The Trump administration is no big fan of electric vehicles — but its newest policy may have a huge impact on where EV owners charge their cars.
Gas stations and truck stops are in. Shopping center parking lots are out.
That implication came in the fine print of the administration’s move last month to reopen the spigots of the $5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program, the infamously slow-rolling effort under former President Joe Biden to build charging stations along highways. The unfreezing came with a new recommendation from the Federal Highway Administration that states use the money to support “charging locations where the charging station operator is also the site host (i.e., property owner).”
The move has elicited protests from electric automakers Tesla and Rivian and a constellation of EV-charging industry and advocates. That’s because charging companies rarely own the land where they build their chargers — while gas stations and truck stops do (or they lease the land).
