What went wrong is that the federal government didn't build or legislate a national charging infrastructure to match the scale of the interstate highway system.
They could have strong-armed the states into it with a combination of funding the construction and the way they mandated the 21 drinking age: by threatening to withhold highway funds.
They definitely tried... $7.5 Billion worth. It's on pause now :-(
https://www.govtech.com/transportation/federal-funding-for-e...
Yeah, because it was ineffective and the people running it, like most federal bureaucracy - extremely incompetent (to mind bending shocking levels). How many chargers got built for that vs other nations similar initiatives at that price tag? There’s just some things that the federal government should not be in charge of until they can prove that they are good stewards of our money.
> Yeah, because it was ineffective and the people running it, like most federal bureaucracy - extremely incompetent (to mind bending shocking levels).
I think this sort of statement should be revised. From an outsider's point of view, there is a political current within the US that pushes with a fundamentalist fervor the idea that state institutions cannot do any good or anything right. This becomes a self fulfilling prophecy when they elect candidates that push these ideals, which have a vested interest in sabotaging, derailing, and shutting down projects.
It’s not just a perspective. Tesla was doing this just fine, building tons of chargers, profitably. The government attempts to stimulate more but at a much higher cost. I have yet to charge anywhere but a Tesla charger. I do think the NACS standard finally being widely adopted would have changed things but came a little too late.
Exactly this. It's not a left/right thing; I'm really tired of the charged partisan excuses (pun intended). What I'm saying is, where is all the charging infrastructure that my tax payer dollars payed for? Where the hell did the money go? If we can't get refunds for wasted taxpayer money, we need to start reevaluating if some of these programs should even exist.
Did you read the article? The program was just paused, and most of the money was never spent.
> Approval of funding does not necessarily mean the money has been dispersed. Only about $500 million of the $5 billion allotted for NEVI had been dispersed as of October, said Corey Harper, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University’s College of Engineering, who has conducted research into the NEVI program
Good. But $500 million is still to much for 7 chargers. Where is the money? Where is it! Really. That's our money that was taken at the threat of gunpoint. Enough of this theft and grift. Shut it down, the entire thing and rebuilt from scratch if need-be.
That program should be a textbook case-study in how not to run federal projects.
Here's a true statistic:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2024/03/28/... ("Biden’s $7.5 billion investment in EV charging has only produced 7 stations in two years" (2024))
That's insane. Wild that people defend this because they hate Trump so much (yeah he's a bag-oh-farts, but that's a lot of damn money).
They didn’t spend most of that money yet.
This is a story about a program not getting off the ground in two years and then being cancelled by the political opposition. Is two years too slow? You could certainly argue that.
But this really isn’t a story about government incompetence wasting billions of dollars on a handful or charging stations. Money was allocated, but it never had the chance to be spent.
> They could have strong-armed the states into it with a combination of funding the construction and the way they mandated the 21 drinking age: by threatening to withhold highway funds.
Yea let's give the federal government more power. That's going so well right now.
> Yea let's give the federal government more power. That's going so well right now.
Investing on a nation-wide infrastructure grid that fundamentally changes the nation's energy independence is hardly a reason to mindlessly parrot state rights cliches.
The current issue is the president ignoring legal limits of his power and breaking laws right and left. While his party cheers on.
While useful parts of the federal goverment are destroyed, because they dont serve ultra rich.
In a way, the current administration perfectly demonstrates the value of a strong federal government: a kakistocratic, kleptocratic regime wouldn't dismantle the "administrative state" if it weren't an impediment to their criminality, incompetence, and rapacity.
Isn't this lack of forward thinking somewhat the general problem now?
From an EU perspective the world as it has existed in the living memory is a world shaped by decisive US-actions. The way EVs have been approached were anything but that. Arguably neither did Germany, because of the way their politicians are entangled with the car manufacturers.