Economy Murica Builds 7 EV Charging Stations in 4 Years with $7.5 Billion Allocated Funds

[Rational Poster]

Yeah seems like the private option is faster and more efficient.

A large part of the time for these projects is literally just that.

Private contractors in bidding wars.

It's literally the private option slowing things down.

 

[ColemanwastheGOAT]

A large part of the time for these projects is literally just that.

Private contractors in bidding wars.

It's literally the private option slowing things down.

Sure bud.

 

[panamaican]

Installation. But the work is plenty.

Installation is the last component of these types of projects. It's the part that only happens when everything else is already done.

It's a little bit like a flooring guy insisting that people take too long to build houses because they can finish their portion quickly. Meanwhile, they have no idea about all of the steps required to buy the lot, get the architect to draw up the plans, get them approved by zoning, hire the general contractor, pour the foundation, etc. They walk in, do the flooring after all of that is finished and then say everyone else is taking too long. It's a bit of an unrealistic way to assess if other portions of the job are being done in a timely way.

 

[Whippy McGee]

There is simply not enough electricity in some major areas of the U.S.A. for us to go all electric. California is a great example. It produces 200 TWh a year and uses 260 TWh a year... and that use number is increasing. The state gets the required extra from a Arizona and Nevada who may need it more and not export it. I worry about my neighbors with only electric cars.

The real event here is politicians stealing massive money in the name of Global Warming. Scumbags.

Until we start building more nuclear plants, we should not be embracing electric vehicles to this level. The Math is simple.

 

[Islam Imamate]

There is simply not enough electricity in some major areas of the U.S.A. for us to go all electric. California is a great example. It produces 200 TWh a year and uses 260 TWh a year... and that use number is increasing. The state gets the required extra from a Arizona and Nevada who may need it more and not export it. I worry about my neighbors with only electric cars.

The real event here is politicians stealing massive money in the name of Global Warming. Scumbags.

Until we start building more nuclear plants, we should not be embracing electric vehicles to this level. The Math is simple.

Not only that but EVs only address one negative externality of ICE vehicles, namely exhaust, while actually increasing some of the others like tire and brake particulate due to their extra weight.

And they still come with most of the downsides of cars; they take up lots of space and require infrastructure like parking and roads that take up even more space, they are dangerous to pedestrians and children in particular, they are a financial burden on American households, and they still require tons of energy.

You can't just swap ICE vehicles for EVs and leave it at that, we need to offer more alternatives to get around our cities like bikes and public transit which are much more efficient in terms of space and energy and don't come with many of the negative externalities of cars.

 

[woodguyatl]

Yo, for real, I just re-read this politico article and it is so fucking weird. Look at this quote from an anonymous Biden admin member, like why on a topic like this, does someone need to remain anonymous?

“”””””””
The Biden administration is expecting a deluge of chargers funded by the law to break ground in early 2024. A senior administration official granted anonymity to speak on the specifics of the rollout said the pace is to be expected, given that the goal is to create a “convenient, affordable, reliable, made-in-America equitable network.”

“Anybody can throw a charger in the ground — that’s not that hard, it doesn’t take that long,” the official said. “Building a network is different.”
“”””””””””

Congress provided $7.5B for electric vehicle chargers. Built so far: Zero.

The sluggish rollout could undermine President Joe Biden’s reelection messaging promoting electric vehicles.

www.politico.com

Look at both those paragraphs, but especially what I bolder. It is just word salad to justify nonsense.

They literally say it would be easy as shit to do this, but they have to build some network of equity. The article goes on and on about how states propose these budgets, expecting funds in the future, which is then basically milking this process for tax payer money

Here is an article from the NYT that explains that many of the delays are Fed red tape, functional requirements, and the fact that this is the first time for many states.



