NEVI Tracker 2026: Where the $5B Federal EV Charging Program Actually Stands, State by State

As of mid-August 2026, the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program is legally protected but financially shrinking on three separate fronts at once. A federal court permanently barred the administration from withholding the funds in January 2026 [2][6], and ten days later Congress clawed back roughly $879 million of unobligated money in a February 2026 appropriations act [7][10] — leaving about $4.12 billion of the original $5 billion, by our calculation. That is only the enacted damage. The Administration's FY2027 budget request, released April 3, 2026, separately proposes cancelling all $4.2 billion in remaining unobligated NEVI and CFI funds outright [42], and the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee's surface-transportation reauthorization bill, advanced 62–2 in May 2026, would not reauthorize NEVI as a standalone program at all once its statutory window closes on September 30, 2026 [39][40][41]. None of that has stopped stations from opening: Pennsylvania alone now reports 37 operational NEVI stations and $62 million invested [22], while roughly 121 stations with 370-plus fast chargers were open nationally as of the last comprehensive census (September 2025) [1], with openings accelerating through 2026 in several states even as Washington argues about what's left.

This tracker consolidates the legal record, the money trail, the station counts, and the reauthorization fight into one reference page, with every figure dated to its own source. Numbers without a clear 2026 confirmation are flagged [ESTIMATE].

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The headline numbers (as of mid-August 2026)

The 9 figures below span the program's full arithmetic, from statutory authorization down to dollars actually spent.

Metric	Figure	Data vintage
Total NEVI authorization (FY2022–2026)	$5.0 billion	Statutory (IIJA, 2021) [11]
Clawed back by Congress (P.L. 119-75)	~$878.8 million ($503.8M formula + $300M discretionary set-aside + $75M Joint Office)	Feb 3, 2026 [7][8][9][10]
Effective program size after rescission	~$4.12 billion [our calculation]	Feb 2026
Apportioned to states through FY2026	~$4.2 billion ($3.3B FY22–25 + $885M FY26), pre-rescission	Oct 2025 [11][20]
Obligated by states	~$1.4 billion	Sept 2025 (Atlas Public Policy via Eno Center/E&E News) [1][21]
Actually spent (outlays)	$94 million (2%)	Sept 2025 [1][21]
NEVI stations open (national census)	~121 locations / 370+ fast chargers	Sept 2025 [1]
Stations obligated/in pipeline	~990 stations / ~4,000 fast chargers planned through 2028	Sept 2025 [1][12]
Total US public DC fast-charging ports	77,776 ports at 14,514 locations	Jun 30, 2026 [32]
Proposed further cancellation (FY2027 budget request)	$4.2 billion ($2.7B NEVI + $1.6B CFI), not enacted	Apr 3, 2026 [42]

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Timeline: NEVI from enactment to mid-2026

The program's history breaks into 5 distinct phases: buildout, freeze, litigation, restoration, and — now — a fight over what comes next.

Date	Event
Nov 15, 2021	Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) signed; creates NEVI with $5B over FY2022–2026 for DC fast charging along designated Alternative Fuel Corridors [11].
Sept 2022	FHWA approves all 50 states' (plus DC and Puerto Rico) initial EV Infrastructure Deployment Plans [11].
Dec 8, 2023	First NEVI-funded station opens in Ohio (Pilot Travel Center, London, OH) [19].
Nov 2024	32 NEVI sites / 135 ports open across 10 states; Ohio leads with 15 sites [35].
Q4 2024	Rhode Island becomes the first state certified "fully built out" on its corridors; Ohio 15 stations, Pennsylvania 3, Hawaii 2 [18].
Feb 6, 2025	FHWA rescinds NEVI guidance, suspends approval of state plans, and freezes new obligations; roughly $1.5 billion available for state obligation drops to zero nationally [1]. States had obligated about $527 million by this point [12].
May 7, 2025	17 states, led by Washington, Colorado and California, sue in State of Washington v. USDOT (W.D. Wash.), alleging the freeze violates the Administrative Procedure Act and the Impoundment Control Act [5].
June 24, 2025	Judge Tana Lin issues a preliminary injunction ordering release of over $1 billion in frozen NEVI funds to 14 of the plaintiff states [4].
Aug 1, 2025	Plaintiffs file an amended complaint adding Kentucky, Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina as states [5].
Aug 13, 2025	FHWA issues Interim Final NEVI Guidance: looser siting rules (the 50-mile spacing rule dropped), streamlined build-out certification, eligibility for medium/heavy-duty charging; new state plans due mid-September 2025 [25].
Oct 2025	FHWA releases FY2026 apportionment: $885 million to states [11][20].
Dec 2025 – Jan 2026	Openings resume broadly; nine-plus states run new funding rounds; a dozen more states plus DC tee up Q1 2026 solicitations [20][25].
Jan 23–24, 2026	Judge Lin grants summary judgment and enters a permanent injunction: the February 2025 freeze was "arbitrary and capricious" under the APA; DOT/FHWA are barred from withholding plaintiff states' NEVI funds for any reason not authorized by Congress in the IIJA [2][6].
Feb 3, 2026	Congress passes the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026 (P.L. 119-75), rescinding or transferring ~$879M in unobligated NEVI-related funds into INFRA, Tribal Transportation, and Reconnecting Communities programs [7][9][10].
Feb–Apr 2026	State-level impacts land: Nevada loses about a third of its $38M award [13]; Pennsylvania unlocks $100M for its Community Charging phase [8]; Ohio awards $51M for 64 new sites [24]; Texas certifies Phase I fully built out and authorizes a $250M Phase II [23].
Apr 3, 2026	Administration's FY2027 budget request proposes cancelling the remaining $4.2B in unobligated NEVI and CFI funds — a proposal, not an enacted cut [42].
May 21–22, 2026	House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee advances the BUILD America 250 Act 62–2; the bill would not reauthorize NEVI as a standalone program after FY2026 [39][40][41].
Jun–Aug 2026	Openings continue: Pennsylvania passes 37 stations [22]; national DC fast-charging ports cross 77,776 [32]; the BUILD America 250 Act awaits a full House floor vote with no Senate companion text yet released [39].

