February 10, 2026 - Who's Killing the Electric Car Again?

This is the Telemetry Transportation Daily for February 10, 2026, and I'm Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research for Telemetry.  

In 2006, director Chris Paine gained some notoriety for his documentary film: Who Killed the Electric Car? It chronicled the aftermath of General Motors's decision to take back all of its EV1 cars from the customers that had been leasing them since they debuted in 1997 and then crush most of them. Paine followed that with a sequel, The Revenge of the Electric Car, that looked at the revival of EVs with new models like the Tesla Roadster, Chevrolet Volt, and Nissan Leaf. It may now be time for Paine to revisit the original with Who's Trying to Kill the Electric Car Again? 

The answer this time is the Trump administration, which seems to be dead set on doing everything possible to undermine EVs. Last year, in concert with the Republican Party in Congress, all federal incentives for EV purchases were eliminated, and one of the earliest executive orders from Trump tried to cancel all disbursements from the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure or NEVI program. The $5 billion NEVI program to build out DC fast charging infrastructure was authorized in the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Act. Several courts have ruled that the administration must release the funds, but it seems the administration may have finally found a way to effectively kill the program. 

The rules for getting NEVI funding have always included a Buy American provision. At least 55% of the parts content of the charging equipment had to be sourced in the U.S. Charger manufacturers have been working diligently over the last several years to establish a domestic supply and manufacturing chain for this equipment. However, the Department of Energy has now unilaterally changed the rules to raise the domestic content requirement to 100%. Since many of the electronic components for U.S.-built chargers still come from Asia, particularly China, this will effectively make it impossible for anyone installing chargers to get NEVI funding for at least the next several years. 

Fortunately, numerous companies have been moving forward with charger deployment even without NEVI funding, and hopefully that will continue. 

Thanks for listening.