Electric vehicles are known for rapid acceleration, but as Massachusetts highway officials plot how to spend $60 million of federal money to improve EV charging, they’re taking it slow at first. Too slow, for some observers. And don’t even mention the Mass. Turnpike charging problems.

While states including Maine, Ohio, and Pennsylvania have already awarded millions of dollars from the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure, or NEVI, program to add more DC fast chargers along major roads, Massachusetts doesn’t expect to make its first awards until May, the state’s highway agency said at a public meeting last week. Building the stations typically takes another six to 18 months.

But the Massachusetts Department of Transportation’s slow start could enable the state to award funds more quickly in future years, the agency said.

Massachusetts currently has only 664 DC fast chargers, which are capable of adding hundreds of miles of range per hour of charging to an electric vehicle and are considered critical for long road trips. But the state will need 10,000 fast chargers by 2030 to meet the projected demand from nearly one million EVs on the road at that time, a state multiagency task force concluded in a report in August.

Funds from the $5 billion federal NEVI program were meant to address the charging gap nationwide. EV sales growth has slowed this year, rising 50 percent in the third quarter, which some attribute to consumer anxiety about the lack of charging options. (Affordability is also a concern.)

Some states have moved quickly to put NEVI funds to work. In October, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine crowed that his state has taken the lead in supporting EV drivers as construction began on a NEVI-funded station at a Pilot Travel Center along Interstate 70 west of Columbus. Using NEVI funds, Ohio will have more than two dozen new stations, each with at least four chargers, in operation by the end of 2024.

Officials at MassDOT have moved more slowly. In June, they released a 28-question request for information from interested parties. By September, the state received more than two dozen replies and has been working on formulating next steps. MassDOT declined to disclose the replies.

At a meeting last week of the state’s Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Coordinating Council, which includes the Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, the Department of Public Utilities, and several other agencies, an official from MassDOT finally disclosed the state’s NEVI plan.

By Dec. 19, MassDOT hopes to issue a request for charging station developers to prequalify for state funds, senior counsel Christopher Aiello said at the meeting. In other states, charging station developers have included everyone from gas station owners and utility companies to national EV charging networks such as EVgo, Tesla, and Electrify America.

Once a group has been prequalified, the state will seek developers to bid on building charging stations at least every 50 miles along Route 2, Interstate 91, Interstate 495, and a portion of Interstate 195 near Fall River and New Bedford, Aiello said. Developers will have to select sites within one mile of a highway exit that have capacity from an electrical utility to build at least four DC fast chargers, each capable of adding 150 kilowatts per hour.

MassDOT declined to make Aiello available for an interview or comment on the plan beyond the details released at last week’s public meeting.

The four highways have little to no public EV fast charging available currently, Aiello said, making them a priority for the first round of NEVI funding. Adding charging at state-owned rest stops on other highways will be addressed in a subsequent round, he said.

“The process here is a lengthy one to get to this point,’’ Aiello said. “We’re using this process because it will make future rounds much more efficient.’’

For future funding rounds, the state won’t have to engage in a lengthy procurement process but will be able to issue “task orders’’ to the prequalified group of developers, “which can be done much more quickly,’’ Aiello said.

Adding fast chargers to the Mass. Turnpike, where six 2017-era chargers were decommissioned this year, faces several additional complications, Aiello said. Because the turnpike predates the federal highway system, the state is not sure federal funds can be used for chargers at state-owned rest stops along the road. And the master contract for managing the rest stops expires in two years and bidders may want to install their own charging stations, Aiello said.

“It may make sense to have that master operator, when they come in, build out their own EV charging infrastructure that they’ll be in charge of operating and maintaining for the foreseeable future,’’ he said.

The process received mixed reviews from state and industry officials seeking to accelerate the EV transition.

“I’m encouraged that they’re finally moving but I wish this had moved at a much faster rate,’’ Representative Jeff Roy, chair of the legislature’s Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy, said in an interview.

But Roy said he was “extremely disappointed’’ about the lack of progress on the Mass. Turnpike. MassDOT has engaged a contractor to replace the six 2017 chargers with similar technology, but the contractor won’t add more or newer charging terminals.

“It’s frustrating to me when I see that Tesla has been able to build a rather robust network around the nation,’’ Roy said.

Anna Vanderspek, EV program director at the Green Energy Consumers Alliance, also wanted to see faster movement on charging.

“We need a whole lot of DC fast charging stations and we need them as soon as possible,’’ Vanderspek said. “I appreciate the due diligence being done to make sure we are building them out thoughtfully. The infrastructure law was passed over a year ago. ‘Let’s go’ is my overall message.’’

ChargePoint, which runs a national charging network, opposes the state’s prequalification plan, which could reduce competition, according to Emily Kelly, the company’s senior manager for public policy.

“Creating a ‘short list’ of . . . applicants from a preliminary (request for quotes) will serve to exclude site hosts who may only have a single or handful of locations from participating in the program and hinder the development of the competitive EV charging market,’’ Kelly said in an email.

Aaron Pressman can be reached at aaron.pressman@globe.com. Follow him @ampressman.