The key legal nuance: the January 2026 injunction constrains the executive branch from withholding appropriated funds, but it could not stop Congress from lawfully rescinding unobligated balances a week later, or from declining to reauthorize the program at all. Three different branches, three different levers — and each one is still live.

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The legal record: from freeze to permanent injunction

A federal court's permanent injunction in January 2026 capped a roughly eight-month legal fight over more than $1 billion in frozen NEVI funds. The case, State of Washington v. U.S. Department of Transportation (W.D. Wash., No. 2:25-cv-00848), was filed May 7, 2025 by 17 states led by Washington, Colorado and California, arguing that FHWA's abrupt February 2025 freeze — which suspended approval of every state's deployment plan and prohibited new obligations — violated the Administrative Procedure Act [5]. An amended complaint filed August 1, 2025 added Kentucky, Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina as plaintiffs, broadening the coalition further [5]. A May 2025 GAO finding that FHWA had violated the Impoundment Control Act by withholding congressionally appropriated funds strengthened the states' position going into the litigation [17].

Judge Tana Lin issued a preliminary injunction on June 24, 2025, ordering release of more than $1 billion in frozen funds to the plaintiff states [4]. That was always going to be provisional relief; the final ruling came on January 23–24, 2026, when Judge Lin granted summary judgment for the states and entered a permanent injunction, holding that the freeze was "arbitrary and capricious" and exceeded DOT's statutory authority under the IIJA [2][6]. The order restored approved pre-February-2025 state plans and permanently bars USDOT from withdrawing states' NEVI funds, cancelling implementation plans, or otherwise interfering with the program for any reason Congress did not authorize [2][3]. No appeal of that ruling has been reported as of this update — the government appears to have accepted the judgment rather than pursue it further at the Ninth Circuit, at least so far.

The ruling's practical effect was immediate: states that had been sitting on approved-but-frozen plans for nearly a year could resume obligating and awarding funds within days, and the pace of new state solicitations picked up sharply through the first half of 2026 [20][25]. What the ruling could not do — because it wasn't the question in front of the court — was stop Congress from separately deciding, ten days later, to take some of that restored money back.

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The rescission: how Congress clawed back $879 million, state by state

Congress rescinded roughly $879 million in unobligated NEVI-related funds in February 2026 — a loss equal to about 12% of the program's remaining formula pool nationally, but as much as a third of a given state's original award where that state had been slow to obligate. The mechanism, enacted as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026 (P.L. 119-75), had three components: $503.8 million in formula funds, transferred proportionally from each state's unobligated FY2022 balance as of January 31, 2026; $300 million from NEVI's 10% discretionary set-aside; and $75 million earmarked for the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation [7][9][10]. FHWA implemented the formula transfer through Notice N 4510.913, and the Congressional Research Service's R48996 documents the statutory repurposing of the funds into the INFRA, Tribal Transportation, and Reconnecting Communities programs [8][9].

