Trump is misleading about the cost of EV chargers

In recent speeches, former President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that the Biden administration spent $9 billion to build just eight electric vehicle charging stations — or even just eight chargers. It is not accurate.

Trump is likely referring to $7.5 billion approved by Congress to help build a network of electric vehicle chargers across the US over five years. But not everyone has money were spent or even made available to the states still. Experts say they expect the funds to help build thousands of charging stations and more than 30,000 individual charging ports.

According to the Federal Highway Administration, as of mid-August, the funds that have been deployed have helped produce 61 loading docks at 15 stations, with another 14,900 docks underway.

Some news outlets have reported that Trump’s tone on electric vehicles has softened recently, after a July 13 approval from Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla, which makes and sells electric cars. However, he continued to spread misinformation about EV infrastructure.

About to least eight On several occasions in the past two months, Trump has wildly exaggerated the government’s costs of building electric vehicle chargers.

“They built eight chargers… for $9 billion! Think of them like a gas tank. Think about it. They spent $9 billion on eight chargers! Three of which didn’t work,” Trump falsely claimed during his speech at the Republican National Convention on July 19.

At a conservative conference in Florida on July 26, Trump said it would cost the US government $5 trillion to build electric vehicle chargers at designated locations across the country.

Trump, July 26: I said, you know, Elon, remember, I love electric cars, I think your car is great, I love it! But it’s not for everyone. … Just like sometimes you want to drive long distances, you don’t want to stop. You know, in the Midwest, somewhere in the Midwest, they put eight charging stations, you know that, right? They spent 9 billion dollars! Now, you know what a charging station is, it’s like a gas pump, it’s the equivalent of a gas pump for electricity, right? It’s a small thing. They spent 9 billion dollars. That would mean if they did it across the country, all the designated locations, it would cost $5 trillion. So our country would have to file for bankruptcy, it would have to file for bankruptcy protection to build them. Everything is crazy!

He recited almost the same remarks the next day at a rally in St. Cloud, Minn., except he raised the total cost to $10 trillion — and pledged to “end the Biden-Harris electric vehicle mandate on Day 1.”

More recently, in Atlanta on August 5, Trump repeated the claim again. “For eight chargers, they spent $9 billion. Is it a good deal? So at that rate, it would be $10 trillion to burden the country,” he said.

Pete Gould, a transportation and mobility technology policy expert and lobbyist for the electric vehicle and charging industry, told E&E News that Trump’s calculations “sound too ridiculous to be true … because they aren’t.”

We have asked the Trump campaign about his claims, but have not heard back. Trump appears to be misrepresenting media stories about the $7.5 billion five-year investment plan to help create an electric vehicle charging network. The funds were appropriated by Congress through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act signed by President Joe Biden in 2021.

On March 29, the Washington Post published a story titled “Biden’s $7.5 billion electric vehicle charging investment produced only 7 stations in two years.” Later in May, Autoweek published an article titled “$7.5 Billion in Federal Funds Produces Just 8 EV Charging Stations.” Both stories reported criticism of the slow pace at which the program was being rolled out — but did not claim that the funds had been fully spent. Not all stations were in the Midwest either. The articles said stations had opened in Hawaii, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Vermont.

As mentioned, federal funding has helped build 61 loading docks at 15 stations as of mid-August, and an additional 14,900 docks are currently in development. Under the funding, each charging station or location must have at least four charging ports.

Michelle Levinson, senior manager of eMobility finance and policy at the World Resources Institute, told us that the number of stations that are open right now is “a small fraction of what the program is expected to achieve” and that in terms of providing funding, the Biden Administration has made good progress.”

The Federal Highway Administration, which doesn’t fully fund each project, couldn’t tell us how many charging stations or ports could ultimately be built with the $7.5 billion because it “ultimately depends on how states and communities plan to use their funding,” an FHWA spokesman said in an email. The new charging stations use both federal money allocated to states and private funding.

