NEVI Program: Funding, Site Requirements & How to Apply

Where the NEVI Program Actually Stands

The National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program provides $5 billion over five years through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (Public Law 117-58, title VIII of division J). If you read a guide written before 2025, it almost certainly described a programme running continuously. It has not been.

On February 6, 2025, the Federal Highway Administration issued a memorandum cancelling all previously issued NEVI guidance and suspending approval of every State Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Deployment Plan, for all fiscal years. No new obligations could be incurred, though reimbursements continued under project agreements already signed. In May 2025 the Government Accountability Office concluded that withholding the funds violated the Impoundment Control Act. FHWA then issued interim final guidance on August 11, 2025, which supersedes all previous NEVI guidance and restarts the programme on a streamlined basis.

That history is not trivia. It determines the only question that matters before you spend anything on an application: has your own state submitted, and had approved, a plan covering the funds you would be applying for? Ask your state DOT directly. Do not infer it from a national summary, and do not assume a solicitation you saw referenced in 2024 still exists.

What the August 2025 Guidance Changed

The interim final guidance supersedes everything before it, including the June 11, 2024 programme guidance and the December 11, 2024 build-out certification guidance. Following the January 29, 2025 memorandum from the Secretary of Transportation, it rescinds prior guidance and policies not required by clear and express statutory language. Several things operators were told to plan around are simply gone.

• State plans are leaner. A plan must contain three things: a description of how the state intends to use the funds each fiscal year, a Community Engagement Outcomes Report under 23 CFR 680.112(d), and a description of physical and cybersecurity strategies under 23 CFR 680.106(h). FHWA reviews only those three items. Anything beyond them is at the state's discretion.
• Justice40 scoring is rescinded. Applications are no longer expected to demonstrate disadvantaged-community alignment as a federal matter. A state may still weight it in its own criteria.
• Station spacing is now state-set. The one-travel-mile siting rule and the every-50-miles corridor spacing came from guidance the August 2025 document superseded. The statute requires that funded infrastructure be located along a designated Alternative Fuel Corridor; how far apart stations sit is for the state to determine, weighing grid capacity, geography and cost.
• Off-corridor use requires certification. Only where a state determines, and FHWA certifies, that its designated EV corridors are fully built out may it fund infrastructure on any public road or other publicly accessible location.

The cost share has not changed. The federal share for NEVI projects is 80 percent. Private and state funds may provide the non-federal share, and a private entity under contract may pay it. NEVI funds may be combined with other Federal-aid highway funding only if the total federal share still does not exceed 80 percent.

Why the Guidance Points at Fuel Retail

The IIJA directs states to consider the “proximity of existing off highway travel centers, fuel retailers, and small businesses” to proposed charging locations, and FHWA encourages co-locating chargers at retail sites with onsite amenities that could provide safe locations and restrooms. That is the strongest argument a fuel retailer has, and it is worth quoting in an application.

Note carefully what it is not. Amenities are encouraged, not a federal minimum standard. Earlier guides presented restrooms and food service as mandatory site qualifications. They are not, though an individual state may impose its own amenity scoring.

The Equipment Standards You Must Actually Meet

These are in the rule at 23 CFR Part 680, and they are where most operators get their specification wrong. Note that the siting requirements above come from the statute and state plans, while the following come from the regulation.

Three of these are commonly misstated, and each error costs money. OCPP 2.0.1 is the requirement, not OCPP 1.6 — buying to the older specification buys non-compliant hardware. ISO 15118 is the Plug and Charge communication standard; it is not a payment-card standard, and citing it for the payment requirement confuses two different obligations. And uptime is measured per port on a rolling twelve-month basis, not as a single annual figure for the station, which matters when you negotiate a service level agreement with a network: an SLA written at 95%, or written per station, does not meet the rule.

Applying Through Your State

FHWA does not fund applicants directly. Your state DOT or a designated state energy office runs the solicitation, so requirements, timelines and scoring vary. The general sequence:

1. Confirm your state's plan status before anything else. Under the August 2025 guidance, states were asked to submit plans covering all unobligated funding for fiscal years 2022–2026 within 30 days, and previously submitted plans for 2022–2025 could be resubmitted but are reviewed only against the three required items.
2. Confirm corridor eligibility. Use the FHWA Alternative Fuel Corridors maps to confirm your site is along a designated corridor, then check your state's plan for the spacing it adopted.
3. Watch for the solicitation. Sign up for your state DOT's procurement alerts. Where a state posts its notices differs, so confirm with the department rather than assuming a particular portal.
4. Start the utility conversation now. A four-port installation at the 150 kW minimum implies a substantial service upgrade, and interconnection lead times vary widely by utility and territory. Get both the required service size and the timeline in writing. This is usually the longest-lead item in the project.
5. Get an electrical site assessment from a licensed engineer to evaluate existing capacity and scope the upgrade.
6. Have counsel read the grant agreement. These are binding federal instruments; reimbursement terms, continued-operation conditions and reporting obligations all sit in the agreement rather than in the rule.
7. Arrange bridge financing. NEVI reimburses after expenditure. You pay first.

Obligations That Follow the Award

• Data submittal. 23 CFR 680.112 sets the requirements, and the August 2025 guidance directs submissions through the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation's EV-ChART platform. Confirm the specific fields, cadence and consequences in your state agreement.
• Cybersecurity. 23 CFR 680.106(h) requires physical and cybersecurity strategies, and 23 CFR 680.114 requires that chargers communicate with the network by a secure method and be able to receive secure remote software updates. No specific named framework is mandated by the rule.
• Where the five-year figure comes from. The IIJA allows NEVI funds to be used for operating assistance for a period not to exceed five years, and only where NEVI funds were first used for acquisition or installation. That is a cap on operating assistance, not a federal useful-life mandate. Any continued-operation or repayment obligation on your project comes from your state grant agreement, so read it.

Budgeting: What Is Fixed and What Is Not

Project costs vary too widely by site, utility territory and equipment for a national range to mean anything, so build your budget from your own contractor and utility quotes. What is fixed is the cost share: the federal share is 80 percent of eligible costs, leaving 20 percent plus all ineligible costs to you. Land acquisition and ongoing electricity are not eligible.

One thing to leave out of the stack entirely: the 30C Alternative Fuel Infrastructure Tax Credit does not apply to property placed in service after June 30, 2026 under P.L. 119-21. If a proforma you were shown still carries it, the proforma predates the change.

Action Items

1. Call your state DOT and ask, in these words, whether the state has an approved plan covering the fiscal years you would be applying under.
2. Confirm your site sits along a designated Alternative Fuel Corridor, then read your state's adopted spacing.
3. Open the utility interconnection conversation and get the service size and timeline in writing.
4. Specify equipment to 23 CFR Part 680 — four ports at 150 kW simultaneously, permanently attached CCS Type 1, OCPP 2.0.1 — and put the >97% per-port rolling uptime obligation into your network agreement, not just your grant file.
5. Model the project without 30C and without any assumption that federal money is currently flowing in your state.