SANTA FE, N.M. — Nearly $68 million is headed to New Mexico to set up an electric vehicle charging network. The funding comes from President Joe Biden’s Investing in America agenda.

“It’s a national announcement of $623 million for the CFI program. 68 million of that approximately, is coming to New Mexico split across three projects,” Federal Highway Administrator Shailen Bhatt said.

CFI stands for the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure program. The three projects are headed to Santa Fe County, Taos, and I-10.

“$3.3 million for the county of Santa Fe to build an EV charging network of 33 fast chargers and level two charging stations at 13 sites. $500,000 for Taos to install six publicly available fast EV chargers,” Bhatt said. “$63.8 million for the New Mexico DOT to build two EV charging centers for medium and heavy-duty commercial electric vehicles along I-10.”

Bhatt says the project will focus on the rural parts of the state, which New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham echoed.

“New Mexico has fared incredibly well,” Lujan Grisham said. “Rural poor states, no matter who the president is, often get left behind. And that has never been the case in this administration. It is certainly not the case where we got the lion’s share.”

New Mexico is getting about 10% of the funding for the national project. The rest of the money will go to 21 other states and Puerto Rico.

Bhatt explained why New Mexico was chosen among so many applicants.

“What Taos and Santa Fe have been able to do is give us community locations… where they’re going to put chargers in publicly accessible areas,” Bhatt said. “The I-10 project is very incredibly important, not just for New Mexico, but our national freight network, you know, we have a lot of goods that are flowing across – the nation supply chain is critical.”

NMDOT says many of the new chargers would provide a quicker charge – some just take 20 minutes for a full battery.

Once construction begins, the chargers will take six to nine months before being fully operational.