But the electric vehicle policy analyst group Atlas Public Policy told the Washington Post in March that the $7.5 billion should be enough for “up to 20,000 charging points or about 5,000 stations.” Nick Nigro, founder of Atlas Public Policy, told us his group has revised those estimates upward.

Looking at just the $5 billion program to build charging stations along major highways, Nigro said updated data from 10 states shows the government’s share of building each port averages $150,000. That’s more than 30,000 ports and up to 7,500 stations, assuming each has four ports (Nigro said the station count will likely be lower because many stations will have multiple ports). With the remaining $2.5 billion, more charging stations and ports can be built.

The World Resources Institute’s Levinson told us this is a reasonable estimate “and our experience with similar projects would produce similar numbers.”

The Biden administration’s goal is to have 500,000 chargers by 2030, with additional public and private funding. As of Aug. 14, there were 65,904 public locations available in the U.S., with a total of 179,547 electric vehicle charging ports, according to the Joint Energy and Transportation Office’s Alternative Fuels Data Center.

Funding process and progress

Of the $7.5 billion in funding, $5 billion will go to the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Program, which will give states money to build chargers along the nation’s major highways, according to a statement released by the FHWA . So far, about $2.4 billion has been made available to all 50 states, plus DC and Puerto Rico. But that money hasn’t all been spent yet — and the states haven’t even necessarily awarded their prizes. According to a report by the National Association of State Energy Officials, as of mid-April, 19 states had awarded $287.6 million in NEVI funds.

The FHWA told us that states are at various stages of rolling out the funding received under their state plans. So far, NEVI funding has resulted in 15 operational charging stations and 61 ports in eight states. The agency said the number is expected to “increase rapidly, with 28 states announcing conditional or final awards for 719 charging stations.”

In addition, about $623 million was awarded to 47 projects through the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Discretionary Grant Program, which received the remaining $2.5 billion in infrastructure law funding, according to the FHWA . The first round of funding awarded through the CFI program in fiscal years 2022 and 2023 is expected to result in about 7,500 electric vehicle charging ports in the states and localities where people live and work, the agency said.

Finally, approximately $148.8 million in grants were awarded to 24 projects in 20 states through the Accelerating Accessibility and Reliability of Electric Vehicle Chargers Program, which targets states and localities in need for additional help. That funding, which comes from the NEVI program, is expected to “repair or replace approximately 4,500 electric vehicle charging ports,” the FHWA told us.

To access federal funds to build electric vehicle chargers, states must submit plans to the Joint Energy and Transportation Office each year before August and then, if the plans are approved, solicit bids and award the funds for the work that follows to be realized.

“There’s certainly a long way to go in terms of getting projects up and running and we’d like to see states move faster, but this is not inconsistent with what we’d expect for such an undertaking massive,” Levinson said. . “Some states are further along than others, but all participants must navigate a complicated landscape of considerations such as siting and permitting challenges, ensuring there is adequate infrastructure to handle this new technology and adapting projects to the unique needs of their communities. These processes can take time – it’s not uncommon for it to take 2-3 years to build a new charging station – but we’re encouraged to see that 36 states have submitted their first-round funding requests.”

Government officials and experts also said Biden’s plan took time to implement because of other factors, including the creation of strict new guidelines, standards and requirements for building these charging stations and partnerships with states that, in most cases, they had no previous ones. experience with EV charging stations.

Regarding Trump’s claim of a Biden-Harris “electric vehicle mandate,” which he repeated at a rally in North Carolina on August 14 and at a news conference in New Jersey on August 15, the administration cannot impose how many cars. it must be electrical, as I explained before.

Biden’s goal is for electric vehicles to account for 50 percent of new car sales by 2030. A new Environmental Protection Agency vehicle emissions rule that limits tailpipe pollution could increase the percentage of new car sales that are electric vehicles above Biden’s goal by 2032. Vehicle manufacturers would have to meet the standards, but would have flexibility in how they meet them. For example, it could choose to produce more efficient internal combustion engines for gas or hybrid vehicles.

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