Donald Trump's Math On EV Chargers Is Way Off (2024)

Former President Donald Trump says a lot of things that aren’t true. One recent “alternative fact” related to electric vehicles was so off that we felt the need to correct the record. No, this isn’t about politics or the upcoming election; it’s just what we do. When people spew nonsense about EVs—or in this case, EV charging—InsideEVs claps back and brings receipts.

In at least three recent speeches—including his address at the Republican National Convention and at rallies in North Carolina and Atlanta—Trump said that President Joe Biden’s administration has spent $9 billion on "eight chargers."

It’s an eye-popping figure, for sure. And it’s also completely false. Even if you take that to mean eight charging stations rather than eight individual chargers, that’s a gross exaggeration.

The math sure sounds absurd—about a billion dollars for one charger—but what normal person actually knows how much a charging station should cost? Why should they? In an election cycle that’s seen EVs get more politicized than ever, you, the people, deserve to know the facts.

So let’s dive into what’s wrong here—and the tiny kernel of truth at the center of Trump’s outrageous claim.

A GM Energy charging station.

How Many Federally Funded EV Chargers Have Been Built?

What Trump is referring to, it would seem, is the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, which was established by the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The program set aside $5 billion in federal funds to blanket the country—particularly its major highways—with thousands of new DC fast-charging stations.

NEVI and the related $2.5 billion Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Grant program are important because a lack of dependable charging stations is one of the biggest concerns among would-be EV buyers.

It’ll come in handy to understand the very basics of how the NEVI program works. States apply for federal funding, then put out requests for proposals for the projects they want done. Charging companies like Tesla and BP bid on the projects and handle construction and operation.

NEVI runs through 2026, with a chunk of the total funds going out to states each year until then. So far, all 50 states plus Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico have received a total of roughly $2.4 billion, according to the U.S. Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, which supports NEVI and other clean transportation initiatives.

It’s true that almost three years after NEVI was passed, only a handful of locations have come online.But it isn’t “eight chargers.” So far, 15 NEVI-funded charging stations have opened for business, providing 61 individual EV chargers to drivers across eight states, a spokesperson for the Joint Office said. The first station opened in Ohio in December, followed by sites in New York, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Utah, Hawaii, Maine and Vermont.

That may sound slow, but Gabe Klein, the office’s executive director, told InsideEVs that the rollout is proceeding at about the rate he had expected.

“We live in this 24-hour news cycle with social media and we just think, ‘Hey, you pass a bill and then next year there are chargers.’ And that’s just not how it works if you’re talking about building out major infrastructure,” he said. “It’s actually going really well, and we’re about where we thought we’d be.”

Erecting high-powered charging stations doesn’t happen overnight, and it's more complicated than installing a slower plug in a garage or parking lot. It takes 18-24 months just to bring power to a DC fast charger from the point the utility is notified, Klein said. Plus, it takes time for states to design projects, solicit bids and get things moving, particularly when they’ve never had to build EV chargers before, he said. Those processes are getting more efficient as time goes on, Klein said.

“If you’re used to building bridges and highways, and now you’re responsible for building out a charging network, there’s a learning curve,” he said.

A Tesla Supercharging station.

Klein said that NEVI charger deployments should take off in the coming months and years. He expects the number of plugs in the ground to climb to hundreds by the end of this year and thousands in 2025. Installations should peak around 2027 or 2028, he said.

Did 8 Chargers Really Cost $9 Billion?

So “eight chargers” is bunk no matter how you slice it. But how much do these stations cost? Hint: It’s not $9 billion for eight chargers.

The first phase of the NEVI program intends to fill major gaps in the nation’s EV infrastructure by placing stations at 50-mile increments along key corridors. According to the Joint Office’s analysis, that will require 1,537 locations with 9,222 total plugs, assuming six plugs per station. The total cost for that, the office says, will be roughly $1.1 billion.

Factoring in equipment, installation, five years of maintenance and station-related costs, the Joint Office estimates the cost of each NEVI-funded port to be $149,667. The government covers 80% of that, so its share comes out to $119,733. Even if that’s on the low end, you’re looking at a government spend in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for each station—not hundreds of millions or billions.

While we’re at it, it couldn’t hurt to quickly address some other parts of Trump’s recent Atlanta speech that dealt with EV charging. “There’s no way you can ever load them up,” he said, referring to charging EVs. “They call it 'loading' them. You can’t load ‘em. We’re going to have to spend $9 trillion.”

First off, as one of “them,” I can safely say nobody calls charging “loading.”

Second, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates that the U.S. will need somewhere between $53 billion and $127 billion in public and private EV charging investments by 2030 to support the growing fleet of electric cars. That’s a lot, but it’s also not $9 trillion. Or $5 trillion, or $12 trillion, which are other numbers Trump has thrown around in this context.

Trump also explained to the Atlanta crowd that “a charger is a gas pump with electricity coming through it.” Actually, that’s not a bad way of describing it. I'll give him that one.

Contact the author: tim.levin@insideevs.com