US federal buildings take down EV chargers

The news that the GSA will unplug chargers reserved for federal workers and federal EV fleets was first reported by The Verge. The portal reports that some regional offices have already begun dismantling their EV infrastructure, citing an internal email.

“As GSA has worked to align with the current administration, we have received direction that all GSA owned charging stations are not mission critical,” The Verge quotes the email, adding that GSA is cancelling all contracts regarding the charging stations. Once that is done, the stations will be offline and “turned off at the breaker.”

The GSA manages all buildings owned by the US federal government. It has about 8,000 EV chargers for federal fleets and employees’ private EVs. That is according to an update posted by GSA in March 2024.

The GSA had received $25 million for the installation of EV chargers at federal buildings across the nation as part of former President Biden’s Investing in America agenda. Under the Biden administration, the goal was to electrify the entire federal fleet. From 2027, all newly purchased light-duty vehicles had to be zero-emission, and all medium- and heavy-duty by 2035. “Since the start of the [Biden] Administration, the federal government has ordered over 58,000 ZEVs and has begun installing more than 25,000 charging ports,” the statement from last year reads.

However, the Trump administration has clearly begun rolling back those plans.

The Verge even cites one source as saying that the GSA will start taking electric vehicles off its fleets. The portal adds that “it’s unclear whether those vehicles will be sold or simply put away in storage. It’s also unclear whether other federal agencies will be making similar decisions for their own EVs, although many of those agencies tend to use the GSA’s EV chargers for their own plug-in vehicles.”

The GSA was not available for comment when contacted by The Verge.

theverge.com, gsa.gov (GSA statement)