The Trump-sized hole in California's EV charger strategy

Politico

28-02-2025

Presented by
With help from Blanca Begert, Camille von Kaenel, Marie J. French, Catherine Allen, Melanie Mason and Jordan Wolman
NEVI YOU MIND: California's electric vehicle charging network is largely insulated from the Trump administration's funding freeze, but it could bite the state where it needs the most help: rural areas.
California had only gotten a little over 8 percent of the $384 million it was promised under the Biden administration's $5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program when the Trump administration froze it Feb. 6.
How much does $352 million matter in a state that's already invested more than $2 billion in EV charger build-out and has another $1.4 billion in state funds on the way?
EV charging companies, state lawmakers and transportation experts say it all comes down to location.
While California has by far the biggest charging network of any state — there are around 65,000 public EV chargers, according to the latest state data, four times more than the next-most-blanketed state, New York, which has 16,000 chargers — those stations are largely in urban centers like Los Angeles and the Bay Area where EV adoption has been highest.
The NEVI program is designed to place charging stations no more than 50 miles away from each other along major highways. That means locations well outside city centers (think remote areas of the Central Valley or Northern California coast while you're on a road trip up Interstate 5).
Alan Jenn, an assistant professor at the University of California, Davis, who studies electric vehicles, said a NEVI funding clawback is likely to have little impact on areas with high EV adoption, where providers know there's going to be demand and will invest their own resources. But a loss of federal dollars will hurt efforts to increase charger accessibility in rural areas.
'These are less compelling for charging providers because they are built for access and not to make money,' Jenn said. 'Those are the ones that are going to suffer without the NEVI program.'
Johannes Copeland, chief operating officer at Skycharger, a charger supplier that's won NEVI grants in California and New Mexico, said the loss of NEVI funding and Biden-era tax credits that help cover costs of building and operating chargers could force some companies to reconsider investing in rural areas, where there are no guarantees they'll ever be profitable.
'The riskier sites may not get built,' Copeland said. 'That's absolutely a risk in losing the money associated with the program.'
And without those chargers, California faces an uphill battle to reach its ambitious goal of phasing out sales of new gas cars by 2035.
Auto market analysts point to a lack of reliable public charging infrastructure as a key variable in California's plateauing electric sales over the last year. (EVs accounted for 22 percent of the new California car market last year, according to registration data released earlier this month by the California New Car Dealers Association.)
Those sales numbers pose a problem for the state's EV sales mandate: Automakers say they can't hit the 35 percent sales mark for model year 2026, and are raising the specter that they might start sending less gas and hybrid models to California dealers, increasing demand and prices.
California Air Resources Board Chair Liane Randolph pushed back against that threat in a statement, calling industry arguments a 'misleading attempt to create an artificial crisis that undermines California's public health goals.' She said the Advanced Clean Cars II rule gives car manufacturers three years to make up EV sales deficits and that they can use credits earned through previous sales of ZEV models to stay in compliance.
But the pace of EV infrastructure construction will continue to be a challenging narrative for state officials, who estimate the state needs 1 million public chargers by 2030, nearly seven times more what's currently available.
Senate Transportation Chair Dave Cortese said NEVI in the short-term won't solve California's charging needs, especially for the 44 percent of residents who rent and largely don't have access to chargers at home.
He said his bigger concern is the potential loss of jobs — from engineers to construction workers — if federal funding dries up.
'Every dollar we lose on the federal side is a dollar that's not going to go to a good paying job here,' he said. — AN
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CROSS-COUNTRY CONSTERNATION: A bipartisan group of New York representatives is pushing the state to back away from an EV mandate modeled after California's rule, POLITICO's Marie J. French reports.
The lawmakers warned in a letter to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul that Advanced Clean Cars II, which the state adopted shortly after California finalized the emissions standard, will force car manufacturers to send fewer gas and hybrid models to stay in compliance. The rule requires that 35 percent of each company's total sales be electric and plug-in hybrid models, or purchase credits from other manufacturers to offset deficits.
