Wisconsin GOP congressman proposes repealing EV charging station program

Dan Olson said he applied for a federal funding to install an EV charging station at the convenience store he manages in Clark County for the same reason he has a laundromat and a car wash at the site.

“There is a segment of the population that needs this service,” Olson said.

Last May, Express Mart, the convenience store in the city of Thorp where Olson is general manager, was awarded more than $500,000 for the project. The money was part of a $7.5 billion Biden administration effort to expand the network of electric vehicle charging stations available nationwide.

That plan, funded by Congress as part of the bipartisan infrastructure law, has been paused by the Trump administration, which has taken aim at federal programs designed to combat climate change.

“We have a site plan in place, ready to go, but everything’s just on hold right now,” Olson said. “We were supposed to start this spring. I’ve not heard yet from that other company that we partnered with whether this is going forward or not.”

His is one of 15 EV charging station projects in Wisconsin the governor’s office says are in jeopardy after the Trump administration suspended the federal program funding the state’s plan to build out a statewide network of chargers.

And this week, a Republican congressman from northeast Wisconsin has announced his intention to end the program.

U.S. Rep. Tony Wied, R-De Pere, introduced a bill to repeal the federal program that gives states funding build networks of charging stations. It makes changes to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure law.

“I see a future in electric vehicles,” Wied told WGBA-TV Wednesday. “I don’t think our taxpayer money should subsidize that though.”

Republican U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa has introduced companion legislation in the U.S. Senate.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration suspended the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program and suspended state plans approved under the Biden administration until new guidance is issued by the federal government.

The Biden administration awarded Wisconsin more than $78 million dollars to develop a network of EV fast chargers. Of that funding, the state could lose out on roughly $55 million it has yet to receive.

Last year, Gov. Tony Evers announced the first $23 million from the program would be used to build 53 charging stations at businesses across the state. The state’s first federally-funded charging stations came online at three Kwik Trip locations in December.

But the governor’s office says the Trump administration’s decision to suspend the program jeopardizes around $7.3 million for 15 of those projects.

In a statement, Evers said Republicans are trying to “gut federal funding” that the state relies on while his administration works to invest in infrastructure that meets the needs of the 21st century “through things like EV charging.”

“It’s ridiculous,” Evers stated. “Building the 21st-century infrastructure Wisconsinites need and deserve is a critical part of moving our state forward. Clearly, Republicans are dead set on doing the opposite and taking our state backward.”

In a statement Tuesday, Wied criticized the federal EV program for only building 59 stations over three years with a $7.5 billion budget. 

“As a small business owner, I could have built 1,500 more gas stations with that kind of money,” he stated. “It is time to repeal this funding and put an end to President Biden’s wasteful vanity project.”

Wied was not available for an interview for this story.

He was elected in 2024 to represent the state’s 8th Congressional District, and ran on a platform of cutting government spending.

The $7.5 billion figure he referenced in his statement refers to the total amount allocated toward EV charging through the infrastructure law, not the amount of money already spent, according to the Associated Press. For example, the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program allocates $5 billion across five years, or $1 billion per year between 2022 and 2026.

Jeremiah Brockman, president of the Wisconsin chapter of the Electric Vehicle Association, said ending the program would disproportionately affect small businesses and rural communities. He said bigger companies that received awards may be able to move forward with building charging stations on their own.

“They might have a large enough customer base where there’s enough demand, but they’re going to have to foot the bill for this,” he said. “But then there’s going to be smaller sort of mom-and-pop type shops that are just not going to be able, I don’t think, to foot the bill. They might just abandon the thing altogether.”

While the pace at which charging stations have come online has been a subject of criticism nationally, Brockman said the program had a lot of moving parts that slowed things down. States had to develop plans for strategic roadways to place charging stations, those plans had to be approved by the federal government and then the states had to open funding applications and award projects, he said.

In Wisconsin, the program also required changing state law to allow private businesses to own and operate charging stations without being regulated as utilities.

“It’s just interesting that certain politicians are the reason why the program is not going forward, and then they’re citing the fact that it’s a failure,” Brockman said. “I get that they’re saying, ‘Well, we’ve only had this number of sites,’ but that’s because it’s a national plan that takes time. It takes energy. It takes a lot of coordination.”

He also said the private sector does not have much incentive to bring EV chargers to rural areas on its own, but the government has an incentive to serve rural communities because it isn’t profit driven.

Eight of the 15 projects that the governor’s office says are currently at risk would be located in municipalities with fewer than 10,000 residents as of the 2020 census.