by Brad Anderson
- The state has been moving at a snail’s pace to establish new charging sites.
- Two vendors have been selected to construct charging locations in the state.
- Several other US states have received funds but haven’t built new charging stations.
Nearly four years ago, Massachusetts landed $64 million from the Biden administration’s National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Program, the massive $5 billion national push to seed thousands of new charging stations across the country. It is now mid-2026, and the state has yet to turn any of that money into a single working charger.
Two years ago, the state selected three vendors to identify possible locations for the new charging stations. Only two of them, Applegreen and Global Partners, have signed contracts, and both companies, along with the state Department of Transportation, have stayed conspicuously tight-lipped about what’s actually happened since.
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The Commonwealth Beacon reports that Applegreen and Global Partners have spent roughly $4 million between them on engineering, permitting, and procurement. There are finally signs of progress, but MassDOT isn’t saying why things have crawled along this slowly.
According to MassDOT spokesperson Marshall Hook, Applegreen recently placed an order for EV charging equipment for sites in Greenfield and Newburyport, with construction expected to begin in July. Global Partners, meanwhile, has ordered the equipment needed to set up stations in Lancaster, Raynham, and Wrentham.
Too Slow For The EV Transition
“The slowness of adoption here is mystifying,” former state transportation secretary Jim Aloisi said. “If your approach to transportation sector decarbonization is largely about the transition to EVs, then you should be spending a fair amount of effort accelerating the process of getting people to adopt EVs, and one way to do that is obviously to roll out the NEVI initiative. That’s the disconnect.”
Massachusetts is hardly the only state dragging its feet on getting these federally funded chargers running. A website tracking the NEVI program shows that plenty of states have received tens of millions of dollars without building a single station, including Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, North Dakota, Oregon, Alabama, Arizona, and, surprisingly, even California.
On the flip side, some states have put the money to work. Texas, for one, already has several NEVI-funded charging stations in operation, with many more at various stages of construction.
