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.
To the other commenters replying to you, and to you as well, the money is committed in a way that is difficult if not impossible to prevent from going out the door once projects are complete or hit specific milestones. Many projects are already underway but it takes time to select sites, developers, manufacture chargers, negotiate with utilities, and develop the sites. This work is underway and many more chargers will come online over the next few years. The new administration is preventing new projects, but horses have already left the barn.
> 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.
Without going through everything with a fine tooth comb I imagine some of the money may have been spent upgrading the electric grid to support the chargers.
Fast chargers as I understand are more taxing to the electric grid and so are not simply able to be placed just anywhere there is electricity. Additionally a source paper in the govtech.com article also emphasizes looking at coverage rather than number of chargers. That is wanting to have chargers spread out such a way that people can complete longer trips.
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.
You don’t get 1/10 the chargers for 1/10 the money, thats not how projects work. You need to hire people, make a plan, and execute on the plan, and all of that has upfront costs. The same in government as in business — why do you think startups need investors?
That money was wasted when the project was cancelled, not before.
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.
> 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.
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.
NATIONAL-scale projects are exactly what the federal government should do. I specifically referred to the Eisenhower interstate-highway system. Those are the kind of grand undertakings that transformed our country, and which the current administration can't even conceive... let alone articulate or propose.
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.