Electric vehicle progress has skyrocketed over the last four years. There are more EVs on American roads than ever, EV chargers have spread across many major highways, and the U.S. has even gained a huge fleet of cost-saving EVs in use by the federal government. Seems like a step in the right direction, no?
Apparently, it’s not great enough, because the new presidential administration is looking to dismantle the progress under the guise of cost-cutting—and its latest effort to snuff out thousands of EV charging ports on federal buildings and properties alone could cost taxpayers more than a billion dollars.
Welcome back to Critical Materials, your daily roundup for all things electric and automotive tech. Here’s what’s on the docket today: Trump’s EV purge could cost taxpayers more than a billion dollars, EV chargers are facing more hackers than ever, and Tesla is preparing for the advent of Full Self-Driving in China. Let’s jump in.
30%: Trump’s EV Charger Purge Could Cost Taxpayers Over $1 Billion
Photo by: InsideEVs
Last week, the Trump administration announced that it would be ceasing operations of EV chargers deployed by the General Services Administration. The GSA, which manages federal properties and facilities (including around two-thirds of the federal government’s fleet of 650,000 vehicles) was told to pull the plug on all of its EV chargers—literally—and remove thousands of charging ports from hundreds of locations. Federal data suggests this could be anywhere between 2,200 and 8,000 charger ports operated by GSA at more than 650 locations.
Yes, you read that right. After spending $300 million to install the majority of these chargers during the Biden administration, the federal government will now flip the breaker and begin decommissioning them. And it’s not going to be free, either. In fact, a GSA official speaking with Politico E&E News estimates that retiring the stations will cost taxpayers between $50 million and $100 million.
It doesn’t stop with just throwing some chargers in the trash. Trump’s team is also reportedly looking to dump the 25,000 EVs that the government has already purchased.
The move, according to E&E, would flood the market with EVs sold at just a fraction of their purchase price and could cost hundreds of millions of dollars in realized depreciation losses as well as a new bill of around $700 for new gas-powered vehicles.
Here’s a snippet from E&E News which explains the math:
If the agency offloads the 25,000 EVs it purchased under the Biden administration—which the Verge reported is in the works—it could flood the market. The former GSA official, who asked to remain anonymous because their current employer has not authorized them to speak to the press, estimates that selling the EVs early could result in each one selling for only 25 percent of their original value.
The premature jettisoning could result in a loss of $225 million, the former official said. Since those EVs are working vehicles and would need to be replaced with gas cars, buying new vehicles could cost GSA another $700 million, they said.
So to recap on potential losses:
- $100 million decommissioning the GSA’s EV charging network
- $225 million in EV depreciation from selling at a lost
- $300 million spent installing EV chargers
- $700 million buying new gas-powered cars
That’s $1.325 billion that could potentially go to waste as the current administration begins to undo the progress made over the last four years to modernize the government’s transportation fleet. Don’t forget that’s taxpayer funding—meaning that you might as well pull $9 out of every tax-paying American’s pocket to light on fire.
Some of these stations are at places that actually need EV chargers in a secure location like national labs and military bases, while others are publicly available to government employees and visitors.
The irony? EVs were actually saving the government money. ICF, an investment consulting firm, previously estimated that the move to EVs would save the federal government $6 billion when considering the total cost of vehicle ownership (which includes vehicle purchasing, chargers, charger installation, fuel, electricity, and maintenance costs.)
60%: EV Charging Stations Are Becoming A Hacker’s Playground
Photo by: Electrify America
It turns out that the future of mobility isn’t just electrified—it’s also vulnerable. This tends to happen when everything becomes software-based, for better or for worse.
A new report from cybersecurity firm Upstream shows that threat actors aren’t just targeting hospitals, schools, and businesses with ransomware. They’re also targeting EV chargers and smart mobility products, both of which experienced a combined 39% increase in attacks year-over-year. For lack of better words, it means that your friendly neighborhood charging stations is the new frontier for hackers.
Here’s Automotive News with the specifics:
Upstream’s 2025 Automotive & Smart Mobility Global Cybersecurity Report logged 409 cyberattack incidents in 2024, up from 295 in 2023. The share of these attacks involving EV chargers increased to 6 percent from 4 percent in 2023.
Attacks are getting more common and more high risk, the cybersecurity company said. As devices, apps and other tools talk to each other, the potential footprint of an attack grows larger.
Fifty-nine percent of the EV charging attacks in 2024 had the potential to impact millions of devices, including chargers, mobile apps, vehicles and more. Thirty-seven percent could have affected thousands of devices, Upstream said.
