President Donald Trump’s recent executive order targeting electric vehicle charging infrastructure funding could have significant implications for Elon Musk’s Tesla, which has benefited from these programs in the past.
TechCrunch reports that in direct move against the EV industry, President Donald Trump has signed an executive order declaring that “All agencies shall immediately pause the disbursement of funds” from programs created by the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The order specifically calls for a halt 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.
The EV industry claims that programs have been instrumental in supporting the expansion of EV charging infrastructure across the United States. Elon Musk’s Tesla, in particular, has been a significant beneficiary of these funding opportunities, using the grants to build out its market-leading Supercharger network.
In recent years, Tesla has secured substantial funding from both the NEVI and CFI programs. The company was part of a group that won a $100 million award from the CFI program to construct charging infrastructure for heavy-duty electric trucks in Illinois. Tesla was hoping to receive around $40 million from the group’s original funding request of $126 million. Additionally, the automaker has repeatedly sought approximately $100 million in CFI funding to establish a truck-charging corridor between Northern California and southern Texas, although this application has been passed over multiple times.
Tesla’s success in securing grants from the NEVI program has been even more notable. By mid-2024, the company had won around 13 percent of all NEVI awards, using these millions of dollars to further expand its Supercharger network, which is now accessible to nearly all competing EVs.
Breitbart News reported in 2024 that Joe Biden falsely claimed that his infrastructure bill had resulted in 500,000 charging stations being built. Although the program spent $7.5 billion, only eight charging stations were actually constructed.
Read more at TechCrunch here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
