Washington, other states sue to regain electric-vehicle funding as sales sag

As electric vehicle sales slump, Washington and 15 other states have sued the Trump administration for blocking funding for vehicle charging stations.

President Trump froze federal funding for electric charging stations on his first day in office in an executive order titled “Unleashing American Energy.” It attacked “burdensome and ideologically motivated regulations,” including various programs under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021.

“The president’s illegal claw-backs aren’t spending reductions — they’re cash grabs that rob taxpayers, steamroll Congress, and stifle critical economic development,” Washington Attorney General Nick Brown said in a press release announcing the multistate lawsuit.

The 2021 infrastructure law appropriated $5 billion for the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program (NEVI) to fund states’ deployment of electric vehicle charging infrastructure.

Washington state stands to lose $71 million of that funding, which was put in legal—or illegal—limbo three months ago.

“The President directed agencies to withhold congressionally appropriated funds, including NEVI Formula Program funds, as a tool to terminate programs the President dislikes,” the lawsuit argues. “But agencies have no authority to rescind or revise statutes, or to withhold funds duly appropriated by Congress based on the President’s disagreement with the policies and priorities of Congress.”

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U.S. Department of Transportation officials did not respond to interview requests.

Transportation is the largest source of planet-heating carbon pollution in Washington and the United States. Reducing the number of cars and trucks that burn petroleum fuel is the centerpiece of the state’s efforts to slash climate-harming pollution.

The Trump Administration has aggressively blocked or undone a wide range of programs and funding to slow, study, and adapt to climate change.

Trump has, falsely, called climate change a hoax, while Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin said in March that climate change was a “religion” that the administration was “driving a dagger straight into the heart of.”

“Holding the federal government to their previous commitments is important,” said Jay Donnaway with the Seattle Electric Vehicle Association. “We can't just drop programs that were already well underway and funds that were committed.”

The federal funding was slated to build electric chargers on I-90, Highway 2, and other corridors in the state where chargers are few and far between.

While states including Colorado and Ohio have already tapped into the NEVI funding and even built charging stations with it, Washington state may have missed the boat on federal funding for electric vehicles.

“Washington state didn't move quickly enough to get the cash from the federal government,” said Scott Case with the Seattle electric-vehicle data firm Recurrent. “There are no NEVI chargers planned for Washington State.”

“It's just the ‘Seattle process’ made planning in Washington stretch out for years, and we hadn't gotten to the point of building stuff yet.”

According to the EV States Clearinghouse, Washington state has been awarded NEVI funding, but no projects have been built or advanced to the stage of selecting a contractor.

Washington State Department of Transportation spokesperson Stefanie Randolph declined to be interviewed. In an email, Randolph said WSDOT had received $102 million in different federal grants for electric vehicle and charging infrastructure, with the bulk of that funding now suspended.

“Because of the funding pause, all Washington state NEVI activities are paused until the federal program is reorganized,” she said via email. “It is unclear if states will receive the same funding after the reorganization or if they’ll have to reapply.”

The federal government is not the only, or even the biggest, game in town when it comes to electrifying transportation.

“By the numbers, the federally funded chargers are kind of a drop in the bucket,” Case said.

Case said that private businesses built the vast majority of new public chargers in the United States in 2024, with federally funded efforts installing just 250 of the year’s 12,000 new charging ports.

“The point of the NEVI program was to basically help underserved areas, less dense areas,” Case said.

Without federal support, private companies are unlikely to build chargers in areas with lower densities of electric-vehicle drivers.

“EV charging in rural areas is like this classic chicken-and-egg situation, and it feels like the government is about to stop laying eggs out there,” Case said.

Angela Song with Seattle City Light said the utility is committed to electrification with or without federal help. Song said the city’s recently passed transportation levy and state policies including a cap on carbon pollution and a clean fuel standard are helping to pay for more charging infrastructure.

“Because City Light is not just a power provider, it's a transportation fuel provider, we're able to receive these credits based on the amount of kilowatts that we dispense to vehicles,” Song said.

Political turmoil as the Trump administration attempts to dismantle many programs and functions of the federal government may have already affected the electric-vehicle market.

In March, electric vehicles’ market share in Washington state fell to 17% of new passenger-vehicle sales, according to vehicle title transaction data from the Washington Department of Licensing.

RELATED: Electric vehicle market stalls in Washington state as Tesla sales plunge

Electric vehicles’ share of new-vehicle sales in the state peaked at 28% in September and has been stagnant or falling since then.

Washington state law mandates that 22% of new car sales in 2025 be electric or other zero-emission vehicles. The requirement goes up to 35% for model year 2026 and ratchets up to 100% by 2035. Auto manufacturers that don’t sell enough clean vehicles can buy credits from other manufacturers, or prior years’ clean-vehicle sales, to meet their quotas.

As protests against the Trump administration and its billionaire advisor, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, mounted, sales of Tesla electric cars and trucks plummeted.

In Washington state, Tesla sales fell 54% from January to March, according to Department of Licensing data. Cratering demand for Teslas was responsible for more than 60% of the drop in sales of new electric vehicles since January.

Correction, 05/12/2025, 3:30 p.m.: An earlier version of this story misspelled Jay Donnaway's name.