The proportional-to-unobligated-balance design meant the rescission fell hardest on states that had been slowest to commit their money — a structural penalty for delay, whatever the cause, whether the year-long freeze, thin staffing, or state-level political resistance. Nevada is the clearest documented example: the state had been awarded $38 million under NEVI, and the February 2026 measure clawed back about $12.6 million of it — roughly a third of its original allocation — redirecting the money to other federally funded highway programs [13].

By contrast, states that had already obligated essentially all of their formula funds before the rescission point — reported as Colorado, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Vermont in the January 2026 litigation record — were largely insulated, since there was little or no unobligated balance left to take [1].

Inside Climate News's contemporaneous reporting on the House vote that produced the cut framed it starkly: a program that had already been frozen for a year, then partially restored by court order, was immediately trimmed by Congress before most of the restored money had a chance to reach the ground [14]. Atlas Public Policy's own fact sheet on the episode — titled, pointedly, "Out of Juice?" — reached a similar conclusion: NEVI's practical challenge by mid-2026 was no longer primarily legal, since the courts had settled that question, but budgetary and legislative, since the money keeps shrinking through channels the courts can't touch [15][16].

The zero column. As of mid-2025, 12 states had issued no NEVI awards at all, and 10 had never even released a request for proposals [17]. Because the rescission drew proportionally from unobligated balances, these were exactly the states most exposed to the February 2026 cut — the states that had made the least progress lost the largest share of what remained.

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State by state: who's building, who's stalled

Pennsylvania leads the nation with 37 operational NEVI stations as of June 2026, while several states — Texas among them, despite holding the largest single formula allocation — are still working through a comparatively small number of confirmed openings. Exact per-state open-station counts are not centrally published in real time, so the table below combines the most recent verifiable figures with formula funding totals; those totals are approximate FY2022–2026 apportionments before the February 2026 proportional rescission, which reduced most states' unobligated balances further.

State	NEVI stations open	Data vintage	~FY22–26 formula funds	Notes
Pennsylvania	37	Jun 2026 (PennDOT)	~$172M	National leader; $62M federal funds invested; $100M Community Charging round launched Feb 2026; eastern/central rounds Aug–Sept 2026 [22].
Ohio	19 open; 64 more sites awarded ($51M)	Apr 2026 (Axios/ODOT)	~$140M	Opened the first NEVI station in the US (Dec 2023); new sites targeted for completion by end of 2027 [18][19][24].
Texas	13 open, 5 more scheduled early 2026; Phase II authorized (~$250M / 147 stations)	Jan 2026 (TxDOT)	~$408M (largest allocation)	Phase I certified "fully built out" Jan 2026; Phase II construction proceeds through 2026 into rural gaps and MPO areas [23].
Colorado	Fully obligated, multiple sites open	Sept 2025	~$57M	One of only four states that had fully obligated funds before the rescission [1].
North Carolina	Fully obligated; construction underway	Q1 2026	~$109M	Insulated from most of the February 2026 rescission [1].
Vermont	Fully obligated	Sept 2025	~$21M	Same insulated group [1].
Rhode Island	~3	Q4 2024	~$23M	First state certified "fully built out" on its corridors [18].
Hawaii	2	Q4 2024	~$18M	[18].
Nevada	Awards made; construction phase	Feb 2026	~$38M pre-rescission	Lost ~$12.6M (about a third of its award) to the February 2026 proportional rescission — one of the most exposed states [13].
Utah	Open, multiple sites	2025	~$36M	Early mover on I-15/I-70 corridors [1].
Kentucky	Open	2025	~$70M	Joined the litigation as a plaintiff in August 2025 [5].
Oregon	First stations opened	Early 2026	~$52M	Post-freeze restart, per the August 2025 guidance changes [25].
California	0 confirmed open at start of 2026; construction proceeding	Q1 2026	~$384M (2nd largest)	Awards made across multiple solicitation rounds; moving from awards into commissioning through 2026 [1].
Massachusetts	0 confirmed open; in construction	Q1 2026	~$63M [ESTIMATE]	Moving from awards to commissioning [1].
Illinois, Washington, Arizona, New Mexico	Awards made; active 2026 solicitation rounds	Jan 2026	$47M–$149M	Active pipeline of new rounds through 2026 [20].
Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, West Virginia, Wyoming	Little/no confirmed deployment	Jan 2026	varies	First/next solicitations not expected until Q2–Q3 2026 [20].

The comparison worth sitting with is Texas versus Pennsylvania. Texas holds the nation's largest single NEVI formula allocation, at roughly $408 million, yet it took until January 2026 — more than four years after IIJA's enactment — to certify its first construction phase as fully built out, with 13 stations open at that point [23]. Pennsylvania, with less than half of Texas's money, had already reached 37 open stations by June 2026 [22]. Formula size predicts nothing about delivery speed; state administrative capacity, procurement choices, and how quickly a state issued its early solicitations appear to matter far more.

