In its continued attempts to erase any sign of the previous administration, President Trump’s team recently ordered the shutdown of all EV chargers at federal buildings and that EVs purchased by the government be sold.
The General Services Administration manages the chargers, which amount to around 8,000 plugs across the country. An email sent by the agency said, “As GSA has worked to align with the current administration, we have received direction that all GSA owned charging stations are not mission critical. Neither Government Owned Vehicles nor Privately Owned Vehicles will be able to charge at these charging stations once they’re out of service.”
President Biden’s administration had been working to phase out gas vehicles to move to an electrified fleet, and more than half of the GSA’s current 650,000-vehicle fleet was expected to make the jump. In the spring of last year, GSA said it had ordered more than 58,000 zero-emissions vehicles and installed more than 25,000 new charging ports.
This sort of thing might save some money going forward, but the costs already sunk into this effort won’t be recovered. We don’t know what will happen to the chargers once the shutdown is complete, and there’s no telling how many EVs the government plans to sell or what it’ll eventually get for them. Given Trump’s words, it’d be reasonable to expect the GSA to move back to a gas-dominated fleet, the costs of which would be astronomical.
[Images: Ford, Chevrolet]
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