Upstream’s figures show that hackers aren’t just messing around here—they’re shutting things down. And as the EV charging industry grows, it could easily become the target of more sophisticated threat actor groups looking to game payment systems or extort businesses for ransoms should they gain more privileged access to a charging network’s systems.
Heck, this weekend I had to pay for an EV charging session in a parking garage using a QR code. I’m not sure how comfortable you are just scanning a sticker on the side of a charger and entering your credit card details, but I can tell you that you shouldn’t be.
Aside from going straight for the software running the charging networks or the payment systems, there’s also the possibility that hackers could use the chargers to exploit an avant-garde charger-to-vehicle attack. Remember that a charger isn’t just passing electricity to your car, but actively communicating to it. Should an attacker find a way to exploit that communication, it could be game over for your oftware-based hunk of rolling metal.
Let’s not forget that nation-state actors also exist. It’s a slim chance, but if state-sponsored attackers found a way to weaponize EV chargers to overload the power grid, they could potentially cause massive blackout and financial chaos. In fact, a study by George Mason University, Concordia University and Canada’s Hydro-Quebec Research Institute in 2024 simulated exactly this kind of switching attack, and guess what? It proved feasible.
Now, I’m not going to tell you to freak out about this. The likelihood of it impacting you, at least right now, is extremely low. But it’s worth having a healthy distrust and push for government regulation into the safety and security of charging networks, similar to how fuel stations are regulated. Things in this case are a bit more advanced; it’s not like a gas pump has a direct line of communication to your car’s computers.
At the rate we’re going, we might end up longing for the days when the biggest problem with EV chargers was just finding one that worked.
90%: Tesla’s Latest Updates In China Shows That It’s Preparing To Launch FSD
Photo by: InsideEVs
Tesla is finally taking steps to roll out Full Self-Driving in China. But, as with everything Tesla does in the country, there’s a lot more going on behind the red curtain than what meets the eye. And while Chinese Tesla owners might soon get FSD-like driver-assist features, the full rollout is still caught in the center of U.S.-China trade tensions.
Tesla’s latest update will let Chinese owners who have already paid for Tesla’s $8,800 (64,000 CNY) FSD package activate certain Autopilot For City Streets and Navigate on Autopilot features. According to Car New China, some of these include allowing the vehicle to exit highway ramps and intersections when the vehicle is actively routing to a destination. The vehicle can also make U-turns, recognize traffic signals, shift lanes, and monitor driver attentiveness using the driver-facing cabin camera.
The FSD software package in China has also reportedly been rebranded to “FSD Intelligent Assisted Driving,” a move which some speculate has been made to appease regulators by downplaying the level of autonomy that the system can provide. In case that sounds familiar, it’s because Tesla has had issues with regulators in other countries (including the U.S. and Germany) over the FSD name—after all, the system is not truly “full self-driving” at all.
It’s worth noting that Tesla is still waiting on regulatory approval before pushing out FSD in China. As we’ve called out before, China is expected to use the regulatory approval of FSD as a bargaining chip over tariffs given Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close relationship with the U.S. government. President Trump in particular has been threatening new tariffs on Chinese goods after the previous administration already locked out Chinese EVs using a combination of direct tariffs and indirect attacks like disqualifying vehicles for federal incentives (like the EV tax credit) if certain components were sourced from China.
For now, Chinese consumers are effectively getting “FSD Lite,” which has some but not all functionality of the driver-assist feature as cars in the States. But, to be fair, U.S. consumers are also waiting for the coast-to-coast-capable FSD they were promised all the way back in 2016 which has yet to be delivered, so perhaps consider this more of an international “welcome to the club.”
If Tesla gets approval to push the full-fledged version of FSD, it could help not just to appease customers who have been waiting for years to take advantage of the software they already purchased, but could also help to make Tesla’s vehicles more competitive in a market where tech is key and domestic automakers are absolutely dominating (with cheaper alternatives to Tesla’s FSD, even).
100%: How Can The EV Charging Experience Improve?
Photo by: InsideEVs
It might not seem like it, but there’s a lot that goes into making the EV charging experience truly good. Location, amenities, and ease of charging are all factors that play into how an EV charging experience plays out. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but it seems like this can vary vastly from location to location, and even between charging providers.
One of the items I mentioned earlier was how EV chargers accept payment. Payment processing can be a four-letter word in many industries—EV charging is no different. But actually getting a company to take your money? Well, that could be a tap of your phone, swipe of your card, tap inside of an app, or—my least favorite—scan a QR code for a link in a text message. This is my biggest pain when charging at a non-Tesla charging station. Maybe I’m just spoiled from plug-and-go.
What’s your biggest issue with the EV charging experience and how can it be improved? Let me know in the comments.
