Tens of millions in taxpayer cash was poured into electric vehicle (EV) charging stations on remote tribal lands under the Biden Administration.

But many of them are sitting dark, broken or barely used.

A Daily Mail investigation has found that EV chargers installed across Native American reservations under a Biden-era green spending blitz are increasingly being viewed as a costly policy failure.

The chargers were sold as a moral mission promoting climate justice and equal access to clean technology for marginalized communities.

But critics say the projects have delivered idle machines, unreliable power and little real benefit for people struggling with far more basic needs.

Researchers, analysts and federal watchdogs have pointed to growing evidence that the charging networks were rushed out with little regard for economics, geography or local realities.

Public chargers in rural and tribal areas are often used less than five percent of the time, according to research by EV analytics firm Paren, and critics say it starts with the numbers.

A typical new EV costs around $55,000 to $58,000, far above the $44,000 average household income for Native Americans. Poverty rates in these communities are disproportionately high.

EV charging stations need to reach 20 percent utilization in order to cover operating costs, including electricity, maintenance and land lease agreements.  

And in many cases, the charging stations built on reservations don't work at all.

Experts say chargers on tribal lands are more likely to be offline due to hardware failures, lack of spare parts, payment system glitches or unreliable electricity. Some have been rendered useless for weeks by power outages.

One 2025 study by the US Department of Transportation found that faulty power supply routinely knocked rural and tribal chargers offline even when the equipment itself was intact.

Another report by JD Power found that one in five EV drivers traveling through remote corridors – including tribal areas – were unable to charge due to malfunctions, outages or payment failures.

In July 2023, a large power outage across the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma left all EV chargers inoperable for days.

Under former President Joe Biden's 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, multiple EV funding streams were launched at once.

They included the $5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program, the $2.5 billion Charging and Fueling Infrastructure (CFI) Grant Program and the $5 billion Clean School Bus Program.

In 2025, the Cherokee Nation was allocated $10.7 million to install 112 charging ports across roughly a dozen sites.

In California, the Fort Independence Indian Community was awarded $15.1 million in 2024 to build a solar-powered microgrid and charging station along US Route 395.

The Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, spanning North and South Dakota, received $3.9 million in 2024 for EV chargers on land once synonymous with protests against an oil pipeline.

Supporters framed the projects as symbols of progress and resistance to fossil fuels.

But utilization data paints a far bleaker picture.

Loren McDonald, then chief analyst at Paren, warned last year that chargers in poor rural areas were being used for less than an hour per day – nowhere near enough to justify construction and maintenance costs.

Paren found that North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana – states with significant Native American populations – rank among the lowest in EV charger utilization nationwide.

UCLA researcher Qiao Yu, who has studied EV deployment on tribal lands, said the infrastructure was often poorly conceived from the start.

Some communities, he noted, still lack reliable electricity or clean water.

'If you don't have electricity, how can you have EV charging?' Yu told the Daily Mail.

Yu's 2025 study found that chargers in tribal and rural areas suffer higher rates of hardware failure and slower charging speeds. In many cases, nobody nearby has the training to fix them. Replacement parts are expensive and slow to arrive.

A Harvard University study from 2024 found that in dozens of rural US counties, EV charging schemes were already being abandoned because they were underused and too costly to maintain.

The result: so-called 'charging deserts,' where drivers cannot reliably plug in at all.

Even federal officials admit they struggle to measure success. A 2025 Government Accountability Office report found that many federally funded EV projects on tribal lands lacked clear performance targets.

In some cases, utilization and uptime were not being properly tracked. That means billions could be spent without a clear answer as to whether the chargers are helping anyone.

On the ground, the shortcomings are obvious. Chargers near Navajo tribal lands in Holbrook, Arizona, are rarely used because EV drivers prefer faster, more reliable chargers elsewhere, according to CleanTechnica.

Meanwhile, critics argue that the Biden administration prioritized symbolism over practicality.

An EV charging kit for a home can cost as little as $300. But the high-powered DC fast chargers typically installed along highways often exceed $300,000 per unit, before maintenance.

Joseph McNeil, who is involved in a renewable project at Standing Rock, has defended the chargers as a matter of equal access.

'Our economic situation shouldn't dictate our access to sustainability,' he said.

Projects like Electric Nation – a tribal-led initiative aiming to build more than 100 chargers and deploy electric trucks across 23 reservations in five Upper Midwest states – argue that electrification is part of a long-term health and environmental strategy.

Bob Blake, founder of Electric Nation and a member of the Red Lake Ojibwe Nation, has described the effort as 'resistance' to fossil fuel infrastructure and a response to health crises on tribal lands.

Since taking office in 2025, President Donald Trump's administration has moved to roll back EV subsidies and infrastructure spending, calling many projects an 'incredible waste of taxpayer dollars.'

New funding under NEVI has been halted, though a federal judge ruled in January that freezing the $5 billion program was unlawful – a decision that could still be appealed.

In August 2025, a $7 billion federal solar funding project was scrapped, cutting green energy grants to the Hopi Tribe in northeastern Arizona and others.

Republican leaders on the House Energy and Commerce Committee have raised concerns about mismanagement, slow rollouts and poor oversight of EV charging programs.

Even Tesla CEO Elon Musk, a vocal supporter of EVs but an opponent of subsidies, has argued that charging networks should be market-driven – even if that means fewer chargers in remote areas.

The US Senate is now weighing legislation to redirect $879 million previously approved for EV charging to other infrastructure priorities.

Yu argued that such moves are short-sighted. He envisions a future where reservations are linked by EV buses, pollution drops, and economic opportunity improves – but only with sustained, thoughtful investment.

'They only look at the price tag right now, not the benefits in ten or 20 years,' he said.