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Three separate threats to what's left: the reauthorization cliff

NEVI faces three distinct, unresolved federal actions in 2026, on top of the $879 million Congress already rescinded in February — and conflating them, as casual coverage often does, understates how differently each one could play out.

First: the enacted rescission. This one is done. The February 2026 appropriations act pulled roughly $879 million out of NEVI's remaining pool, as detailed above [7][10]. It is the only one of the three that is already law.

Second: the FY2027 budget request. The Administration's budget request, released April 3, 2026, proposes cancelling all remaining unobligated NEVI and CFI funds — $2.7 billion from NEVI and $1.6 billion from CFI, a combined $4.2 billion [42]. A presidential budget request is a starting position for negotiation, not an enacted cut; Congress controls appropriations, and lawmakers had already shown in the February rescission that they preferred a partial reduction (about $500 million) over a full elimination when they had the chance. Whether the FY2027 request fares any differently depends on the same appropriations process that produced the smaller February cut.

Third: the BUILD America 250 Act. This is the structurally different threat, because it isn't about clawing back existing money — it's about whether NEVI exists at all after its current authorization expires. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, chaired by Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.) with Ranking Member Rick Larsen (D-Wash.), advanced H.R. 8870, the BUILD America 250 Act, by a bipartisan 62–2 vote on May 21–22, 2026, after a 14-hour markup [39][40][41]. The bill would reauthorize $580 billion in federal surface transportation programs for FY2027–2031 [40] — but it would not reauthorize NEVI as a standalone $5 billion formula program. Instead, EV, hydrogen, propane and natural gas charging infrastructure would be folded into the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) program as a set-aside, replacing the current $2.5 billion CFI carve-out with a $1 billion one inside CMAQ — with no dedicated NEVI line at all [39]. The bill also introduces a new $130 annual EV registration fee and a $35 plug-in-hybrid fee to help fund the Highway Trust Fund, a separate but related signal of how Congress is rethinking who pays for roads as gasoline-tax revenue erodes [40]. As of this update, the bill awaits a full House floor vote, and the Senate has not yet released its own reauthorization text — jurisdiction there is split across multiple committees, so a final package is unlikely before the fall at the earliest [39][40].

Underneath all three of these is a hard deadline that needs no vote to take effect: NEVI's own FY2022–2026 statutory authorization expires September 30, 2026 [8][28]. If Congress does not pass some version of a NEVI successor — whether inside the BUILD America 250 Act, a standalone extension, or a continuing resolution that preserves the program — new NEVI apportionments simply stop after that date by default, independent of anything the FY2027 budget request or the committee bill accomplish on their own. That makes the next six weeks of this fiscal year, not any single vote, the real pressure point to watch.

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NEVI vs. CFI: comparing two stalled EV-charging programs

NEVI and CFI are the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act's two federal EV-charging programs, and both are now under budgetary pressure for overlapping but distinct reasons. NEVI is the $5 billion formula program that sends money to every state by a statutory allocation, funding corridor DC fast charging; CFI is a smaller, roughly $2.5 billion discretionary grant program that competes applicants against each other for both corridor and community charging, including for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles [8]. Both appear in the same February 2026 rescission legislation, the same FY2027 budget request, and the same BUILD America 250 Act — Congress and the Administration have consistently treated them as a package rather than addressing one without the other [8][42].

The comparison is instructive on execution speed. NEVI's own four-year, 2%-actually-spent record [1][21] looks slow even against CFI's more modest footprint, and CFI has faced its own criticism for a slower-than-hoped award pipeline through its first competitive rounds [8][16]. Where the two programs diverge most sharply is in the BUILD America 250 Act's treatment: rather than reauthorizing either program as its own line item, the House committee bill folds both into the existing CMAQ formula program, shrinking their combined dedicated funding from CFI's $2.5 billion alone down to a $1 billion set-aside that would also have to cover NEVI's former role [39]. If that provision survives to enactment, it would mark a structural retreat from the IIJA's original theory — that EV charging needed its own dedicated federal funding stream — back toward folding EV infrastructure into a general-purpose air-quality program that also funds diesel retrofits, transit improvements, and traffic-flow projects.

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Context: the private market lapped the federal program

The US had 77,776 public DC fast-charging ports as of June 30, 2026, according to Paren-sourced data — up from 73,951 on June 1 and 71,398 at the start of April, a roughly 9% increase in three months [30][31][32]. Total public charging of all levels, including slower Level 2, crossed 253,000 ports across more than 82,000 locations by late June 2026 [33]. NEVI's few hundred funded ports represent well under 1% of the nation's DC fast-charging stock [1][32].