The White House has set a goal of building a national network of at least 500,000 public chargers by 2030, but researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory have projected that the country will need more than one million public charging ports by the end of the decade.
Ben Shapiro, a researcher at RMI, a nonprofit that promotes the energy transition, said the country needed to accelerate the pace of new charging infrastructure considerably.
“People certainly have this perspective that there isn’t enough charging,” Mr. Shapiro said. “And that I think does hamper people’s interest in E.V.s.”
Electric vehicle sales have been climbing faster than any other major category of automobile, with the nation on track to hit more than one million sales for the first time this year. President Biden’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, has also spurred a surge of investment in electric vehicle production across the country. But demand has not grown as much as expected.
Some state transportation officials said the rollout has taken more than two years because they had little experience building chargers and it has been challenging to navigate new federal requirements.

​

Some state transportation officials said the rollout has taken more than two years because they had little experience building chargers and it has been challenging to navigate new federal requirements.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/30/dining/chew-bread-southern-delicacy.html


In Tennessee, officials started reviewing bids for contracts after closing applications last month. Preston Elliott, a deputy commissioner of the state’s transportation department, said he thought Tennessee was moving quickly, but it still took officials about two years to get to that stage, in part because they had to submit two plans to the federal government and wanted to have conversations with stakeholders before opening bids.

The Rise of Electric Vehicles​

• A Political War: Electric cars have driven into the U.S. presidential election, inflaming partisan fights that have come to define much of American culture. One reason is that President Biden has made electric vehicles central to his strategy to combat climate change.
• A Hybrid-First Strategy: Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, has been criticized for selling few electric vehicles. But the company’s decision to focus on hybrids is paying off financially.
• Where E.V.s Are Taking Off: Electric vehicles have soared in popularity in the United States, but enthusiasm hasn’t spread equally across the country. New data show some surprising places where they’re getting a foothold.
• Betting on Nostalgia: Volkswagen is trying to regain the status and sales it enjoyed in the United States in the 1960s with electric cars that nod to some popular models from its heydays.

“Federal funds come with lots of requirements and lots of strings,” Mr. Elliott said. “I’ve been doing this for about 30 years, and this is the first time I’ve ever encountered a program where you’ve had to do so much planning before you spend a penny.”

The U.S. Transportation Department issued final rules for the program early this year, outlining technological requirements and standards that have to be met. Chargers must be within a mile of an interstate exit or highway and have four ports that are all operational and meet minimum power levels 97 percent of the time.
But the law gave states flexibility to determine how to award contracts and dole out funds, resulting in varying degrees of progress.
Ohio became the first state to open a charger funded by the new program earlier this month. Mike DeWine, the state’s Republican governor, cited charging concerns as a primary reason for getting the system up and running. There are about 43,200 electric vehicles registered in Ohio.



“This industry is not going to develop unless people think they have places where they can charge their car,” Mr. DeWine said. “We want to send the signal that not only are we getting companies in here that are building things for the future, but we want our consumers in Ohio to have the ability to benefit from that.”
Six more charging stations are being designed and expected to begin construction in the next month or two, state officials said. Officials expect to build about 50 charging stations by the end of 2026 to meet the program’s requirement.
Image

