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electric vehicles
Congress Urged to 'Stand Up for Itself' as Trump Admin Halts EV Charger Program
"Freezing these EV charging funds is yet another one of the Trump administration's unsound and illegal moves," said one climate advocate.
Feb 07, 2025
Climate campaigners are blasting the Trump administration's move to halt a $5 billion initiative to build electric vehicle chargers along highways across the United States and calling on Congress to fight back against the attack on the grant program from the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law.
The National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program was established by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Natural Resources Defense Council's Beth Hammon said in a Friday statement that "on a bipartisan basis, Congress funded this program to build a new vehicle charging network nationwide. The Trump administration does not have the authority to halt it capriciously."
Hammon, a senior vehicle charging advocate at the group, warned that "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. The only winner from this chaos is the oil industry."
"This should not stand. Courts have already blocked the Trump administration's other illegal attempts to halt legally mandated funding," she added. "Congress needs to stand up for itself: This move and many others from the Trump administration steals away its constitutionally established spending authority."
Katherine García, director of the Sierra Club's Clean Transportation for All campaign, similarly declared Friday that "freezing these EV charging funds is yet another one of the Trump administration's unsound and illegal moves. This is an attack on bipartisan funding that Congress approved years ago and is driving investment and innovation in every state, with Texas as the largest beneficiary."
"Throwing out states' plans, which were carefully built together with business, utilities, and communities, only hurts America's growing clean energy economy," she stressed. "The NEVI program has helped the U.S. build out the infrastructure needed to support our nation's necessary transition to pollution-free vehicles. More electric vehicle charging means better public health, reduced climate emissions, good-paying green jobs, and healthier communities."
President Donald Trump has taken various anti-climate actions since Inauguration Day—declaring a "national energy emergency," ditching the Paris agreement again, and enabling new liquefied natural gas exports. One executive order calls for "terminating the Green New Deal," and directs agencies to pause disbursement of funds appropriated through the Inflation Reduction Act and the 2021 law, specifically mentioning the NEVI program.
Trump targeted the initiative despite his ties to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, head of the president's destructive Department of Government Efficiency. Wiredreported that the billionaire's "electric automobile company has been a recipient of $31 million in awards from the NEVI program, according to a database maintained by transportation officials, accounting for 6% of the money awarded so far."
The Federal Highway Administration on Thursday sent a letter—first reported by InsideEVs—informing state transportation departments that "the new leadership of the Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT) has decided to review the policies underlying the implementation of the NEVI Formula Program," and, as a result, "is also immediately suspending the approval of all" state deployment plans previously greenlit by the Biden administration.
As Heatmapdetailed:
According to Paren, an EV charging data analytics firm that has been closely following the rollout of the NEVI program, states are legally entitled to spend roughly $3.27 billion on NEVI. That accounts for plans approved for fiscal years 2022 through 2025. To date, states have awarded about $615 million of the funds to just under 1,000 projects—with 10% of those projects being led by Tesla.
The letter says states will still be able to get reimbursed for expenses related to previously awarded projects, "in order to not disrupt current financial commitments." But the more than $2.6 billion that has not been awarded will be frozen.
The outlet noted that advocates expected Trump's attacks on the program won't survive legal challenges.
"This should be carefully scrutinized by states and the legal community," said Justin Balik, the senior state program director for Evergreen Action, "as it looks like an attempt to sabotage the program based on ideology that's dressed up in bureaucratic language about plan and guidance revisions."
Andrew Rogers, a former deputy administrator and chief counsel of the Federal Highway Administration, told Wired that "there is no legal basis for funds that have been apportioned to states to build projects being 'decertified' based on policy."
Paren chief analyst Loren McDonald also doesn't think that the Trump administration can legally suspend the program.
"I'm assuming the lawsuits from states will start soon, and this will go to court and Congress," McDonald toldPolitico. "But the Trump [administration] will succeed in just causing havoc and slowing things down for a while."
Already, Alabama, Oklahoma, Missouri, Rhode Island, Ohio, and Nebraska have put their NEVI programs on hold.
Whether Congress—particuarly Democrats, who are the minority party in both chambers—will fight back is unclear. Hill Heat's Brad Johnson pointed out on the social media platform Bluesky that two dozen members of the Senate Democratic Caucus voted with Republicans to confirm Trump's DOT chief, Sean Duffy.
After 24 Senate Democrats joined all GOP to confirm climate denier Sean Duffy as Transportation Secretary, he illegally called for the shut down of the National Electric Vehicle Charging Program, established by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
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— Brad Johnson ( @climatebrad.hillheat.com) February 6, 2025 at 11:36 PM
As Common Dreamsreported last month, right after Duffy was confirmed, the secretary directed DOT staff to immediately begin the process of rescinding or replacing former President Joe Biden's clean car pollution standards.
"These commonsense, popular fuel economy standards save drivers money at the pump and reduce dangerous pollution from vehicles," Sierra Club's García said at the time. "Sean Duffy is selling American families out to Big Oil, burdening us with higher fuel prices and more polluting gas-guzzlers that harm our health."
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Tesla Sales Plummet in Germany Amid Musk's Support for AfD
"Nobody wants to be associated with it," said one researcher in the automotive industry.
Feb 06, 2025
"Limiting yourself to AfD supporters as customers comes at a cost it seems," said one Germany-based political scientist on Wednesday, referring to the far-right political party Alternative for Germany, as Tesla sales were shown to have plummeted in the country last month amid CEO Elon Musk's show of support for the party.
In January, the company's electric vehicle (EV) sales were down 59% in the Germany, the only European country where Tesla's cars are manufactured.
