(Crankers) Welcome to the land of wasting money, or laundering it, whatever one comes up first in an investigation. Joe Biden’s administration invested $7.5 billion into EV charging stations, but somehow only built 7 or 8 stations in about 2 years, and now people want to know where all the money went. I say 7 or 8 stations because some reports said 7, and other reports said 8, and I honestly don’t know which one is correct. And you know what, I don’t even care to research it further because it doesn’t really matter if it’s 7 or 8 since it’s only off by a number and won’t impact the context of the story in any way.
The ironic part about what you’ll read next is that this info comes from the Washington Post. So you know it must be bad if even the WaPo is pointing it out. Let’s dive in:
President Biden has long vowed to build 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations in the United States by 2030. Those stations, the White House said, would help Americans feel confident purchasing and driving electric cars, and help the country cut carbon pollution.
Meh. I don’t feel confident if you vowed to build 500,000 EV charging stations and have only come up with seven (or 8) so far. You mean to tell me that in the next six years, they’ll magically build another 499,993 stations? It took them two years to build seven. That’s 3.5 stations per year, meaning it would take 142,855.143 years to build the rest. Pretty sure this ain’t happening, bubba. I’m bad at math, but you get the idea.
But now, more than two years after Congress allocated $7.5 billion to help build out those stations, only 7 EV charging stations are operational across four states. And as the Biden administration rolls out its new rules for emissions from cars and trucks — which will require a lot more electric cars and hybrids on the road — the sluggish build-out could slow the transition to electric cars.
And most people don’t really want the electric cars, for a number of reasons. I think hybrid is really the way to go for now, because electric vehicles still need work on coming up with a better battery, or at least batteries that don’t cost so much to replace. I can’t afford a new battery, can you? Exactly. You may as well buy a used Hyundai for that price.
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which Biden signed in November 2021, included $7.5 billion for EV charging. Of that, $5 billion was allocated to individual states in so-called “formula funding” to build a network of fast chargers along major highways in the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure, or NEVI, program.
But after two years, that program has only delivered seven open charging stations with a total of 38 spots where drivers can charge their vehicles, according to a spokesperson for the Federal Highway Administration. (The funding should be enough to build up to 20,000 charging spots or around 5,000 stations, according to analysis from the EV policy analyst group Atlas Public Policy.) Stations are open in Hawaii, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania and under construction in four other states.
Where is the money now? Who really has it? What did they spend it on? Is there any accountability or transparency at all? This is why people say the government ruins almost everything they touch – especially with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ administration. It’s like they picked a bunch of DEI hires to do real world things and they just ended up wasting money or having no idea what to really do.
And this is why the DOGE – Department of Government Efficiency is very much needed. I can’t wait to see how the DOGE performs, because spending billions to build only seven charging stations was a total waste of money.
For reference, here’s the other report that said 8 charging stations.
And for more context about where the money went, think about this info from Factcheck.org that talks about where things are expected to be: “But not all of the money has been spent, or even made available to states yet. Experts say the funds are expected to help build thousands of charging stations and more than 30,000 individual charging ports. According to the Federal Highway Administration, as of mid-August, the funds that have been deployed have helped produce 61 charging ports at 15 stations, with another 14,900 ports in progress.“