{"id":82287,"date":"2025-05-07T20:21:40","date_gmt":"2025-05-08T00:21:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=82287"},"modified":"2025-05-07T20:21:40","modified_gmt":"2025-05-08T00:21:40","slug":"ca-and-16-states-sue-feds-for-5b-gift-to-china-withholding-ev-charger-funds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=82287","title":{"rendered":"CA and 16 states sue feds for $5B ‘gift to China’ withholding EV charger funds"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\"Texas
\n\t\t\t\tPhoto: Joint Office of Energy and Transportation\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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 \u201canother trump gift to China.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, enjoy.<\/p>\n

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

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The NEVI program was even the main driver of Tesla opening up its charging port and creating the NACS standard<\/a>, due to the law\u2019s requirement that federal funding can only go to charging stations that have open access to multiple brands of vehicle. Tesla\u2019s Superchargers used to be open only to Teslas, but after this law passed, Tesla started opening them up to other brands<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And wide adoption of the NACS standard by the industry promises to fix a lot of the problems with EV charging<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So, NEVI is a great program, and it\u2019s helping Americans to save on fuel and maintenance costs, reducing barriers to charging, and making the world cleaner for everyone who breathes air.<\/p>\n

So of course, the enemy of America currently occupying the White House (despite there being a\u00a0clear Constitutional remedy<\/a>\u00a0for this crisis) opposes it.<\/p>\n

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

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.<\/p>\n

California Governor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta laid out their argument today in a press release by the California Governor\u2019s office<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Among those arguments is something we\u2019ve mentioned many<\/a> times<\/a> here<\/a> on<\/a> Electrek<\/a><\/em>: that republican efforts to diminish the US EV industry are a \u201cgift to China,\u201d who have well and truly taken the lead in the global EV industry, and other countries \u2013 particularly the US \u2013 are just not doing enough<\/a> to keep up.<\/p>\n

\n

When America retreats, China wins.<\/p>\n

President Trump\u2019s illegal action withholding funds for electric vehicle infrastructure is yet another Trump gift to China \u2013 ceding American innovation and killing thousands of jobs.<\/p>\n

Instead of hawking Teslas on the White House lawn, President Trump could actually help Elon \u2013 and the nation \u2013 by following the law and releasing this bipartisan funding.<\/p>\n

-California Governor Gavin Newsom<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Another of President Biden\u2019s laws, the Inflation Reduction Act<\/a>, was an effort to increase investment in the EV industry in the US \u2013 and did so while also lowering the deficit<\/a>. It worked extremely well, leading to hundreds of billions in investment and hundreds of thousands of jobs<\/a> in American EV manufacturing. Certainly much more effective than the unwise tariffs that both President Biden<\/a> and Mr. Trump<\/a> have supported.<\/p>\n

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

Oddly, despite Mr. Trump\u2019s 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\u2019s most high-profile auto CEO, donated hundreds of millions of dollars to this anti-EV candidate<\/a>. He has used tortured logic<\/a> to claim that raising the price of his products by $7,500 relative to the competition won\u2019t hurt his business, but that\u2019s just wrong<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, his policy proposals so far \u2013 which Musk claims he \u201cloves<\/a>\u201d \u2013 have generally been directed towards harming<\/em> Tesla and other EVs. The money from the NEVI program could go a long way towards filling the gaps<\/a> in EV charger buildout around the country, making Teslas more usable for Americans who don\u2019t live in areas where chargers are easy to come by<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Pausing that funding not only puts charger plans into chaos (something Musk is no stranger to<\/a>), it also means that Tesla can\u2019t use money that it created an entire charging standard just to get a piece of.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit requests that a court stop Mr. Trump\u2019s illegal actions and permanently halt the FHWA from withholding these funds. <\/p>\n

\n

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<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo: Joint Office of Energy and Transportation 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 \u201canother trump gift to China.\u201d The federal NEVI (National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure) program was established by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8313,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-e-cars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=82287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82287\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}