U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, FTA Administrator Nuria Fernandez, Senator Tom Carper, Governor John Carney and Delaware Transportation Secretary Nicole Majeski discuss how the Low/No Emissions Bus Program in President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will help ensure that more Americans have clean and high-quality transit options, and that workers gain the skills they need to repair, maintain and operate the transit vehicles of the future. Photo courtesy of Governor John Carney’s office.
A Boondoggle for the Ages
Americans are receiving too little for all the consumer and taxpayer pain, complains James Freeman in the WSJ. A case in point is the US government subsidizing infrastructure for the electric vehicle industry.
… even those who do ought to concede that the sluggish and expensive pace of this project makes it a boondoggle for the ages.
Chasing an E-Dream
This past September, we noted at richardcyoung.com, thanks to Mr. Freeman’s “Best of the Web,” the road-trip travails of “Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg as they tried to model politically correct voyaging via electric vehicles.”
A problem they shared was the difficulty of finding efficient and reliable charging stations.
Read more about that in “A High-Speed Collision with Reality.”
Well, the problem continues, only now it is becoming an “embarrassing one, given how long Mr. Buttigieg, has been talking about his plans to do something about it.”
If electric vehicles ran on press releases, keynote addresses, memoranda and media availabilities, we’d all be driving them by now.
From Mr. Buttigieg (December 2020):
To meet the climate crisis, we must put millions of new electric vehicles on America’s roads. It’s time to build public charging infrastructure powered by clean energy and make it available in all parts of this country.
Remember how Mr. Buttigieg talked about charging stations at his Senate confirmation hearing?
He (Buttigieg) quickly assumed office and began issuing a voluminous record of statements on the topic.
“We plan to explore best practices on how to help incentivize the installation of electric charging stations,” his department announced in a joint statement with Transport Canada in February 2021.
Mr. Buttigieg issued impressive proclamations and pronouncements all year.
Press Release from Buttigieg’s department (December 2021):
WASHINGTON, D.C. U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg today signed a memorandum of understanding to create a Joint Office of Energy and Transportation to support the deployment of $7.5 billion from the President’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to build out a national electric vehicle charging network that can build public confidence, with a focus on filling gaps in rural, disadvantaged, and hard-to-reach locations…
“Transportation is responsible for the most greenhouse gas emissions of any sector in our economy – so it can and must be a big part of the solution to the climate crisis,” said Secretary Buttigieg. “With this announcement by DOT and DOE, we are taking a big step forward on climate by helping make the benefits of EVs more accessible for all Americans.”
At this point, Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation, decided to explore the results of Mr. Buttigieg’s oft-discussed policy, President Joe Biden’s plan for most new cars sold in the U.S. to be electric by 2032, and also Donald Trump’s reaction to it:”
MARGARET BRENNAN: … Listen to what he (Trump) said in New Jersey recently…
DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE:
Do you notice, he’s trying to save the electrical vehicle but not the gas powered, which is the vehicle that everybody wants.
They’re going crazy with the electric car, costing us a fortune. We’re spending hundreds of billions of dollars subsidizing a car that nobody wants and nobody’s ever going to buy.
According to the CBS transcript:
SECRETARY PETE BUTTIGIEG: Well, this is really important. Every single year more Americans buy EVs than the year prior. There are two things that I think are needed for that to happen even more quickly. One is the price, which is why the Inflation Reduction Act acted to cut the price of an electric vehicle. The second is making sure we have the charging network we need across America.
But I want to talk about the bigger point here, and I take this very personally because I grew up in the industrial Midwest literally in the shadow of broken down factories from car companies that did not survive into the turn of the century because they didn’t keep up with the times.
MARGARET BRENNAN: … And let me ask you about a portion of this that I think does fall under your portfolio, and that’s the charging stations you mentioned. The Federal Highway Administration says only seven or eight charging stations have been produced with a $7.5 billion investment that taxpayers made back in 2021.
So Few, So Slow
SECRETARY PETE BUTTIGIEG: So, the president’s goal is to have half a million chargers up by the end of this decade. Now, in order to do a charger, it’s more than just plunking a small device into the ground. There’s utility work and this is also really a new category of federal investment. But we’ve been working with each of the 50 states. Every one of them is getting formula dollars to do this work, engaging them in the first handful –
MARGARET BRENNAN: Seven or eight, though?
SECRETARY PETE BUTTIGIEG: Again, by 2030, 500,000 chargers. And the very first handful of chargers are now already being physically built. But again, that’s the absolute very, very beginning stages of the construction to come.
Stifling a Chuckle
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.
Laugh or Cry
Her (Granholm’s) advance team realized there weren’t going to be enough plugs to go around. One of the station’s four chargers was broken, and others were occupied. So an Energy Department staffer tried parking a nonelectric vehicle by one of those working chargers to reserve a spot for the approaching secretary of energy.
That did not go down well: a regular gas-powered car blocking the only free spot for a charger?
Call In Law Enforcement
In fact, a family that was boxed out — on a sweltering day, with a baby in the vehicle — was so upset they decided to get the authorities involved: They called the police.
Only voters can end the waste.
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