The Trump administration’s effort to shut down thousands of electric vehicle charging stations could ultimately cost the government as much as $1 billion.
The General Services Administration is disconnecting EV stations because the administration does not find them “mission-critical,” as first reported by Colorado Public Radio. Such stations are used to charge the government’s fleet of electric vehicles, which GSA spent $900 million procuring in recent years, according to a former senior GSA official who is familiar with purchasing programs.
GSA doesn’t usually shed assets before their useful lives are over. But President Donald Trump — with the help of billionaire Elon Musk — has begun gutting the federal government and freezing spending, focusing in particular on climate programs. Trump has also taken aim at EV spending, pausing construction of highway charging stations and trying to claw back billions of dollars in grants to build EV and battery factories.
Ridding the government of EV infrastructure could be particularly costly, said a former senior Biden-era White House climate official, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal. The government’s EVs and charging equipment are “basically brand new,” they said.
“I think the word ‘unprecedented’ would be appropriate here,” the official said.
GSA manages two-thirds of the government’s 650,000 vehicles, the world’s largest fleet. The only things on wheels it doesn’t buy are tactical military vehicles and Postal Service trucks.
If the agency offloads the 25,000 EVs it purchased under the Biden administration — which the Verge reported is in the works — it could flood the market. The former GSA official, who asked to remain anonymous because their current employer has not authorized them to speak to the press, estimates that selling the EVs early could result in each one selling for only 25 percent of their original value.
The premature jettisoning could result in a loss of $225 million, the former official said. Since those EVs are working vehicles and would need to be replaced with gas cars, buying new vehicles could cost GSA another $700 million, they said.
Pulling the plug
Federal EV purchases spiked during Biden’s presidency. The former White House climate official estimated that EVs jumped from 1 percent of light-duty federal vehicle purchases in 2020, before Biden become president, to roughly 20 percent in 2024.
Last January, Biden signed an executive order requiring that the federal government only buy electric light-duty vehicles like cars and truck by 2027. The same order set 2035 as the all-electric deadline for all vehicle types bought by the government.
During Biden’s tenure, GSA also undertook an expansion of EV charging stations. The government has 654 locations with charging stations, comprising 2,226 charging ports, according to federal data.
The Trump administration aims to cut power to them all. In an email, reported by Inside Climate News, GSA’s leadership said that it would cancel its contracts with EV-charging providers and that power “will be turned off at the breaker.”
“Neither government-owned vehicles nor privately owned vehicles will be able to charge at these stations once they’re out of service,” the email said.
The GSA official estimated that the federal government has in the last four years spent roughly $300 million to install and activate charging stations. Decommissioning those stations could cost $50 million to $100 million, the official added.
Many were purchased by federal agencies with their own Congress-approved funds. However, GSA may own the land and buildings in which they operate.
A sizable minority of federally-owned charging stations are at national laboratories and military bases, including many in California.
Other federal charging stations are at a wide variety of locations, such as a parking lot at the FBI’s Washington, D.C., headquarters; a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention office outside Atlanta; a Federal Aviation Administration facility in New Jersey; and a federal coal plant near Knoxville, Tennessee.
Some are exclusively meant for use by government vehicles, while many others are intended to be used by government employees or visitors who are driving their own EVs.
