Electric vehicle owners say lack of charging stations harms businesses in rural areas

In 2021, bipartisan majorities in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives approved the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, a compromise bill that included a $7.5 billion investment over five years in electric vehicle charging infrastructure. Now, as Wisconsin starts to benefit from that investment, Republican U.S. Reps. Glenn Grothman, Tom Tiffany and Tony Wied have introduced a bill intended to cancel the program.

The bill, sponsored by Wied, would repeal the law’s sections authorizing charging and fueling infrastructure grants and its electric vehicle infrastructure formula program, which provided funds to the states to subsidize the installation and maintenance of EV chargers. 

“I am proud to introduce the Unplug the Electric Vehicle Charging Stations Programs Act,” Wied said in a Feb. 25 press release. “The fact that the Biden Administration was only able to produce 59 stations nationwide with a $7.5 billion budget is the exact reason why the American people overwhelmingly support President Trump in reducing waste and inefficiencies in our government. As a small business owner, I could have built 1,500 more gas stations with that kind of money. It is time to repeal this funding and put an end to President Biden’s wasteful vanity project.”

“The government doesn’t build gas stations, and it shouldn’t be in the business of funding EV chargers either,” Tiffany said in a statement emailed by his office to the Wisconsin Independent. “When a business opens a gas station, it pays for its own fuel pumps; the same should apply to EV chargers.”

Grothman’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Not all of the $7.5 billion has been distributed yet. While only a few projects have been completed, many more funded through the law are underway, including dozens in Wisconsin.

The WIsconsin Department of Transportation has already distributed millions of dollars authorized by the law in support of more than 50 EV infrastructure projects. Those funds helped fund charging stations now operational at Kwik Trip convenience stores in Ashland, Menomonie, and Chippewa Falls, and the chain plans to install stations at all of its other locations.

Additionally, Ingeteam EV announced it would expand its Milwaukee EV charger production facility, adding 100 new jobs over five years.

About 25,000 electric vehicles were registered in Wisconsin as of December 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. 

EV owners say the federal government’s investment in EV infrastructure will be anything but wasteful.

Jeremiah Brockman, a Prairie du Chien resident working toward his teaching license, told the Wisconsin Independent that he and his wife got their first electric vehicle in 2017. He liked it so much that he got involved as a volunteer with the Wisconsin chapter of the nonprofit Electric Vehicle Association, where he now serves as statewide president. 

Brockman said there are many reasons to switch to electric vehicles: “They’re fun to drive. There’s less maintenance involved. There’s so many reasons. First and foremost, I think, especially the way inflation has been recently, has to be the kind of fuel savings that people get with electric vehicles. … We got a Chevy Bolt last week and that car will give us 238 miles on a full charge, and that full charge will cost us $7.25.” 

But in rural parts of Wisconsin, fast chargers are not always available. In the cold weather, when battery charges last a shorter time, Brockman said, driving to visit his family in the Northwoods can be “a little iffy.” “If it is the winter, sometimes we might not go certain places, because if there’s no charging there, we can’t make it.” 

Cathy Van Maren, a La Crosse resident, said in a phone interview she has been driving EVs since 2019. While she prefers trains and buses for long-distance travel, in Wisconsin public transportation is often not an option. The lack of charging stations in some parts of the state can be a challenge, she said: “Last year, I had to go to Appleton, to a family event, and it was awful. There may be charging along the way, but you don’t know if it’s going to work or not work. You don’t know how much it’s going to cost or if there will be someone there. So the more we have, in that respect, the better.”

Van Maren said eliminating the EV infrastructure funds would hurt Wisconsin drivers and reduce tourism. “I believe there are a lot of people who do, climate activism aside, who love to drive electric cars because they’re much more efficient, they’re much cheaper to maintain, etc., fun to drive. So that would mean, I think, that you would be telling people, especially people from out of state, like Illinois or Minnesota, We don’t want you here. Stay away. So I think it’s just a near-sighted, cutting-off-nose-to-spite-face action.” 

John Roach, an EV owner and Madison resident, called the proposed repeal unwise. 

“To stifle charging stations will hurt tourism, especially far north,” Roach told the Wisconsin Independent. “It will also put local retail outlets like Kwik Trip at a disadvantage because all the national big box stores are putting in charging stations. … There should be charging stations for the same reason that people urged gas stations a century ago. There were blacksmiths who resisted and we all know how that ended for them.” 

Asked about Tiffany’s argument that gas stations are privately funded, Brockman noted that the federal government has provided subsidies to the fossil fuel and automobile industries for years, “If we can do those types of subsidies, or if we can give oil companies billions of dollars in subsidies every single year, why can’t we do the same thing?”

Geoffrey Hoffman, a Madison EV owner whose manufacturing business relies on electric vehicles for deliveries and snow removal, told the Wisconsin Independent that companies and states need the federal government to make a decision and stick to it rather than canceling promised funds mid-project. 

“I think that when things change like this and when we transition from different energy sources or wherever, I think you need to have a government involved and spend money to get things started,” Hoffman said. “It’s a little more difficult for a private enterprise to spend the money whenever it’s just getting started. And it’s kind of like how you would get a greater subsidy for solar panels when they were more expensive, and then every year that that subsidy is tapered back because they become less expensive, because we’re manufacturing more of that.”

Regardless of the legislation, President Donald Trump’s administration has placed a temporary freeze on new EV investment grants under the infrastructure law. 

A U.S. Department of Transportation spokesperson said in an email, “We are utilizing this authority to ensure the Program operates efficiently and effectively and aligns with current U.S. DOT policies and priorities.”