Startup companies are immediately bearing the brunt of the Trump administration’s order to freeze billions of dollars in federal funds for electric vehicle charging.
Many companies were created in response to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which included $5 billion to build EV chargers along the interstate highway system. The money is federally funded, but planned for and administered by the states. Now that the Trump administration has rescinded the states’ charging plans, the small business owners and entrepreneurs that formed in response to the program are already feeling the pain.
“We have won all of these sites in all of these states, and not a single dollar has yet to be obligated to our company,” Josh Turner, who is the CEO of PowerUp America, one such company, told NOTUS on Friday evening. PowerUp America, which is based in Tennessee, was supposed to finally begin signing contracts for charging sites across the Southeastern US in the coming months.