By the end of 2023, Florida’s roads were home to about 232,000 electric vehicles, making the Sunshine State the second-biggest EV market in the U.S. Chalk it up to low electricity costs, or abundant sunlight for solar energy, or even the huge luxury car market in cities like Miami. No matter the reasons, Florida’s electric car growth has been hailed as “a beacon of progress” by the nonprofit Electrification Coalition.
Not a bad outcome for a technology that’s often embroiled in bitter, partisan politics—especially in a state where the political climate is very different from other EV-heavy places like California and New York.
Get Fully Charged
The National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Program
NEVI is a $5 billion program authorized by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. It allocates federal money to states for DC fast charging, which they then dole out to private companies who apply to build the chargers. The program has been criticized for how long the chargers have taken to install, but more and more NEVI-funded plugs are starting to appear nationwide.
But politics are coming for EVs in Florida. As the U.S. government aims to make unprecedented investments into charging networks that serve EV drivers, Florida is falling behind—a deliberate decision by state leaders.
Florida has yet to dole out any existing federal money allocated to the state to grow its DC fast-charging network, as multiple outlets have reported in recent weeks, including the Tampa Bay Times and Axios. The state has $198 million over five years earmarked for chargers under the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, but not a single dollar has been distributed to private companies in the form of grants to install new EV plugs.
That means companies like ChargePoint, Tesla and even gas stations that wish to install chargers can’t do so with federal funding help in Florida, as they can in other states.
Instead, the Florida Department of Transportation produced a new website that, among other things, rails against “the groupthink culture that is the Biden Agenda”—as well as EVs themselves.
“Rather than focusing on ways to increase throughput and highway capacity, [the U.S. Department of Transportation] seeks to force people out of their cars in one way or another whether that be through reducing lanes or issuing regulatory mandates to force electric vehicles on American commuters,” the website reads.”Why would the government be so insistent on getting rid of one of the greatest inventions [sic] like the combustion engine?”
The site, “Roads Are Not For Politics,” includes a laundry list of culture-war issues that state officials claim are driven by the Biden Administration, including “COVID tyranny” and “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).”
But it also includes partisan-flavored criticism of EVs, citing the money Ford has lost building out its manufacturing base and what it calls “low consumer demand” despite a record sales year in 2023.
“While the federal government's obsession with electric vehicles is increasingly becoming an obsession that help's [sic] China, Florida continues its all-hands-on-deck approach to fight back through court challenges and educating Floridians on these mandates, emphasizing the importance of ‘fuel freedom’ and consumer choice,” the site reads.
FDOT announced this new website in a statement filled with invective toward the Biden Administration from Gov. Ron DeSantis. "Unlike the federal government, under my leadership Florida's Department of Transportation is focused solely on transportation," DeSantis said. "We listen to Floridians and meet their needs. Roads are not for politics.”
But if Florida shuns that federal money, the Sunshine State’s taxpayers are essentially funding EV chargers in other states, like California and New York, said Loren McDonald, the CEO of analytics firm EVAdoption.
“Florida residents have paid for NEVI via their federal taxes, so if Florida doesn’t use the money to build out charging infrastructure, then DeSantis is in essence cheating his own state’s residents of getting something in return for their tax payments,” McDonald said.
Meanwhile, would-be charging providers who want to serve Florida’s growing EV driver community are getting fed up.
The Charge Ahead Partnership—a coalition of businesses that includes gas station chains like Wawa and Buc-ee's, all eager to expand into the electric “fueling” market—has criticized Florida’s still-closed application process for NEVI funding. And Florida’s moves come at a time when the U.S. government has already been lambasted for the slow rollout of NEVI-funded chargers, the group said. (As InsideEVs has covered before, the DC fast-charger installation process is often hampered by the cumbersome local permitting process, which can vary wildly from community to community.)
But FDOT spokesman Michael Williams defended the site’s claims in an email to InsideEVs and reiterated that the onus of building out charging will be on the private sector in Florida.
“Free enterprise, not federal mandates, are the driving force when any industry experiences growth,” Williams said. “Nothing prohibits the private sector from building out our nation’s charging network. With the total number of EVs on the road today constituting approximately 1% of all vehicles registered across the nation, ‘low consumer demand’ is an accurate statement.”
Besides the fact that the private sector is the one tasked with building out America’s charging networks, McDonald, from EVAdoption, said the statement is a mischaracterization of how our century-old car evolves as new technologies emerge.
“It will take 40+ years to replace most ICE vehicles on the road in the U.S.,” he said. “We are now at 290 million vehicles on the road in the US, and about 4.5 million of those are [EVs] and [plug-in hybrids.] A wide choice of EV models and high-volume production of EV models like the Tesla Model 3 and Model Y have only emerged in the last few years.”
The hostility toward EVs and the NEVI program represents a strange reversal for DeSantis. In 2020, the governor touted an $8.6 million investment to “strengthen Florida’s electric vehicle infrastructure” and “improve Florida’s environment.” The state even drafted a fairly robust EV Infrastructure Master Plan in 2021 that anticipated aggressive growth and a network of chargers to serve it.
“Not only will these charging stations promote reduced emissions and better air quality, they will also improve mobility and safety for the ever-increasing number of Floridians that drive electric cars,” DeSantis said in a 2020 statement—a far cry from the “unscientific climate alarmism” that FDOT is decrying today.
Moreover, around the time former President Donald Trump stepped up his criticism of electric vehicles, DeSantis—who was also vying for the GOP nomination before dropping out—vetoed bipartisan legislation that would’ve led the state to buy more of them.
Williams, the FDOT spokesperson, countered by saying “There has been no policy shift [under DeSantis] regarding EVs as FDOT believes all road users should be free to drive what they want, where they want, when they want. FDOT’s objection is to the Biden Administration’s desire to implement a California-style mandate that will ultimately force consumers to purchase EVs.”
The FDOT website still has a NEVI-related page describing the grant program, but it merely says "Please monitor site for any updates." So far, none have come.
Meanwhile, though it's taken a frustrating amount of time, NEVI-funded chargers are starting to open across the country. The first opened in Ohio last year, followed by 11 others in seven states. McDonald said that this week alone, Maryland released its first round of NEVI awards, which should eventually yield 23 charging sites in 15 counties across the state.
He said that Florida is the one playing politics here, including in ways that could deter EV owners from road-tripping to one of America’s top tourism destinations.
“It is also interesting that the responses you received don’t even mention charging infrastructure or NEVI, but rather just repeat DeSantis talking points about Biden mandates,” McDonald said. “Who is being political here? DeSantis is putting his personal politics and dislike of Biden ahead of what is actually in the best interest of the residents of the state of Florida.”
McDonald added, “This is just crazy.”
Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com
Top graphic: Ralph Hermens/Motorsport Network
