Florida appears to have backed off its plans to spend nearly $200 million in federal funds meant for electric car chargers on flying cars instead, according to documents obtained by the Miami Herald.
In a report dated September 2026, Florida Department of Transportation officials softened their language about funding electric-powered helicopter-style vehicles in lieu of “everyday vehicles.” Now, the report says, Florida will spend some of its $197 million in National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure cash on regular cars, referred to as “surface passenger vehicles.”
However, the language in the report was vague enough to leave a foot in the door for continued funding of drone-style flying vehicles. FDOT did not respond to Herald questions about how exactly it plans to spend the money or what it plans to build.
“NEVI-funded charging infrastructure will primarily serve surface passenger vehicles including cars and trucks, but may also include additional value by supporting other uses, such as aviation users like electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, where co-location is feasible,” the report reads.
Electric transportation advocates in Florida and beyond praised the change in strategy, which they said will benefit far more Floridians than a tight focus on the two to six-passenger short-range flying vehicles currently being developed.
“There’s no better time for Florida to move this plan forward. With rising gas and diesel prices - diesel up nearly 70% from a year ago - and the growing demand for used electric vehicles, FDOT’s commitment to expanding reliable charging access for surface passenger vehicles is a smart investment in affordability and energy independence,” said Ali DySard, Florida Manager for the Environmental Defense Fund, in a statement.
Florida has had a tortured relationship with this Biden-era money, originally intended to bolster states’ public charging networks for electric cars. First, the state sat on the money for so long that the federal government clawed back about $45 million of it. Then, Florida launched a website saying it had an “all-hands-on-deck approach to fight back” against the “war against the American automobile.” Under President Donald Trump’s administration, Florida finally agreed to spend the cash.
But in a report obtained by the Herald after its lawyers got involved in July, the state revealed its plan to spend all of that money on flying cars, saying that the private market had done enough to build EV chargers throughout the state.
FDOT did not respond to Herald requests for comment at the time, but a week later it told the Tampa Bay Times that there was no “active proposal” to redirect the funds because the Federal Highway Administration had not approved any plan.
This new report, with the tweaked spending plan, is dated one month after that comment from FDOT — on Sept. 9.
Stephen Smith, executive director of Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, has followed how states have spent this money closely. He said Florida’s “Flying car Jetson’s fever dream” slowed down real progress that would have benefited millions of Florida drivers.
“It’s just totally inappropriate to hijack funds for another electric need that is actually going to have a bigger impact,” he said. “It was a mistake for Florida not to lock onto the money quickly and move quickly.”
No public engagement
While many electric car advocates applaud the state’s new tack in funding chargers for cars with the federal money, they have plenty of questions about what that will look like.
The report shows Florida intends to spend its cash quickly, all before 2028. But unlike previous versions of the report, it does not go into details on how many chargers would be installed or where.
Ryan McKinnon, spokesperson for the Charge Ahead partnership, a group of gas stations and convenience stores that seek to add EV chargers to their businesses, said the report was “nebulous” and that made it hard for businesses to have the information they need to invest in chargers.
“One thing businesses need is clarity,” he said. “We would like to see this program move forward as designed and not get so experimental here with the flying cars.”
The report is vague on language for precisely the types of chargers it would fund, too. It mentioned combination chargers that would power both regular and flying cars. At least three of them have been installed in Florida already, at airports in Gainesville, Tallahassee and the Panhandle’s Okaloosa County.
For years, the state’s community outreach for this report — detailed in the document— has been focused tightly on flying cars. The last car-focused meeting was in 2023. Advocates worry that the state doesn’t have the information it needs to install any regular chargers where people need them.
“They’ve been having meetings for and with special interest groups,” said Dory Larsen, senior electric transportation program manager for Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. “There just have not been any meetings recently that have had the words general public.”
A push for flying cars
In January, Florida received certification from the Trump administration that it had fully built out its EV charger network, which would allow the state to spend this cash on other uses, like upgrading old chargers or installing them in new locations like government buildings. In North Carolina, for example, the state used its federal cash to build public chargers in apartment buildings.
Two Florida counties have zero EV chargers, per the U.S. Department of Energy. Two others have only one charger apiece.
In the 2025 draft report obtained by the Herald, FDOT argued that the state’s EV charging network was flourishing, thanks to private market investments, and didn’t need additional government subsidies. It said it “will not waste taxpayer dollars and spend it on everyday passenger vehicles.”
Instead, Florida appeared to set its sights on “advanced air mobility” instead, which it repeatedly calls a “viable solution for modern travel.”
Florida is one of a handful of states tapped by the federal government to run pilot programs on flying cars. Florida built the nation’s first aerial testing site at its SunTrax facility in Central Florida.
And the state thinks it will take off. Florida’s Advanced Air Mobility Business Plan, released last year, projects it could go from zero current passengers per year in 2026 to more than a million by 2027. That’s about the number of short distance riders on the Brightline in all of 2025.
“The Phase 1A modeling forecast suggests that AAM passenger trips could reach between 220,000 and 1.4 million trips in the initial operational year of 2027, with numbers climbing to somewhere between 11.2 million and 18.7 million annual trips for all the phases in 2050,” the report reads.
This story was originally published by the Miami Herald and shared in partnership with the Florida Climate Reporting Network, a multi-newsroom initiative founded by the Miami Herald, the Sun-Sentinel, The Palm Beach Post, the Orlando Sentinel, WLRN Public Media and the Tampa Bay Times.
