CA and 16 states sue feds for $5B ‘gift to China’ withholding EV charger funds

California and 16 other states have sued the government for illegally withholding $5 billion in funds that Congress earmarked for EV charging, calling the action “another trump gift to China.”

The federal NEVI (National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure) program was established by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), otherwise known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, pushed for and signed by President Joe Biden.

Among other things, the IIJA dedicated $5 billion in funding to expanding EV chargers, in order to give more Americans access to EV ownership, and allow them to unlock the fuel cost and health savings that EV owners, and communities with high EV penetration, enjoy.

Since then, every state has submitted a plan and that money has gotten assigned to projects around the country in various levels of completion, with several charging stations already open.

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The NEVI program was even the main driver of Tesla opening up its charging port and creating the NACS standard, due to the law’s requirement that federal funding can only go to charging stations that have open access to multiple brands of vehicle. Tesla’s Superchargers used to be open only to Teslas, but after this law passed, Tesla started opening them up to other brands.

And wide adoption of the NACS standard by the industry promises to fix a lot of the problems with EV charging.

So, NEVI is a great program, and it’s helping Americans to save on fuel and maintenance costs, reducing barriers to charging, and making the world cleaner for everyone who breathes air.

So of course, the enemy of America currently occupying the White House (despite there being a clear Constitutional remedy for this crisis) opposes it.

In February, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), at the behest of convicted felon Donald Trump, froze funding for the NEVI program, even though that funding was already allocated by Congress for this purpose. Who knew a felon would break the law?

Now, states are pushing back against the illegal funding freeze, as 17 states, led by California, Colorado and Washington, are suing the FHWA to free up the funds that were allocated to them.

California Governor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta laid out their argument today in a press release by the California Governor’s office.

Among those arguments is something we’ve mentioned many times here on Electrek: that republican efforts to diminish the US EV industry are a “gift to China,” who have well and truly taken the lead in the global EV industry, and other countries – particularly the US – are just not doing enough to keep up.

When America retreats, China wins.

President Trump’s illegal action withholding funds for electric vehicle infrastructure is yet another Trump gift to China – ceding American innovation and killing thousands of jobs.

Instead of hawking Teslas on the White House lawn, President Trump could actually help Elon – and the nation – by following the law and releasing this bipartisan funding.

-California Governor Gavin Newsom

Another of President Biden’s laws, the Inflation Reduction Act, was an effort to increase investment in the EV industry in the US – and did so while also lowering the deficit. It worked extremely well, leading to hundreds of billions in investment and hundreds of thousands of jobs in American EV manufacturing. Certainly much more effective than the unwise tariffs that both President Biden and Mr. Trump have supported.

However, as one might expect from an enemy of America, Mr. Trump has opposed that law as well. After he begged the oil industry for a billion-dollar bribe to harm EVs during his presidential campaign (where he also repeatedly promised to raise inflation for Americans), his republican party now thinks they have the votes to inflate the price of EVs by $7,500.

Oddly, despite Mr. Trump’s clear opposition to the well-being of Americans, and particularly to the well-being of the American auto industry, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, perhaps America’s most high-profile auto CEO, donated hundreds of millions of dollars to this anti-EV candidate. He has used tortured logic to claim that raising the price of his products by $7,500 relative to the competition won’t hurt his business, but that’s just wrong.

As Governor Newsom points out in his quote above, this situation seems puzzling. While Mr. Trump did improperly utilize government property to create a bizarre ad for his largest political donor, his policy proposals so far – which Musk claims he “loves” – have generally been directed towards harming Tesla and other EVs. The money from the NEVI program could go a long way towards filling the gaps in EV charger buildout around the country, making Teslas more usable for Americans who don’t live in areas where chargers are easy to come by.

Pausing that funding not only puts charger plans into chaos (something Musk is no stranger to), it also means that Tesla can’t use money that it created an entire charging standard just to get a piece of.

The lawsuit requests that a court stop Mr. Trump’s illegal actions and permanently halt the FHWA from withholding these funds.

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