Who built the rest:

• Tesla remains the largest network at 49.8% of all DC fast ports as of Q2 2026, though its share of new Q2 deployments fell to 27% — down from over 40% a year earlier — as growth broadens across the market [32][34].
• IONNA, the eight-automaker joint venture, passed 100 sites in early 2026 and reported 107 stations and 1,020 bays open as of April 2026, contributing meaningfully to new-port growth even as its Q2 pace slowed to 186 new ports (from 278 in Q1) [32][36]. It has more than 3,000 contracted bays, including a Wawa partnership, and targets 200-plus stations and 2,000-plus bays by the end of 2026, and 30,000 bays by 2030 [37].
• Retail and long-tail operators — Walmart's proprietary network (368 new Q2 ports, 8.4% share), ChargePoint (333 new ports), Red E (315 new ports), and dozens of regional players — collectively out-built IONNA in new Q2 port additions, a sign the "who's second to Tesla" question is broadening rather than consolidating [32].
• Infrastructure reliability sat at 93.8% nationwide in Q2 2026, up modestly from 93.6% in Q1, and average utilization held roughly flat year over year at 15.8% [32][34].

In plain terms: while NEVI spent four years in planning, procurement, litigation and partial rescission, the private market added roughly 6,400 new DC fast ports in Q2 2026 alone [32] — more than NEVI opened across its entire program history through the last comprehensive census [1]. That is the program's central paradox, and also, its defenders argue, beside the point: NEVI was designed to fill corridor gaps the market skips, not to compete with it on raw volume.

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What it means for drivers: the deserts NEVI was supposed to fix

The picture for road-trippers in 2026 breaks into three regions. Private buildout clusters where utilization pays, with average national utilization around 15.6–15.8% in 2026 but a wide spread — well above 30% in leading urban markets, down to low single digits in low-density regions [32][34]. That spread runs almost exactly along the lines NEVI's original 50-mile-spacing corridor rule was designed to address.

• Northeast corridor states (PA, NY, VT, RI) and Ohio/Colorado/Utah: NEVI stations are open and materially filling corridor gaps compared with 2024, helped along by states that fully obligated their money before the rescission could touch it [1][18][22].
• Great Plains and Mountain West: the thinnest coverage persists. States like Wyoming, Montana and the Dakotas combined slow NEVI execution with lighter private investment, and the February 2026 rescission's proportional design took a larger share of what these states had left [7][20].
• Texas: still the starkest gap between allocation and delivery relative to its size — the nation's largest formula pot, at roughly $408 million, against 13 confirmed open stations as of January 2026, even with Phase II construction now underway [23].
• Nevada: a state actively losing ground on paper even as it builds — a third of its original award clawed back in February 2026 even while awards move into construction [13].

For the practical, driver-facing question of whether a NEVI-funded charger is actually cheaper or just more reliably located, see our guide to whether NEVI-funded charging is free or cheaper. Charging prices at DC fast chargers generally, NEVI-funded or not, averaged in the low-$0.50s per kWh through mid-2026 with fixed per-kWh pricing now dominant — a separate pricing story we track in depth in the US Public EV Charging Price Index [34].

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Comparisons worth having: NEVI against other federal buildout programs

NEVI's 2%-spent, four-year record looks unusually slow even by the standards of large federal infrastructure programs, which typically show a multi-year lag between authorization and outlays as environmental review, state procurement, and construction timelines play out. What makes NEVI's case sharper is that the delay wasn't purely administrative — a year of that four-year window was an active federal freeze later found unlawful [1][2], on top of the ordinary friction of getting 50 states, DC and Puerto Rico to each stand up new procurement processes from scratch [11]. The CRS's own account of the program frames the freeze-then-rescind sequence as a genuinely unusual pattern for a formula program: most IIJA formula funds have flowed on a predictable statutory schedule, while NEVI is the rare one that was both litigated and legislatively trimmed within the same fiscal year [8][28].

The Highway Trust Fund context adds another layer worth knowing for anyone covering the reauthorization fight: the Congressional Budget Office projects the Trust Fund's highway account balance will approach zero by FY2028, a structural gap the BUILD America 250 Act's new EV and PHEV registration fees are explicitly designed to help close [40]. That funding pressure — not just ideology — is part of why a bipartisan committee (62–2, with Democratic ranking member Larsen co-sponsoring) nonetheless produced a bill that zeroes out NEVI's dedicated line: the money has to come from somewhere, and EV-specific programs are an easier target than the broad highway formula programs every state depends on for basic road maintenance.

