“It’s been a really great office, and I certainly think it will continue. But we’ll see,” remarked Linda Bailey, program manager for technical assistance at the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, speaking of the work of the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program (NEVI), funded with $7.5 billion from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) to help build thousands of EV charging ports along major corridors. Bailey was speaking Thursday on a panel discussion hosted by Veloz, a Sacramento-based EV policy and advocacy group.
The IIJA is a signature piece of the President Joseph Biden administration’s domestic agenda. The $1.2 trillion legislation received bipartisan support in Congress, and is aimed at modernizing the nation’s long-neglected infrastructure. A companion piece of legislation known as the Inflation Reduction Act has been investing billions of dollars into initiatives to address climate change, and reorienting the nation’s economy toward the technologies of tomorrow. That legislation passed with virtually no Republican support, and the president-elect has signaled his distaste for key pieces of it, like extending tax credits toward the purchase of electric vehicles.
“I really can’t comment, unfortunately, on what the new administration will do,” Bailey said, when asked about the future of the tax credit. “I will say that continuity is really important for businesses in terms of tax planning. And the changes in the tax code could just change peoples’ plans, in general.”
Among consumers, she noted, “there’s a lot of momentum, overall” for EVs.
President-elect Donald Trump could not unilaterally remove the tax credit, since it is part of the Inflation Reduction Act, which would require congressional action to amend the law.
That glass half-full outlook may do little to calm fears among EV advocates. Trump has picked Chris Wright, an oil and gas executive to lead the U.S. Department of Energy, and has put forward Sean Duffy, a former Republican Congressman from Wisconsin, and a host of Fox Business, to lead the Department of Transportation.
“Changes in administrations may bring changes in priorities. This is a natural part of our democratic process. The Joint Office will continue to address priorities across the departments of Energy and Transportation,” Gabe Klein, executive director of the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, said during the panel. Klein devoted most of his comments to the office’s accomplishments during the last three years.
Much of the planning and design phase for the hundreds of high-speed charging stations developed as part of the NEVI program is done, and stations are now beginning to go online, serving drivers.
Some 39 charging sites are now active in 12 states, with another 10 under construction, said Steve Birkett, an electrification consultant at Plug and Play EV, which produces educational media for EV drivers.
“Construction is really starting to accelerate,” Birkett said during the panel. “There are [openings] so often, every day.”
The NEVI program operates as a formula program of the federal government, and sends funding directly to states. So far, all 50 states; Washington, D.C.; and Puerto Rico have submitted and received approval on two rounds of EV charging plans under NEVI, unlocking nearly $2.5 billion in formula funding to be used toward the construction of high-speed charging stations, Klein said. To date, 47 states have received approval on their third state plan, to tap an addition $726 million for Fiscal Year 2025 funding.
Because of the way the program is structured, it’s not easy to claw back money once it’s been apportioned, officials said.
“I don’t believe formula funding like this has been rescinded in the past,” Bailey said. “I’ll just say that. There’s no guarantee. Anything can change, of course.
“I don’t know that anyone will want to kind of take that back, out of the state’s hands, out of the private sector’s hands,” she added. “I would expect steady progress, barring something that has really never happened before, which is that apportionments that already went to states being changed.”
