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But work toward building the rest of what was to be a statewide network of up to 85 charging stations is now on hold until the Federal Highway Administration comes up with new guidelines for running the program, the ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Department of Transportation told the ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ on Friday.

Most immediately because of the federal order, ADOT has put on hold a recent request it had issued for private contractor proposals to design, build, operate and maintain another 35 stations along Interstates 10 and 40 and a dozen other U.S. and state highways.

The 18 stations where construction will start by the end of 2025 will be built along interstates only, including I-10. One will be in ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ and five others elsewhere in Southern ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥, including Green Valley, Nogales, Willcox, Yuma and San Simon.

For the long term, the Trump action calls into question the likelihood of ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ completing its planned network of 75 to 85 charging stations. The 2021 infrastructure law awarded ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ $76 million to build that network as part of a $7.5 billion appropriation to construct a nationwide network of thousands of stations.

The new federal hold on financing charging stations carries out a commitment by President Donald Trump, in his 2024 campaign, to do away with federal support of electric vehicles in general and charging stations in particular. He has said government help for the technology is unfair competition to the gasoline-powered-vehicle industry and wasteful spending. He particularly dislikes the existing $7,500-per-EV federal tax credit, one that would require congressional action to remove.

But the action disappoints many electric vehicle advocates and drivers. They see the charging stations as essential for building a nationwide system of chargers to satisfy long-distance drivers of the electric vehicles, which are much less polluting although generally much more expensive than gasoline-powered vehicles.

Reducing 'range anxiety'

In fiscal year 2023-24, more than 108,000 electric vehicles were registered with ADOT to be driven in ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥, or about 1.3% of the total number of registered vehicles. That's up from the 2021 total of about 40,000, or .5% of total registered vehicles, ADOT records show.

But despite that jump in electric vehicle uses,

Range anxiety — the idea that EVs cannot go far enough on a single charge and may leave a driver stranded — continues to be a major reason why many Americans do not purchase electric vehicles, said a national poll released last June by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago.

About half of U.S. adults cite worries about range as a major reason not to buy an EV, the poll found. About 4 in 10 say a major strike against EVs is that they take too long to charge or they don’t know of any public charging stations nearby.

The charging stations to be largely federally financed are designed to help reduce range anxiety, by powering up an EV in 20 to 30 minutes, ADOT has said.

As for the impact of the new hold on building the stations, “for those of us who largely use an EV around town it won’t make a huge bit of difference,â€� because owners can charge them at home or easily find charging stations in their cities, said ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ State University researcher Jameson Whitmore. His work specializes in the sociology and history of technology.

“But if there was any chance of having a long-term vision of taking electric vehicles from state to state, it could have a significant impact on that," he said.

The charging station program was put into the 2021 federal infrastructure law to make it easier to do vacations and out-of-town work trips in an electric vehicle, said Wetmore, an associate professor at ASU's School for the Future of Innovation in Society.

He likened the charging station program to the Depression-era Rural Electrification Administration that brought electricity to farms around the country by making low-cost loans available to extend power lines into remote areas.

The charging station program was created to try to extend the benefits of electric vehicles more equitably across the country, Wetmore wrote in a blog post. "The goals were to give people living in rural areas better access to charging stations and to allow everyone who owned an EV more access to more places."

Legal action already begun 

Now, the administration's halt to spending for the stations is drawing one lawsuit, filed Friday by 22 state attorneys general including ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥'s Kris Mayes.

That motion seeks to halt a freeze the administration previously imposed on any spending under the Infrastructure Act and the related 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The lawsuit also targets much broader Trump administration efforts — so far temporarily halted by other litigation — to freeze trillions of dollars in general federal grants for a wide range of purposes.

"This funding is owed by law to the people of ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥. Trump can try every trick he has up his sleeve to evade the constitution but I will be there to stop him," Mayes said Friday in a news release. "ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ns who are impacted by the Trump administration not complying with this court order, should report any difficulty accessing funds they are owed to my office."

Trump has made it clear he doesn't agree he's legally bound to spend all money Congress appropriated. A 1974 law forbids him from withholding such appropriations, but the administration has intimated although not formally said it will challenge the law.

In any case, the federal freeze on spending for EV charging stations comes as no real surprise.

The hold was announced Thursday in a highway administration memo to all state transportation directors.

It came barely two weeks after the White House, on Inauguration Day Jan. 20, handed down an executive order that singled out charging stations in saying it would "pause" spending on all programs and projects financed by the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

The charging station program was the only program specified by that order, in a section titled, "Terminating the Green New Deal."

The memo said the administration shall review "processes, policies and programs for issuing grants, loans, contracts or any other financial disbursements of such appropriated funds" to see if they are consistent with the law and other parts of the Jan. 20 order.

It is U.S. government policy to consider eliminating "unfair subsidies and other ill-conceived government-imposed market distortions that favor EVs over other technologies and effectively mandate their purchase … by rendering other types of vehicles unaffordable," the order said.

'Would be a shame to go back'

Duane Ediger, who lives in Barrio Hollywood on ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥'s west side, told the Star Friday that he and his wife invested in a new electric vehicle in 2022, based on their sense that Congress' 2021 decision to finance a national charging station network would be honored.