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What to watch next: a checklist for journalists and policy-watchers

Five dates and decisions will determine NEVI's trajectory through early 2027:

1. September 30, 2026 — NEVI's FY2022–2026 statutory authorization expires. Absent a reauthorization, an extension, or a continuing resolution that explicitly preserves it, new apportionments stop by default [8][28].
2. The full House floor vote on the BUILD America 250 Act — still pending as of this update, with the bill's committee-passed language not reauthorizing NEVI as written [39][41].
3. Senate reauthorization text — not yet released; jurisdiction is split across multiple Senate committees, and any final bill will need to reconcile with (or override) the House's CMAQ-folding approach [39][40].
4. FY2027 appropriations — separate from the reauthorization bill, this is where the Administration's $4.2 billion cancellation request would actually have to be enacted or rejected, the same process that produced February 2026's smaller $879 million compromise [7][42].
5. State-level obligation rates through the rest of 2026 — every dollar a state manages to obligate before any further rescission attempt is a dollar that's structurally harder to claw back, based on how the February 2026 cut was designed [7][9]. States sitting on large unobligated FY2022–2023 balances, per the pattern set in February, are the ones most exposed if Congress or the Administration tries again.

Between our editorial updates, two living, continuously updated trackers are worth bookmarking directly: the EV States Clearinghouse's NEVI Awards Dashboard tracks state-by-state award activity as it happens, and Plug In America maintains a station-level map of announced and energized NEVI chargers [26][27]. For readers tracking the state-level money separately from the federal fight, our guides to US EV incentives and rebates by state and EV charging cost by state cover the parts of the picture that don't run through NEVI at all — the state tax credits, utility rebates, and retail electricity rates that shape what a driver actually pays regardless of what Congress does with federal corridor funding. Our best and worst states for EV ownership cost piece folds NEVI's coverage gaps into the broader state-by-state ownership picture.

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Key findings

Five figures anchor this update:

• ChargeCostLab's 2026 analysis finds that Congress clawed back approximately $879 million in unobligated NEVI funds in February 2026 (P.L. 119-75), shrinking the program to about $4.12 billion just ten days after a federal court permanently barred the executive branch from withholding the money.
• Per ChargeCostLab's 2026 tracker, only about $94 million of the roughly $4.4 billion apportioned NEVI program — about 2% — had actually been spent as of September 2025, four years after enactment.
• ChargeCostLab's 2026 research finds Pennsylvania leads the nation with 37 operational NEVI-funded charging stations and $62 million invested as of June 2026, while Texas — holder of the largest formula allocation at roughly $408 million — had 13 confirmed open NEVI stations as of January 2026.
• ChargeCostLab data shows the private market added roughly 6,400 new US DC fast-charging ports in Q2 2026 alone, more than NEVI opened across its entire program history through the last comprehensive national census.
• According to ChargeCostLab's 2026 analysis, NEVI now faces three distinct, unresolved federal threats beyond the enacted rescission: a $4.2 billion FY2027 budget-cancellation request, a House committee bill that would not reauthorize the program after FY2026, and the program's own September 30, 2026 authorization cliff.

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Frequently asked questions

Is the NEVI program still active in 2026? Yes. After the February 2025 freeze, a June 2025 preliminary injunction, new FHWA guidance in August 2025, and a permanent injunction in January 2026, states are again receiving, obligating and awarding NEVI funds. Congress separately rescinded about $879 million of unobligated money in February 2026, and a further $4.2 billion cancellation is proposed but not enacted.

How much NEVI money is left after the February 2026 rescission? Roughly $4.12 billion of the original $5 billion statutory authorization remains, by our calculation (the $5.0B authorization minus the ~$879M Congress rescinded). About $1.4 billion of that was obligated to specific station projects as of September 2025, the most recent nationally comprehensive figure available.

Which state leads on NEVI stations? Pennsylvania, with 37 operational NEVI stations and $62 million in federal funds invested as of June 2026. Ohio opened the nation's first NEVI station in December 2023 and had 19 open by April 2026, with 64 more sites awarded that month. Texas had 13 stations open in January 2026 with a $250 million, 147-station Phase II authorized.

Could Congress kill NEVI entirely? Two separate, not-yet-enacted processes could. The Administration's FY2027 budget request proposes cancelling all $4.2 billion in remaining unobligated NEVI and CFI funds. Separately, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee's BUILD America 250 Act, advanced 62–2 in May 2026, would not reauthorize NEVI as a standalone program after its FY2026 authorization expires September 30, 2026. Neither is law yet.

