EV charger domestic content: the Buy America rules, and what's changing

EV charger domestic content is one of the few corners of Build America, Buy America where the rule has already changed once and is, right now, in the middle of changing again. If you build, sell or install chargers on a federal-aid highway project, the number you have to hit has moved from nothing, to 55 percent, and a federal agency has formally proposed moving it to as much as 100 percent. None of that is settled history. It is live rulemaking, and it affects every EV charger bought or installed with National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) or Charging and Fueling Infrastructure (CFI) money today.

Why EV chargers get their own rule

Most Build America, Buy America questions start by classifying the item, and an EV charger is a manufactured product, not iron and steel or a construction material. That means it does not face the all-or-nothing test that applies to structural steel; it faces a percentage test on component cost, the same family of rule covered in how BABA domestic content is calculated. What makes EV chargers unusual is that the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), which administers NEVI and CFI funding, did not simply apply the standard manufactured-products percentage. It ran its own waiver process for chargers specifically, and that waiver is the thing now being rewritten.

The timeline so far

Three distinct phases have applied, or are proposed to apply, to EV chargers purchased with federal-aid highway funds. The dates matter, because a charger bought under one phase can look compliant under a rule that no longer governs the next one.

What changed in February 2026, and why

On 12 February 2026, FHWA published a notice proposing to modify the EV charger waiver, raising the required domestic content from 55 percent to up to 100 percent of total component cost. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy framed the timing as the point at which the industry's own adjustment period should have run out, telling the department the change was overdue: "We are currently beyond the timeframe industry said that they would need to ramp-up capacity to be able to domestically manufacture EV chargers," he said in FHWA's announcement of the proposal. The public comment period closed on 16 March 2026, and state attorneys general, manufacturers and industry groups filed comments before that deadline.

Today, no EV charging manufacturer can meet a 100 percent threshold, and this change would effectively end the goal of the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program. (Ben Prochazka, Executive Director, Electrification Coalition)

That quote captures the substance of the pushback: the Electrification Coalition and several charger manufacturers argue that no supplier currently sources every component domestically, so a 100 percent standard would not tighten the market so much as stall procurement across chargers already contracted, ordered or mid-installation under the 55 percent rule. Whatever the outcome, the proposal is a useful illustration of a pattern worth planning for on any manufactured product: a Buy America threshold set today is not a number you get to keep using indefinitely.

The people who actually feel this shift are not just the charger manufacturers named in the trade press. State departments of transportation administer the NEVI awards, charging-network operators specify the hardware, and general contractors install it, and all three sit on the compliance chain for the same bill of materials. A state DOT that approved a supplier under the 55 percent standard still owns the determination on any unit installed after a new rule takes effect, so the paperwork trail needs to survive a rule change mid-programme, not just a single procurement cycle.

How the determination actually runs

Set the politics aside and the mechanics are the same as any other manufactured product: line up the bill of materials for the charger cabinet, cable assembly, power electronics, connector and enclosure, price each component's US-origin share, and total the domestic cost against the full component cost. The 55 percent domestic content threshold guide walks through that arithmetic in full, and it is the same test whether the floor sits at 55 percent today or somewhere higher once FHWA's proposal is resolved. The only thing that changes between phases is the pass mark, not the method.

Final assembly is a separate, binary requirement layered on top of the percentage test, not folded into it. A charger assembled abroad does not become compliant by clearing 55 percent component cost, and a charger assembled domestically does not clear the standard just by virtue of that assembly. Both conditions have to hold at once, which is a detail that trips up bidders who treat "assembled in the US" and "55 percent domestic" as interchangeable claims from a supplier.

Take a level-2 charging cabinet as a concrete example. Say the enclosure, connector and cable are fabricated domestically, the power electronics board is imported, and final assembly happens at a US facility. That charger clears the assembly test outright, but whether it clears the 55 percent floor depends entirely on how much of the total component cost the imported board represents. If the board is the single most expensive part, a domestically boxed charger can still fail on cost alone, and no amount of pointing at the US assembly line changes that result.

One more wrinkle in FHWA's own wording is worth flagging: the February 2026 notice describes the new figure as "up to 100 percent", not a flat mandate at that number. That phrasing leaves room for the final rule to land below 100, or to phase in over a schedule the way the wider manufactured-products standard already does. Until FHWA publishes a final decision, treat the 100 percent figure as the ceiling under discussion, not the number to determine against today.

What to do while the rule is unsettled

• Determine against the standard actually in force for your procurement date, not the one you expect to apply by the time the charger ships.
• Keep the bill of materials and supplier attestations on file for every charger, since a verdict that was correct under phase 2 needs to be re-run, not assumed, if phase 3 takes effect.
• If your delivery schedule straddles a possible rule change, model the determination under both the current and the proposed threshold before you commit to a supplier.
• Treat a supplier's "final assembly in the USA" claim as answering only the assembly question, and check the component-cost percentage separately.

This is the same discipline that applies to the FHWA-funded projects generally, since highway agencies are the funding source for both charger installations and the broader construction programme. If a specific charger line genuinely cannot clear the standard, the waivers overview covers the categories, including nonavailability, that a non-compliant item may qualify for, though the request itself goes to the funding agency, not to a supplier or to us.