Also, "we love clean air and tamping down the exponential rise in heat deaths in ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥," he said, referring to the role of fossil fuels in climate change. 

After driving it more than 50,000 miles, the vehicle's only major repairs needed were a new set of tires and a windshield wiper fluid pump, he said. But because of the slow buildout of the charging stations nationally, "we mostly drive on interstates, where they are more common. If you are going to go more than half your range from the interstate you’ve really got to plan carefully.

"Seeing the great outdoors and visiting friends in rural areas would be great, and it would be a shame to go back on a congressional decision just to put an exclamation point on a worn-out ideological position," Ediger said.

Peter Culin, co-founder and vice president of Drive Electric ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥, said he's disappointed in the administration's freeze on EV station spending. The group's 15 member board and 200 volunteers have a "sole purpose" of advancing electric vehicles through public education and advocacy, he said.

"I think there are huge legal questions as to whether or not the administration will even do it," he said.

But while he expects the spending freeze will have some ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ impact, he said it's not going to be as severe as some might think.

A lot of private businesses already are building and installing charging infrastructure, he said. Any "clawback" of federal funding might hamper that kind of installation for public networks, but it’s not going to stop private companies from doing it on their own, Culin said.

"Tesla and Electrify America are building out and expanding their networks," he said. "Regardless of (federal) funding, that will continue to go forward."

Federal guidelines rescinded

The program whose spending was halted by the administration is called the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program. It was to distribute $5 billion to the states for stations built along interstates and other major highways. A second charging station program targeting communities and not major highways was created at the same time and awarded $2.5 billion

Under the 2021 infrastructure law, money is supposed to be awarded and distributed to each state for the program annually through 2026 under a formula set by that law.

States get 80% of the funds needed to build charging stations. Private contractors who build the stations put up the rest. The stations are to be privately owned and operated.

ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥, like all other states, has had to annually win federal approval of a plan for how it will spend that money, every year since the law was enacted through 2025.

But it can't get the money until it meets a series of benchmarks for each project, such as obtaining permits and starting and completing station construction.

Until now, the consensus among many experts and environmentalists was that because of the way the law and program were structured, even if an administration hostile to EVs took office.

The charging station program just halted by the administration was approved by legislation that had some Republican support, the D.C.-based website Inside EVs noted after Trump's Jan. 20 order.

"And since they were established by Congress, they can’t just be torn up or permanently paused by a new presidential administration that doesn’t feel like they jibe with its 'drill, baby, drill' mentality," Inside EVs said.

“An executive order can't expand the President's power, or overrule a duly passed law,� Martin Lockman, a climate law fellow at Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, told InsideEVs. “Projects that already have agreements in place have legally defensible rights, and those rights don't disappear.�

But the memo released Thursday by the highway administration that froze the charging station program took a different tack from trying to kill the program outright.

It said, "The new leadership of the Department of Transportation has decided to review the policies underlying the implementation" of the charging station program. The federal guidelines and policies previously established for the program are rescinded, and the highway agency is updating them."

The agency expects to release revised guidelines and policies for public comment in the spring, and to set new policies after reviewing public comment, said the memo from Emily Biondi, associate administrator of the highway administration's Office of Planning, Environment and Realty.

For now, the administration is immediately suspending its past approvals of all state plans for building stations, including ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥'s. States can't commit to spend any more money on them until federal guidance and policies are revised, Biondi said.

Existing obligations will be met

But states will still be reimbursed for "existing obligations" to spend money "in order to not disrupt current financial commitments," Biondi said.

That's how ADOT is able to still build the 18 stations it had previously won federal approval to spend $12 million on, said agency spokesman Steve Elliott. These projects are generally expected to take about a year to build, he said.

But as for the remaining stations, "We're not doing anything till we get the updated federal guidance," he said.

ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥, like most other states, has moved more slowly than some observers had expected in getting these stations built and online — a fact that Trump himself derided during the 2024 presidential campaign.

Nationally, 56 stations have been built so far, and contracts to build 940 more have been awarded, said Atlas Public Policy, a D.C.-based policy and data research firm.

Asked why it takes so long to get stations built, ADOT's Elliott pointed out that states weren't allocated the first round of money from the program until October 2022, and that final rules for running it took effect only in March 2023.

Then, the state had to issue requests for proposals, after holding a public hearing first to meet state requirements, and review 49 proposals before "conditionally" awarding the 18 that will be built.

Finally, it takes several months more to get through environmental reviews and develop final contract agreements with the companies that will build and run the stations, he said.

Will the program survive Trump? 

It would be quite unprecedented for a federal surface transportation program like the charging station program to be delayed considerably, Nick Nigro, Atlas' founder, told the Star the day before the highway administration put a freeze on its spending.

It's also not going to be easy for the Trump administration to permanently halt the program, he said. "That would be very unprecedented for the federal government, to try to sunset a program of this type, early. I can’t expect that to happen. It would take an act of Congress."

ASU's Wetmore, however, said he suspects most states will simply abandon their charging station plans at this point. While they theoretically could pick up the feds' 80% share of the construction tab, "finding ways to quintuple their budgets is likely to prove impossible," he said.

And given the administration's views on EVs, "It’s unclear to me what would cause the federal government to legally restart that money," he said.