Did the courts force the administration to release NEVI money? Yes. In Washington v. USDOT, a federal judge ordered over $1 billion released in June 2025 and, in January 2026, ruled the original freeze arbitrary and capricious, permanently barring DOT from withholding plaintiff states' NEVI funds for reasons Congress never authorized. No appeal of that ruling had been reported as of this update.

How was the February 2026 rescission calculated per state? Congress rescinded $503.8 million in formula funds proportionally from each state's unobligated FY2022 balance as of January 31, 2026, plus a flat $300 million from NEVI's discretionary set-aside and $75 million from the Joint Office. States that had obligated the least lost the most: Nevada, for example, lost about a third of its original $38 million award, roughly $12.6 million.

Does NEVI even matter given how much the private market has built? NEVI's few hundred funded stations are under 1% of the 77,776 public DC fast-charging ports the US had as of June 30, 2026. Its relevance is targeted at rural corridor segments with low utilization that private networks tend to skip — whether the remaining money closes those specific gaps is the program's open question heading into the FY2026 authorization cliff.

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About the author

This tracker is written and maintained by Petra Halvorsen, Energy & E-Mobility Cost Analyst. Petra analyses European retail power markets and electric-vehicle running costs. Her work focuses on reconciling regulator data, charging-operator tariffs and real-world consumption into figures drivers can act on. She does not accept payment from charging networks or energy suppliers, and every calculation is reproducible from the cited primary sources.

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Sources

All figures accessed or updated August 17, 2026 unless a specific date is noted in the source title. Per-state open-station counts are not published centrally in real time; figures above carry their own source vintage, and [ESTIMATE] flags projections beyond the last verified count.

