Electric Vehicle Charging Is Going to Get Political

It’s an exciting and delicate time to be an electric vehicle charging company.

Three years ago, the US government opened the funding spigot as Congress, with support from the Biden administration, directed $7.5 billion in funding to build tens of thousands of public charging stations. Those stations would ease the transition from gas-powered cars to electric ones, policymakers argued, allowing the government to reach its goal of making at least 40 percent of car sales zero-emission by 2030.

Now the administration is changing over, and members of the Donald Trump transition team are broadcasting a more skeptical stance towards EV charging. Last week, Reuters reported that members of the upcoming administration intend to redirect EV charging funds to other purposes, including onshoring battery-mineral processing, on the grounds that charging isn’t a “national defense” priority.

The electric vehicle ride-hail and charging company Revel is reacting to this uncertain climate with strategy: It’s going where it’s wanted. This week, the firm—which already operates four large charging stations in the New York City area and one in Los Angeles—announced details of its next raft of charging stations in the San Francisco Bay Area. The company has signed eight leases in San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland, with all hoping to open in 2025.

Revel’s strategy of sticking to blue cities points to a concern among electric vehicle and climate advocates as the administration transition draws closer: that electric vehicle charging stations—and electric vehicles themselves—will be further sucked into the political maelstrom.

Has the red-state/blue-state divide come for the charging station?

EV Charging Gone CityRevel’s strategy isn’t attuned to the particulars of national politics, says CEO and cofounder Frank Reig. The company does double down on dense cities, where grid capacity is constrained and where Revel might be able to carve out an early advantage in charging stations.

But it’s also going to places where lawmakers have created regulations designed to get more electric vehicles on the road. New York City aims to electrify its entire taxi and ride-hail fleet by 2030, and has incentivized drivers to make the switch to EVs. Since 2021, California has required ride-hail companies including Uber and Lyft to phase in electrics. By law, 90 percent of miles logged in 2030 in the state will have to be electric.

Because these places are pushing harder on zero-emission vehicles, charging companies like Revel are willing to build more chargers there. “The vast majority of incentives, grants, and subsidies for a business like us is really not at the federal level. Oftentimes, it’s not even at the state level,” says Reig. Instead, in New York, 50 percent of the capture expenditures related to every installed charger comes from the local utility, ConEdison, according to Reig.

The question is whether every local authority is willing to chip in where federal funding might fall short. “The next 10 years [in EV charging] is all about the urban environment, cities, middle- and lower-income folks,” says Reig. In a world where electric vehicles become a political lightning rod, those places might see the most charger action.

EV Charging as BipartisanPlenty of people would prefer it if EVs—and their chargers—could avoid the culture wars altogether. Joe Sacks is the executive director of the bipartisan EV Politics Project, an advocacy group, and says that getting more public chargers in the ground is critical to getting more electrics on the road. The group’s surveys suggest that customer fears about EV’s ranges and an unreliable charging network are preventing some of them from buying electric.

Charging companies are still in their early days, and some struggle to operate as profit-making businesses. Charger-funding roadblocks, then, might be a near-existential concern for the industry. “There’s this scary trend where electric vehicle funding is seen as low-hanging fruit by some in the incoming administration,” says Sacks. Some political operators “use EV bashing as a tool to enact policy of whatever kind of flavor is interesting to them. That is frustrating to us.”

For those depending on federal charging money, even during a less-than-enthusiastic Trump administration, there is some good news: It will be very hard for the feds to claw back all of that federal charger funding. The government has already allocated at least $3.5 billion in charger money to the states. Forty-two states have started taking bids on charger contracts, and 12 have at least one station up and running. Those states span the political gamut: Texas, Utah, Kentucky, and Ohio all voted for Republicans this October, and are ahead in charger build-outs. So are Democratic states including New York, California, Rhode Island, and Maine.

“There is broad support for electrification amongst a whole bunch of critical stakeholders,” says Jason Mathers, the associate vice president of the zero-emission truck initiative at the Environmental Defense Fund. Manufacturers, labor unions, community organizations, politicians who want more EV-related jobs in their districts, and large companies already experimenting with EVs, including Walmart and Amazon, all have reasons to want chargers in the ground. Advocates like Mathers don’t believe those constituencies will go away just because of an administration change—meaning the pressure to build out the charging network will stay on.

Sacks, the EV Politics Project director, says plenty of EV charging-related messages should appeal to politicians of all stripes. “We want the Trump administration to see that the EV transition is not just critical for the jobs that are here, but also to maintain our competitiveness versus China.”

Sacks finds it heartening, for example, that the Trump administration seems to want investment in domestic battery mineral industries. (Today, the majority of battery material mining and processing occurs overseas, and particularly in China.) To create demand for that sort of industry, more Americans will need to buy into electric vehicles—and they might not do that without plenty of EV chargers around. Making sure that all Americans get access to those new chargers, not just those living in specific “EV-friendly” states, might come down to getting that message across.