that the federal government set aside four years ago to build electric vehicle charging stations on U.S. highways.
Congress made $4.4 billion available to states under the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program, per official estimates. But so far, states have asked Uncle Sam to reimburse them for only $94 million, according to data from the Federal Highway Administration, which oversees the NEVI program.
Five states — Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Nevada and Wyoming — have spent no money.
The new data appeared in a legal filing last week in a lawsuit that Democratic states filed against the Trump administration for freezing their NEVI funds. It’s the latest sign that NEVI, an early part of the Biden administration’s push to accelerate EV adoption, is struggling to stand up charging stations on highways and build confidence in the EV future among road-trippers.
“That’s unfortunately not a very positive story,” said Loren McDonald, an EV-charging analyst who has closely tracked NEVI’s spending.
However, state officials and experts expressed confidence that NEVI’s roughest days are in the rear view mirror, and that the path seems clear for new charging plazas to steadily come online this year and into 2027 and 2028. The Trump administration ended its seven-month funding freeze in August, and states have plans in place to ramp up construction.
First, the program has to dodge cuts from Congress as lawmakers write a new surface-transportation bill. A bipartisan package announced Tuesday would remove more than $500 million from NEVI funds meant for states and put it toward other purposes at FHWA — despite Democrats’ earlier insistence that EV chargers get more funding, not less. The Sierra Club said in a statement that the change “would sabotage states’ efforts to resume NEVI buildout.”
Hard from the start
The NEVI program has suffered the twin challenges of bureaucracy and political controversy.
NEVI is a creature of the bipartisan infrastructure law that Congress approved in 2021. It routed EV charging funds through traditional highway spending channels — a move that caused state departments of transportation to move cautiously because they didn’t know how to build charging stations.
Then President Donald Trump, who mocked NEVI’s slow rollout during the 2024 presidential campaign, paused the program last year, causing many station builders to slow down or back out.
Meanwhile, a somewhat rosier picture of NEVI’s progress can be found in a different number.
States have obligated $1.4 billion of funds. Money is considered obligated when the federal government believes a state has a clear enough plan that it approves the money to be spent. (States receive that obligated money only after they’ve paid their vendors and submitted their receipts to the federal government.)
These increasingly certain plans are creating confidence that more NEVI-funded EV stations are coming soon.
“Assuming no new political hurdles arise, it wouldn’t be a stretch to see the current open site count double by the end of the year,” wrote Steve Birkett, an independent EV-charging-station analyst, in a post on LinkedIn.
Estimates vary on the number of NEVI stations that are now open to serve the public.
One EV-data shop, Atlas Public Policy, counts 121 open NEVI locations. Birkett’s tally reaches 150.
NEVI aims to build an EV station every 50 miles on highways. That would mean roughly 1,600 stations once the network is fully built.
Ohio, which alongside Pennsylvania leads in NEVI station openings, said that both spending and new charging plazas are coming. The state currently has 19 stations open and 12 more slated to start construction this spring. Still, the state has spent only $8.3 million of the $140 million it has available.
“Some developers haven’t yet invoiced for completed work, so we expect that number to increase in the coming months as invoices continue to be received and paid,” said Breanna Badanes, a spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Transportation, in an email. “We anticipate a big uptick in spending in 2026.”
Trump’s freeze and a long thaw
The biggest and most recent speed bump for NEVI, some state officials said, was Trump’s funding freeze.
The freeze that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy began last February ended in August, when the administration relented against legal challenges and offered new, simplified guidance. Those seven months threw carefully laid plans into limbo, said Jared Wiley, director of the Arkansas Department of Transportation.
Before the pause, Arkansas had awarded contracts for 19 sites, at a total cost of $15 million. Now, after the pause, nine station builders have backed out and others three are considering their next move. Only seven are still committed.
Arkansas is looking for new applicants for those idled sites, a process that may take another year.
“All that time was lost and we are now playing catch-up,” Wiley said.
Meanwhile, other states celebrated the resolution to Trump’s freeze — new guidance.
Wyoming had originally refused to build EV stations every 50 miles, as the Biden administration required. The state argued that no services or even buildings existed at some far-flung outposts.
But Trump’s new guidance erased that 50-mile rule, and Wyoming is doing what it has wanted to do all along: using the federal money to build charging stations on routes between Wyoming’s national parks and EV-loving California.
“Our goal is to use NEVI to help EV-driving tourists get from the interstate highways to popular destinations like Yellowstone National Park,” said Jordan Young, a spokesperson for Wyoming’s Department of Transportation.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the amount of money that Congress has proposed removing from NEVI funding.