1. Eno Center for Transportation — Washington v. U.S. Department of Transportation and NEVI Progress Updates. https://enotrans.org/article/washington-v-u-s-department-of-transportation-and-nevi-progress-updates/
2. Washington State Office of the Attorney General — Judge rules USDOT illegally withheld funds for EV charging infrastructure. https://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/judge-rules-usdot-illegally-withheld-funds-ev-charging-infrastructure
3. Sierra Club — Judge Protects Billions for Reliable EV Charging, Cleaner Air and Lower Driving Costs Across the Country. https://www.sierraclub.org/press-releases/2026/01/judge-protects-billions-reliable-ev-charging-cleaner-air-and-lower-driving
4. Natural Resources Defense Council — Judge Orders Lifting Trump Administration's Unlawful Freeze of More Than a Billion Dollars. https://www.nrdc.org/press-releases/judge-orders-lifting-trump-administrations-unlawful-freeze-more-billion-dollars
5. Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse — State of Washington v. U.S. Department of Transportation, 2:25-cv-00848. https://clearinghouse.net/case/46580/
6. Earthjustice — Judge Protects Billions for Reliable EV Charging, Cleaner Air and Lower Driving Costs Across the Country. https://earthjustice.org/press/2026/judge-protects-billions-for-reliable-ev-charging-cleaner-air-and-lower-driving-costs-across-the-country
7. Transportation for America — What's in the Tangled FY26 Transportation Spending Bill. https://t4america.org/2026/01/30/whats-in-the-tangled-fy26-transportation-spending-bill/
8. Congressional Research Service — R48996: Implementation of Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Programs: CFI and NEVI. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48996
9. Federal Highway Administration — Notice N 4510.913. https://highways.dot.gov/laws-regulations/directives/notices/n-4510913
10. US Congress — Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026, Public Law 119-75. https://www.congress.gov/119/plaws/publ75/PLAW-119publ75.pdf
11. Federal Highway Administration — NEVI Program. https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/environment/nevi/
12. GCN (Government Computer News) — States had obligated over $500 million to put fast chargers along every major highway corridor. https://gcn.com/states-obligated-over-500-million-put/20671
13. Nevada Current — NV loses a third of EV charging funds under federal budget measure. https://nevadacurrent.com/2026/02/17/nv-loses-a-third-of-ev-charging-funds-under-federal-budget-measure/
14. Inside Climate News — EV Charging Program Faces the Axe in Budget Bill. https://insideclimatenews.org/news/02022026/national-electric-vehicle-infrastructure-charging-funding/
15. Atlas Public Policy — Fact Sheet: Out of Juice? What's Next For NEVI. https://atlaspolicy.com/out-of-juice-whats-next-for-nevi/
16. Atlas Public Policy — The Next Steps with Federal EV Charging Programs. https://atlaspolicy.com/the-next-steps-with-federal-ev-charging-programs/
17. NC Clean Energy Technology Center — The National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Program: Current Status and Outlook. https://nccleantech.ncsu.edu/2025/06/26/the-national-electric-vehicle-infrastructure-nevi-program-current-status-and-outlook/
18. Joint Office of Energy and Transportation — Q4 2024 NEVI Quarterly Update. https://driveelectric.gov/news/q4-2024-nevi-quarterly-update
19. Joint Office of Energy and Transportation — First Public EV Charging Station Funded by NEVI Open in America. https://driveelectric.gov/news/first-nevi-funded-stations-open
20. ACT News — The United States of NEVI. https://www.act-news.com/news/the-united-states-of-nevi/
21. E&E News / POLITICO — Congress Green-Lighted Billions for EV Chargers. Four Years Later, Only 2% Is Spent. https://www.eenews.net/articles/congress-green-lighted-billions-for-ev-chargers-four-years-later-only-2-is-spent/
22. Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) — Shapiro Continues to Lead Nation with NEVI-funded EV Charging Stations Now Open. https://www.pa.gov/agencies/penndot/news-and-media/newsroom/statewide/2026/shapiro-continues-to-lead-nation-with-nevi-funded-ev-charging-st
23. Government Technology — Texas Moves Forward on Electric Vehicle, Big Rig Charging. https://www.govtech.com/transportation/texas-moves-forward-on-electric-vehicle-big-rig-charging
24. Axios Cleveland — Ohio Will Add 64 Electric Vehicle Charging Stations. https://www.axios.com/local/cleveland/2026/04/15/ohio-ev-charging-stations-electric-vehicles
25. GreenCars — NEVI Charging Network Reboots in 2026. https://www.greencars.com/news/nevi-charging-network-reboots-in-2026
26. EV States Clearinghouse — NEVI Awards Dashboard. https://evstates.org/awards-dashboard/
27. Plug In America — NEVI EV Charger Tracker. https://pluginamerica.org/nevi-funding-tracking/
28. Congressional Research Service — IN12556: Status of Federal Implementation of EV Charging Infrastructure. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IN12556
29. US DOE Alternative Fuels Data Center — U.S. Public EV Charging Infrastructure. https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10972
30. evchargingstations.com — Largest DC Fast-Charging Networks in the US: April 2026. https://evchargingstations.com/chargingnews/largest-dc-fast-charging-april-2026/
31. evchargingstations.com — DC Fast Charging Infrastructure Data: June 2026. https://evchargingstations.com/chargingnews/dc-fast-charging-june-2026/
32. evchargingstations.com — Paren: US Added 800+ New DC Fast-Charging Sites in Q2 2026. https://evchargingstations.com/chargingnews/paren-dc-fast-charging-q2-2026/
33. evchargingstations.com — US Public EV Charging Network Surpasses 250,000 Charging Ports. https://evchargingstations.com/chargingnews/us-250000-ev-charging-ports/
34. Paren — US EV Fast Charging: Q1 2026 State of the Industry. https://www.paren.app/reports/us-ev-fast-charging-q1-2026
35. Paren — 32 NEVI-Funded DC Fast Charging Stations Are Now Open. https://www.paren.app/blog/32-nevi-funded-dc-fast-charging-stations-are-now-open
36. Destination Charged — IONNA Reaches 100 Charging Sites as Network Expansion Continues. https://www.destinationcharged.com/news/ionna-reaches-100-charging-sites-as-network-expansion-continues/
37. IONNA — IONNA Reaches Milestone of More Than 3,000 Contracted Bays with the Addition of EV Rechargeries at Wawa. https://www.ionna.com/news/ionna-reaches-milestone-of-more-than-3000-contracted-bays-with-the-addition-of-ev-rechargeries-at-wawa/
38. US Congress — H.R.8870, BUILD America 250 Act, 119th Congress. https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/8870
39. Holland & Knight — A Closer Look at the BUILD America 250 Act. https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2026/05/a-closer-look-at-the-build-america-250-act
40. National Association of Counties — NaCo Legislative Analysis: BUILD America 250 Act. https://www.naco.org/resource/naco-legislative-analysis-build-america-250-act
41. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure — T&I Committee Approves BUILD America 250 Act. https://democrats-transportation.house.gov/news/press-releases/tandi-committee-approves-build-america-250-act
42. Congressional Research Service — R48947: Department of Transportation FY2027 Funding Request. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48947

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© 2026 ChargeCostLab. Independent EV running-cost and policy analysis. Figures reflect data available as of August 17, 2026 and will change as litigation, appropriations, and reauthorization move. Informational, not legal or financial advice.