President Donald Trump is trying to stop funding for EV charging infrastructure from two programs that have benefited Tesla. It’s the latest example of how Elon Musk’s political interests conflict with the auto company’s goals of promoting sustainable energy.
It is not clear whether President Trump’s strategy will be successful. But if that happens, Tesla could be cut off from two sources of funding it has leveraged over the past two years to build out its market-leading EV charging network.
One of the countless executive orders signed by President Trump on the first day of his second term states that “all agencies will immediately cease disbursing funds” from programs created by the Inflation Control Act and the bipartisan Infrastructure Act. declared. In particular, he is calling for an end to funding for EV charging stations made available through the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program and the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure (CFI) Grant Program.
These agencies are to submit a review of their “processes, policies, and programs for issuing grants, loans, contracts, or other fiscal expenditures” within 90 days of the date of this order. , the heads of all agencies shall submit reports to the agency. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and National Economic Council (NEC). The order also prohibits agencies from spending any more funds unless “the OMB Director and the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy determine that such spending is consistent with the review recommendations they choose to adopt.” It also says that it cannot be done.
Musk has long maintained that Tesla’s mission is to “accelerate the transition to sustainable energy.” But he is now officially working with the second Trump administration, which made a major shift toward sustainable energy from its first day in office. President Trump has already signed an order suspending federal leases for offshore wind development, withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris climate accord, and seeking to reverse other EV policies of the Biden administration.
As TechCrunch first reported last week, Tesla was part of a group that recently won a $100 million award from the CFI program to build heavy-duty electric truck charging infrastructure across Illinois. The company had hoped to secure about $40 million from the group’s initial funding request of $126 million. Tesla has also repeatedly sought approximately $100 million in CFI funding to build a truck charging corridor between Northern California and South Texas, but its applications have been repeatedly rejected.
Tesla’s CFI award in Illinois is just a fraction of the roughly $2 billion the Department of Transportation has allocated over the past two years. Tesla is getting more subsidies from the NEVI program. The NEVI program donates a small amount of money to states, which then use that money to provide grants to build charging infrastructure. Tesla has won about 13% of all NEVI awards by mid-2024 and is using millions of dollars to further build out its Supercharger network, now open to nearly all competing EVs. .
Trump could slow or stop the flow of future spending from these programs, said Martin Lockman, a fellow at the Sabin Center on Climate Change Law at Columbia University Law School. In particular, the president may be able to do so if the administration is successful in a promised legal battle over the Seizure Control Act, which limits the president’s ability to block the spending of funds appropriated by Congress.
“There is significant wiggle room here, and the Trump administration will do everything it can to slow spending under these bills,” Lockman said.
However, it is unclear whether President Trump could legally stop funding for awards already under contract.
“The people who currently have contracts have rights under those contracts, and the president can’t take that away,” he said.
But Lockman said if the agency felt enough pressure from President Trump, it could violate the terms of the contract and violate the law that established the funding program in the first place, potentially denying funding. I warned you that there is. In such situations, businesses, state and local agencies, or other entities that receive awards from NEVI or CFI must fight to make them a reality.
“If the new administration wants to force people to fight contracts in court, that will definitely create a major barrier to building EV infrastructure,” he said.