Brief pause didn’t help, nor does weak market for electric cars; private sector efforts outstrip government
For several years now, Wisconsin officials have been handing out millions of dollars in federal funds, aiming to build about 80 charging stations for electric vehicles at gas stations, hotels, and other venues across the state.
So how’s progress?
Things are going slowly. Only 21 new chargers are operational. Republicans’ wins on the federal level meant both a brief pause for the program and a broader cutback for electric-vehicle subsidies. Wisconsin congressman Tony Wied, who owned a small chain of gas stations that he sold in 2022, has even proposed legislation to terminate the subsidies nationwide.
Wied branded the program a poor use of money: “It’s clear this program does not bear fruit, and hardworking Wisconsinites’ taxpayer dollars should not be wasted on it.”
Meanwhile, Wisconsin remains a particularly inhospitable market for EVs, given low temperatures that reduce range for battery-powered vehicles and vast rural areas where range is a high priority.
Goal and reality
The funding here stems from the 2021 federal infrastructure law, which offered Wisconsin (and other states) millions of dollars to subsidize up to 80 percent of the cost of new charging stations. As the Badger Institute previously reported, a Republican-led Legislature passed two bills to pave the way for the program, and in “none of the four votes to pass the bills were there more than two ‘nays.’” Democratic Gov. Tony Evers signed the bills, and his administration has implemented the resulting Wisconsin Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (WEVI) effort. The goal is to create a network of fast-charging “Level 3” stations along the state’s major highways, dubbed Alternative Fuel Corridors, or AFCs.
As the program launched, the state already had more than 300 publicly accessible charging stations, as the Wisconsin Department of Transportation noted in a 2022 planning document. Officials deemed them inadequate, however, because about half of them weren’t within a mile of an Alternative Fuel Corridor, 79 of them worked only with Teslas, and only four — in Madison, West Milwaukee, Tomah and Eau Claire — met all of the program’s criteria, which also required “having four ports able to charge EVs at 150 kW simultaneously.”
Wisconsin gained access to about $80 million over five years, and the first two rounds of funding (dubbed Round 1 and Round 1.5) have awarded about half of that to build nearly 80 more stations.
More than 50 of these projects were announced with the first round of funding in 2024, with three becoming operational before the end of that year. But just 21 stations funded by the program are fully operational today, about two years later.
Meanwhile, the total number of charging stations in Wisconsin, including those that don’t meet WEVI requirements, has grown to exceed 800. Many EV makers are migrating to the charging standard that the Tesla level 3 network, built by private industry, uses, and Tesla says it aims to open its Level 3 “Supercharger” network to all EVs.
One reason for the holdup in the government-funded effort is that, soon after taking office last year, the Trump administration paused the program’s funding nationwide, including about three-quarters of Wisconsin’s promised money. However, several states, including Wisconsin, sued to reopen the spigot, with a judge granting an injunction in mid-2025 and ultimately ruling against the administration.
“In early 2025, WisDOT worked quickly to sign agreements and advance a number of projects supported by NEVI funding before the federal decision was made that froze funding,” the agency’s Office of Public Affairs told the Badger Institute. But the five-month pause in federal funding meant “we were unable to proceed on 15 projects due to the federal funding pause. Those projects have now been moving forward.”
Other delays have been more routine. “We continue to work through the many steps of the project development process for all awarded projects, despite facing supply chain issues or other delays,” WisDOT said.
Wisconsin’s experience, though painful, isn’t necessarily atypical. According to data tracked by EV States Clearinghouse, some states don’t have stations open yet. Yet a handful have achieved “fully built out” status, covering their major transportation corridors.
Rachael Nealer — director of Atlas Public Policy, the organization that built the clearinghouse — told the Badger Institute that achieving fully-built-out status “would give the state flexibility” with any remaining federal money, including being able to “expand to more community charging” beyond major corridors.
She also pointed out that it can take a while to get a charger up and running: “It’s not something that happens overnight.” In a report earlier this year, she and a colleague detailed the burdensome permitting rules and utility challenges that these projects face.
Meanwhile, federal priorities are changing. Earlier this year, a new appropriations law redirected about a billion dollars from the charging-station program toward highway projects — though Wisconsin didn’t lose money.
Some in Congress are aiming for further cuts, including Wied, whose district includes the Green Bay area.
He introduced his Unplug the Electric Vehicle Charging Stations Programs Act “after seeing the abysmal results of the Biden administration, which was only able to produce 59 stations nationwide with a $7.5 billion budget,” Wied told the Badger Institute.
“As a small business owner, I could have built 1,500 more gas stations with that kind of money.”
Wied hopes the measure will be included in this year’s surface-transportation reauthorization bill, which is considered must-pass legislation because the existing funding expires at the end of September. But “either way, I will continue to urge my colleagues to join me in passing this common-sense legislation and putting an end to this wasteful program once and for all.”
Declining demand
If the past couple years have been rough on the charging-station program, they’ve also been brutal for electric vehicles more broadly. Effective at the end of September 2025, Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act eliminated the large tax credits for EV buyers that had previously been available under the Inflation Reduction Act — up to $7,500 for new cars, $4,000 for used ones, and $40,000 for commercial EVs.
Cutting off subsidies likely affected demand, per recent reports from the Alliance for Automotive Innovation. Electric vehicles’ market share spiked in late 2025 as the credits’ expiration approached, then plummeted. It’s fallen in the range of 6 to 8 percent in recent months, a drop of around a third from where it was in late 2023 and early 2024.
Here in Wisconsin, which has never been too enthusiastic about EVs, adoption of the new technology is particularly low. In the Badger State, EVs had a market share of just 4.5 percent as of 2025 according to AAI, less than half the nationwide figure.
There are a few theories about why.
“Our population bases in Madison and Milwaukee have been more accepting, while the population bases outside of those two metropolitan areas have been a harder sell,” Bill Sepic, president of the Wisconsin Automobile & Truck Dealers Association, tells the Badger Institute. “There’s longer distances to drive, and certainly the cold weather impacts range.”
Nick Jarmusz, AAA’s regional director of public affairs, cited his organization’s research. “Range anxiety remains a top barrier to purchasing an electric vehicle,” he noted. The group’s testing this year showed that operating at 20 degrees reduced EVs’ range by 39 percent.
Indeed, AAA’s national survey showed waning interest even before the subsidies ended. A little more than half of respondents said they were unlikely or very unlikely to buy an EV in the 2022 and 2023 surveys, but 63 percent did in both 2024 and 2025, falling only to 58 percent this year.
Can more charging stations help?
“Lack of charging stations is still a sticking point for many car shoppers (46 percent),” Jarmusz said, “but it is the factor in our survey that showed the most change (coming down from 56 percent in 2025).”
Sepic suggested that hybrids might be a popular middle ground in the years ahead. “When you don’t have the pressure of the financial incentives, but you still have a public that cares about the environment and renewable resources, in what direction do they go when the decision is left up to them?” he asked. “I think certainly, at least in the near-term future, the hybrid fills that need. It takes away the range anxiety.”
Wisconsin’s vehicle-registration data for 2025 show almost 74,000 hybrid passenger vehicles throughout the state, versus fewer than 14,000 electric, and AAA’s surveys have also shown growing interest in hybrids. Most hybrids, interestingly, either do not need to charge, or are not compatible with the Level 3 charging stations the WEVI program is installing.
Robert VerBruggen is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He lives in Hobart, Wis.
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