'Many New Yorkers, especially those in rural and underserved areas, will be left without affordable options if the supply of internal combustion engine (ICE) and hybrid vehicles diminishes as the mandate progresses,' the letter reads.
That argument mirrors an ad campaign launched Monday by the California New Car Dealers Association, which calls for California to pause enforcement of the EV mandate to give 'infrastructure, consumer demand, and market readiness' time to develop.
EVs accounted for 22 percent of the new California car market last year, according to registration data released earlier this month by the car dealers, but the share is as low as 10 percent in New York and other states that follow the regulation, automakers pointed out last year.
Officials in both states are rebuffing calls for an enforcement pause, calling the claims about potential vehicle shortages 'misleading.' — AN, MJF
FAIR OR UNFAIR: Do you live in Truckee, Placerville, South Lake Tahoe, Big Bear Lake or Fallbrook? Your ZIP code saw the highest increase in FAIR Plan policies since 2020, according to a data analysis by POLITICO's Catherine Allen.
The insurer of last resort has been absorbing much of the state's highest-risk properties following the retreat by other insurers — long before the Los Angeles fires caused losses so great it said it would need to bill the entire market to pay out its claims. Check out more of Catherine's subscriber-only data analysis here. — CA, CvK
ANOTHER CARB DELAY: The California Air Resources Board is blaming environmental justice groups for its failure to embark on a rulemaking to both promote and regulate carbon capture technology that was supposed to be done by the start of this year.
'It makes no sense that advocates who dislike [carbon capture utilization and storage] and [carbon dioxide removal] were advocating for reduced resources or no resources two years ago to recently express concerns that we've made little progress on the rulemaking,' said industrial strategies division chief Matthew Botill at a workshop on SB 905, Sen. Anna Caballero's 2022 law to set up a carbon capture and removal program in the state.
Advocates say they oppose the deployment of carbon capture and direct air capture projects, but they're supportive of the rulemaking — provided CARB implements the parts they negotiated for as the law was being developed.
On Monday, they sent a letter to Assembly and Senate budget subcommittee chairs asking that no new carbon capture projects move forward in the state until CARB finishes the part of the rule that requires community protections from things like co-pollutants and pipeline ruptures.
'We are not opposed to CARB getting resources to implement SB 905, but we are opposed to giving CARB additional resources without clear legislative direction to fully implement the community protections,' reads the letter, signed by 24 groups, including the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment and the Central Valley Air Quality Coalition.
Botill said the rulemaking has lagged because of budget constraints on staffing, where CARB currently has just two limited-term people dedicated to the rule. In 2023 the agency got $3.6 million annually for three years and this year re-upped their request for an additional $2.2 million in 2025-26 and $4.3 million for the next four years.
Sen. Ben Allen, chair of the Senate Budget Subcommittee on Resources, Environmental Protection and Energy, said he would have questions. 'Their frustration is not unfounded,' Allen said of the EJ groups' letter. 'I would look forward to hearing from CARB about their plan to utilize the ongoing funding that has been previously provided to them for SB 905 implementation.' — BB
SPOTTED: Los Angeles Councilmember Traci Park on a flight from LA to Sacramento, part of her journey to Paradise, California. The councilmember, who represents the Palisades neighborhood that was ravaged by wildfire last month, was up for a fact-finding mission on fire recovery to Paradise, which endured its own destructive blaze in 2018. Park met with representatives from city government, business groups and philanthropy to discuss lessons learned about their rebuilding efforts. — MM
NEW SAPLING: Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced today that Tom Schultz will serve as Forest Service chief after Randy Moore steps down from the position Monday. Schultz, who has managed state forests and rangelands in Idaho and Montana, had been tapped by President Donald Trump to serve as chief of staff for natural resources and environment at USDA but will instead take the reins of the Forest Service, which manages 193 million acres of national forests and grasslands. — JW
— Read the texts between DOGE's man at Interior and a Bureau of Reclamation employee during a visit to California last month.
— The Karuk Tribe has entered into a first-of-its-kind agreement with state officials to practice more cultural burning.
— Rising electricity costs aren't just a problem for California politicians. They're also a problem for Trump.