- The US Trump administration has published new guidance concerning the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) programme, following an earlier freezing of the funds and a subsequent court case from states challenging the freeze.
- Now, all US states, along with the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, will continue to be able to apply for NEVI funding to allow for significant expansion of public charging infrastructure.
- The NEVI programme was originally introduced under the Biden administration, back in February 2022.
NEVI funding is back on the cards for US states and CPOs
Despite the Trump administration freezing NEVI funding back in February, as of the start of the year, around $3 billion of the $5 billion NEVI pot had already been allocated to states, with funding that had already been claimed being hard to retract.
A court case earlier this summer helped to unfreeze NEVI funding to 14 US states, such as California, Hawaii, and New York. Now, new guidance documents published by the Federal Highway Administration show that the remaining NEVI fund will remain open for all states to claim, marking a nationwide restoration and allowing public charging infrastructure to take an even larger footprint in the US. NEVI funding is now set to continue to be available until the 2026 fiscal year.
NEVI funding is dependent on sites being located on or near to ‘Alternative Fuel Corridors’, a network of key roads that will further enable long-distance EV travel. Unlike previous guidance, charging stations will not need to be placed 50 miles apart, with states able to decide the distance between separate pieces of funded infrastructure.
Despite recent efforts from the Trump administration which have been seen as anti-EV, this news will come as a welcome surprise for the country’s EV industry, and it makes it clear that the EV dream isn’t going away. OEMs are also remaining committed to their electrification plans. That stance was emboldened further this week with Ford’s new plans to create its affordable and production-efficient Universal EV Platform, allowing for a range of electric models to be produced and sold for as little as $30,000, with manufacturing and battery production taking place in the US.
