Electric car charger funding delays lifted in August 2025, but states have reimbursed only 94 million dollars, 2%, of the 4.4 billion dollars now available

Electric car charger funding delays, from freeze to restart

Electric car charger funding delays defined the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program for most of 2025. The program, known as NEVI, pays states federal money to build public electric car chargers along highway corridors. On taking office in January 2025, the Trump administration ordered the program halted, and the Federal Highway Administration formally suspended new state plan approvals on February 26, 2025. A coalition of states sued on August 1, 2025, arguing the freeze had no basis in law. 10 days later the agency issued revised guidance letting states resume, easing station spacing rules, grid connection requirements and consumer protection rules that the agency says the law never actually required. A federal judge, Tana Lin, later found that the freeze itself counted in law as a final agency action, a permanent decision rather than a temporary pause, which meant it could not simply be left to expire and had to be reversed with new guidance instead.

Why the funding pot shrank to 4.4 billion dollars

Congress set aside 5 billion dollars for NEVI in 2021. After the freeze lifted, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy transferred almost 1 billion dollars of that money into other highway programs under the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026. That transfer, not delay or waste alone, explains most of why states now have 4.4 billion dollars to work with instead of the original 5 billion.

How little of the money has reached the ground

As of the most recent full accounting, January 21, 2026, states had asked the federal government to reimburse them for only 94 million dollars of the 4.4 billion dollars now available, 2%. That low number understates real progress, the same accounting shows, since 1.4 billion dollars is already obligated to specific projects that are approved but still waiting on invoices before the money can move. Between 121 and 150 charging stations funded by the program were open at that count, with about 1,600 planned once the network is complete.

What state officials say the delays cost

State transportation officials describe the freeze cost in lost time rather than lost money.

All that time was lost and we are now playing catch-up

Jared Wiley, director of the Arkansas Department of Transportation. Source 3.

North Carolina is one state still opening chargers through the same program that was briefly stopped.

By expanding our electric vehicle charging network, we're making it easier for everyone to travel confidently across the state, while supporting a cleaner, more modern transportation economy

Heather Hildebrandt, State Initiatives Manager at the North Carolina Department of Transportation. Source 4.

A ledger that has not moved since the freeze began

The Federal Highway Administration own public funding ledger, dated February 6, 2025, the exact day the freeze formally began, shows Texas, California, Florida, New York and Pennsylvania holding the 5 largest apportionments, the label for how much federal funding a state has been allotted to draw down.

That same agency own webpage carries a metadata date of February 2026, but no updated version of that ledger has been published since, a gap that means the government own funding numbers have not kept pace with the program it runs, through the whole freeze and restart period this story covers.