April 30, 2026
REPORT: Despite federal obstacles, New Mexico making progress on spending EV charging dollars
Amid high gas prices and Trump rollbacks, New Mexico has key opportunity to swiftly spend federal funding for EV charging to help drivers go electric.
SANTA FE — New Mexico has led on transportation electrification and made meaningful progress on rolling out federal EV charging dollars in 2025, but the vast majority of that funding remains unspent, according to a new Sierra Club report out today.
“New Mexico’s Department of Transportation moved quickly and decisively to set aside nearly $64 million for heavy-duty charging along the I-10 corridor, an important early win that is now shifting the state from planning to real-world implementation,” said Camilla Feibelman, Director of the Sierra Club Rio Grande Chapter. “This progress will help reduce toxic diesel pollution and climate emissions in frontline communities, including in the Las Cruces area and west toward Arizona. Now is the time to build on that momentum for light and heavy duty charging across the state. New Mexico should continue accelerating deployment and ensuring these investments deliver cleaner air, lower fuel prices, and healthier communities.”
In February 2025, the Trump administration illegally froze the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program. Sierra Club, New Mexico, and other states and nonprofit partners challenged that action in federal court and successfully lifted the freeze. NEVI funds were unavailable to New Mexico for nearly five months in 2025 and only fully secured after a final court order in January 2026. Despite these months-long obstructions, 2025 was still the most productive year in the program’s four-year history.
States have to jump through a lot of hoops to implement and spend federal funds for EV charging — including developing statewide plans for NEVI, selecting projects, “obligating” funding (which legally binds the federal government to reimburse their spending), and moving ahead with permitting, design, and construction. New Mexico led in obligating funds and now has a key challenge of expending the funds and opening charging stations to the public. By the end of 2025, New Mexico had:
- Obligated 43% ($16.4M) and spent 14% ($5.6M) out of its $38M of available federal dollars for EV charging stations along highways
- Obligated 100% ($64M) and spent .001% ($.001M) out of its $64M of available federal dollars for public EV truck and bus charging stations
- Opened at least one NEVI charging station to the public
Crucially, New Mexico was able to obligate all of its Charging and Fueling Infrastructure (CFI) funding before the Trump administration unlawfully froze the program at the start of 2025. Sierra Club, allied organizations, and over a dozen states challenged the Trump administration’s freeze of the CFI program in federal court in December 2025. That litigation is currently pending and a decision from the federal court is anticipated before the end of 2026.
To speed up the rollout of federal EV charging funds, the report recommends New Mexico and other states use their attorneys general offices to address issues with access to funds, engage with utility regulators and public service commissions to stretch funding, set targets and timelines for rolling out funds, and maximize coordination between state agencies, project applicants and electric utilities.
The State of New Mexico has led on EV policy by enacting EV tax credits for new and used vehicles as well as chargers, passing clean cars and trucks rules to bring more EV to the state, and recently finalizing a clean transportation fuels program (CTFP) that supports transportation electrification. CTFP will generate tens of millions of dollars to invest in electric vehicles and charging infrastructure every year, which will help make the federal investment go further and help more New Mexicans acquire EVs.
Beyond federally-funded projects, 2025 was also the biggest year on record for deployment of privately-funded EV charging stations. According to data released by Paren, more than 18,000 new fast-charging ports were installed nationwide in 2025 (a 30 percent year-over-year increase). As of today, New Mexico has roughly 458 charging stations with 1,169 charging ports open to the public, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Roughly 344 of those ports opened in 2025, marking a roughly 30% year-over-year increase in fast-charging ports in New Mexico.
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