Today, let’s focus on the third item so we can remind ourselves that government is inefficient and incompetent.
And we’ll focus specifically on Biden’s push for more electric vehicles. The President wants to encourage consumers to transition away from the internal combustion engine, so his legislation has big subsidies for more electric charging stations.
How’s that working out?
Just as you might suspect. Here are some excerpts from Shannon Osaka’s report in the Washington Post.
President Biden has long vowed to build 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations in the United States by 2030. …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. …$5 billion was allocated to individual states in so-called “formula funding” to build a network of fast chargers along major highways… But after two years, that program has only delivered 7 open charging stations with a total of 38 spots where drivers can charge their vehicles… requirements…slow down the build-out of the chargers. “This funding comes with dozens of rules and requirements,” Laska said.
Since the article does not specify how much money has been spent so far, we don’t know the per-station cost, but it surely will be enormous.
To be fair, the per-station cost presumably will decline over time, but I’m sure it won’t be anywhere as low as the cost of private charting stations.
And the article notes that Tesla is doing a much better job than the klutzes in Washington.
The United States currently has close to 10,000 “fast” charging stations in the country, of which over 2,000 are Tesla Superchargers, according to the Department of Energy. Tesla Superchargers — some of which have been opened to drivers of other vehicles — are the most reliable fast-charging systems in the country.
So what’s the moral of the story? Maybe, just maybe, we should let market forces rather than a “green new deal” determine the number of charging stations.
P.S. Absurdly expensive charging stations are bad, but the behavior of electric-vehicle-promoting politicians is worse.
Dan Mitchell is co-founder of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity and Chairman of the Board. He is an expert in international tax competition and supply-side tax policy.