EV makers saw sales fall in Germany over the past year as the country ended a subsidy program—but other companies in the sector experienced have experienced at least a partial rebound in sales, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
German buyers purchased electric cars from domestic and Chinese companies, which saw a 54% increase in sales last month.
The Daily Beastreported Thursday that Germans who already own Musk's EVs have been overwhelming at least one business owner with orders for a bumper sticker that reads, "I bought this before Elon went crazy."
Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer, director of the Center Automotive Research Institute in Germany, toldAFP that Tesla's plunging sales numbers were almost certainly tied to Musk's support for AfD, which has been classified as a suspected extremist group by the country's domestic intelligence agency and multiple courts.
"Tesla and Musk are almost inextricably linked."
Comments like those Musk made at a rally for AfD last month, where he said "there is too much focus on past guilt" in Germany over Nazism and the Holocaust, have been "extremely damaging," said Dudenhoeffer.
"Nobody wants to be associated with it," he said. "Tesla and Musk are almost inextricably linked."
Earlier in January, Musk stood in front of the U.S. presidential seal on stage at an inaugural event for President Donald Trump and displayed what appeared to be the Sieg Heil salute that was used as a greeting among Nazis. The gesture has been outlawed in Germany since the end of World War II.
Nonpolitical factors, like the impending arrival of the Model Y Tesla, could be at play. But Schmidt Automotive Research wrote in a report that German customers "may well be reacting to Musk's comments."
Some segments of the German public expressed disgust with Musk before the EV sales numbers were released this week, with activists projecting an image of the CEO's salute and the word "Heil" on the outside of a Tesla factory near Berlin after Trump's inauguration.
In recent days, protests have cropped up across the U.S. as Musk, through his advisory body to the Trump administration, the Department of Government Efficiency, has attempted a takeover of numerous federal agencies and their data on millions of Americans, including a payment system at the Department of Treasury, the Office of Personnel Management, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Department of Education, and the National Institutes of Health.
Signs displayed at demonstrations on Wednesday took aim at the Tesla CEO as much as President Donald Trump, with some reading, "Arrest Elon Musk" and "De-MusKKK the U.S."
Some have started directing their outrage at Tesla, as German activists have. On Tuesday, Tesla campus recruiters arrived at Michigan State University to talk to potential future employees, only to be greeted by protesters carrying signs that read, "Don't be a Musk-Rat!!" and "SUPPORT STUDENTS NOT FASCISTS!!"
Journalist Robinson Meyer mused this week on the social media platform Bluesky that protests at Tesla dealerships across the U.S. could soon follow as Musk continues his efforts to dismantle federal agencies.
Other users shared images of small public actions at a dealership in Burbank, California and elsewhere, as well as graffiti that was recently scrawled on the outside of the company's office in Seattle, saying, "Nazi Scum."
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'Oil Industry Wins' as Trump Transportation Chief Targets Biden Clean Car Rules
"Sean Duffy is selling American families out to Big Oil, burdening us with higher fuel prices and more polluting gas-guzzlers that harm our health," said one campaigner.
Jan 29, 2025
In a move decried by climate and environmental advocates, newly confirmed Republican U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Tuesday directed agency staff to immediately begin the process of rescinding or replacing former President Joe Biden's historic clean car pollution standards.
Duffy's first official act after being confirmed by the U.S. Senate in a 77-22 vote was to sign a memo acknowledging Republican President Donald Trump's policy of promoting fossil fuel use and ordering National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) personnel to "commence an immediate review and reconsideration of all existing fuel economy standards applicable to all models of motor vehicles produced from model year 2022 forward."
The memo singles out Biden's finalized Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, which regulate how far vehicles must travel on a single gallon of fuel. U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) officials estimated the new standards would have pushed the average fuel efficiency of new cars and sport utility vehicles over 50 miles per gallon by 2031. The Biden administration subsequently weakened the rules.
"The memorandum signed today specifically reduces the burdensome and overly restrictive fuel standards that have needlessly driven up the cost of a car in order to push a radical Green New Deal agenda," Duffy said in a statement. "The American people should not be forced to sacrifice choice and affordability when purchasing a new car."
However, according to a 2024 NHTSA analysis, Biden's CAFE standards would have saved consumers nearly $23 billion in fuel costs and avoided the burning of approximately 70 billion gallons of gasoline through 2050.
Critics of the Trump administration's fossil fuel agenda also underscored the importance of CAFE standards in reducing gasoline and diesel consumption and combating planetary heating, which is driven primarily by burning fossil fuels. Some also noted that Duffy questions whether human activity is causing climate change.
"These commonsense, popular fuel economy standards save drivers money at the pump and reduce dangerous pollution from vehicles," Karen García, director of the Sierra Club's Clean Transportation for All campaign, said in a statement Wednesday. "Drivers spend excessive amounts of money to fuel their cars, and it's often a large part of household expenses."
"Sean Duffy is selling American families out to Big Oil, burdening us with higher fuel prices and more polluting gas-guzzlers that harm our health," García added.
Duffy's announcement is part of a wider Trump administration push to roll back Biden's efforts to boost electric vehicles. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is also taking aim at California's plan to ban the sale of gasoline-only new vehicles by 2035.
"As sad as it is, it's no surprise that climate denier Sean Duffy's first act at DOT is to advance Trump's harmful deregulatory agenda and roll back fuel economy standards," Will Anderson, electric vehicle policy advocate with Public Citizen's Climate Program, said Wednesday.
"Such a rollback would not only hinder consumer choices for more fuel-efficient vehicles while putting the U.S. auto industry further behind global competitors, it would raise consumer's costs when fueling—all to boost oil and gas industry profits," Anderson added.
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