Independence Avenue in Washington, D.C., close to the headquarters of the Global Services Administration
Imagine a publicly-held or private company is told by its external consultants to shutter the thousands existing electric-vehicle charging stations it opened for its massive fleet of electric vehicles – and then was told to park the EVs and replace them with internal-combustion engine-powered automobiles? Sheer lunacy, you say? No one in his right mind would ever do that? You would be raising several good points and this is especially pertinent because that is what the General Services Administration has been told to do by the Trump administration.
The General Services Administration announced on Thursday that it plans to shut down all of its EV chargers across the country. In the announcement, the agency described the chargers as “not mission critical.”
The U.S. General Services Administration announced on Thursday that it plans to shut down all of its electric vehicle chargers across the country. The agency described them in the announcement as “not mission critical.”
The agency, which also holds responsibility for managing the U.S. government’s vehicle fleets, a task that includes electric vehicles. As the present time, the GSA operates several hundred EV chargers in the 50 states that provide approximately 8,000 connectors. The charging stations are available for use by drivers of government-owned EVs as well as personal vehicles owned by federal employees.
“As GSA has worked to align with the current administration, we have received direction that all GSA owned charging stations are not mission critical,” an e-mail announcing the changes reads.
The GSA is an independent agency of the United States government. It was established in 1949 with a directive to help manage and support the basic functioning of federal agencies. To that end, the GFA provides the supplies and products that U.S. government offices need to function. It also provides transporation and develops government-wide cost-minimizing policies and other management tasks.
A person with knowledge of the situation who could not speak on the record told a reporter that official guidance instructing federal workers to begin the process of shutting down the chargers will be announced internally next week.
A March 2024 news release indicates that the GSA had ordered over 58,000 EVs and had begun to install more than 25,000 charging ports in addition to the 8,000 currently in use.
Pages on the GSA’s website related to EV charging, such as one entitled “GSA charging ports,” located on the agency’s main website in the Fleet Electrification section with a page title of GSA Charging Ports that shows up on major search sites including Bing and Google and with the text dated March 3, 2024 reading “Thirty-two new projects for electrical vehicle supply equipment, also called EVSE, or EV charging ports, will provide a total of 782 ports,” went to an error page that reads “We apologize for the inconvenience… The page you’re looking for may have gone offline or does not exist.”
While the GSA will be required to remove its Evs from its current fleet, it is unclear as to whether the agency would merely put them into storage or sell them at current market prices. The picture at other federal agencies is equally unclear but they will likely be forced into making similar decisions for their own fleets. In addition, many government agencies use the GSA’s EV chargers for their own plug-in vehicles.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