The broader availability of chargers is critical for the Biden administration’s goal of getting electric vehicles to make up half of new car sales by 2030.Credit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times
Most states are well behind Ohio and New York. While some are bidding out contracts to build the network, the actual installation of all of the chargers can take years to finish because projects have to clear environmental reviews and other bureaucratic hurdles in addition to the construction, state officials said. Some states are also building chargers in several phases.
“If you were talking about building a sidewalk, we build sidewalks all day long,” said Mr. Elliott of Tennessee. “When you start talking about a charging system, being open 24/7 and meeting certain power thresholds, I mean, think about the complexities of that.”
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Mr. Elliott said state officials were planning to fund 32 charging stations to meet the program’s requirement and aimed to complete those projects in two years once contracts were awarded.
Some states with sparse populations and little charging infrastructure have also taken longer to roll out their programs. In Wyoming, the state’s transportation department began accepting responses this month from potential station owners to better gauge interest in using the federal funds, which can cover up to 80 percent of the project’s cost, plus operating expenses.
State officials said they did not know when or if they would award contracts because that would depend on the level of interest. Keith Fulton, an assistant chief engineer at Wyoming’s Transportation Department, said the process was taking more than two years partly because the department has never installed an electric vehicle charger before.
States are also considering the types of connectors they will need. Although they only have to provide ports with Combined Charging System connectors, some states, such as Texas, will also require the plugs that Tesla cars use, known as the North American Charging Standard. Ford and General Motors have also announced that they would equip future vehicles with Tesla’s ports.
Loren McDonald, the chief executive of EVAdoption, a data and analysis firm that has been tracking each state’s progress, said it was concerning that some automakers have not been clear about whether they will provide adapters with the purchase of vehicles. That is in part because it could complicate the ability of some drivers to use the new chargers. But he noted that Tesla has won many of the bids so far, and other station owners will probably make upgrades to adapt to the market.
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Senior Biden administration officials said they expected to see a wave of new chargers becoming available in the coming months, and the federal government had taken steps to help states move more quickly, including streamlining environmental permitting processes. Once states completed the planning and design work, they would be in a position to move much faster, they said.
Gabe Klein, the executive director of the federal Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, pointed to new private investments in charging infrastructure and said he expected the country to reach the administration’s goal before 2030.
“The private sector investment is staggering,” Mr. Klein said.
Nick Nigro, the founder of Atlas Public Policy, a policy and data research firm, said states have made substantial progress, but much of the work has not been visible to the public.
“I can imagine from the outside that it might look like this is taking a while,” Mr. Nigro said. “But that is the process we’ve set up in this country for how we spend money. There are a lot of checks and balances.”
Although some drivers said they wanted to see state officials use federal funds to build more chargers, they were still hesitant to make the switch to electric vehicles.


Barbara Ziegler, 66, a psychologist in Sheridan, Wyo., said she welcomed more chargers, but she did not feel comfortable yet buying an electric car. She said she often drives more than a hundred miles to see a diabetes specialist, attend conferences and go shopping in larger cities, and she was concerned about being stranded on the road because of the lack of chargers.
Ms. Ziegler said she would consider buying a hybrid car, but for now, she planned to stick with her 2012 Toyota RAV4 until it needed to be replaced.
“Here we have long, long highways without towns in between,” Ms. Ziegler said. “I would be too worried to try and do the drive just on electric.”

 

[woodguyatl]

Not only that but EVs only address one negative externality of ICE vehicles, namely exhaust, while actually increasing some of the others like tire and brake particulate due to their extra weight.

And they still come with most of the downsides of cars; they take up lots of space and require infrastructure like parking and roads that take up even more space, they are dangerous to pedestrians and children in particular, they are a financial burden on American households, and they still require tons of energy.

You can't just swap ICE vehicles for EVs and leave it at that, we need to offer more alternatives to get around our cities like bikes and public transit which are much more efficient in terms of space and energy and don't come with many of the negative externalities of cars.

I'm going to disagree on brake particulate. Electric vehicles use regenerative breaking so most people do "one pedal" driving and never touch the break. I often never touch the break once except when holding at a light when commuting to work and that is out of habit. I don't know a single Tesla owner who has ever replaced the breaks and I know lots of owners. My FIL has a lead foot and a Model S with 200K miles with original breaks. Here is a link the delphi auto parts who manufactures OEM equipment says that EV breaks last longer.

Three key differences with EV brakes

Learn how regenerative braking works as well as the difference between EV brakes and normal brakes with this video guide from the experts at Delphi.

www.delphiautoparts.com

 

[fedoriswar37]

Installation is the last component of these types of projects. It's the part that only happens when everything else is already done.

It's a little bit like a flooring guy insisting that people take too long to build houses because they can finish their portion quickly. Meanwhile, they have no idea about all of the steps required to buy the lot, get the architect to draw up the plans, get them approved by zoning, hire the general contractor, pour the foundation, etc. They walk in, do the flooring after all of that is finished and then say everyone else is taking too long. It's a bit of an unrealistic way to assess if other portions of the job are being done in a timely way.

I'm not disagreeing about the logistics. I've worked on enough bids from the ground up that took years to finally pop off. The quantity suggested in this post is still ridiculous for a 7 year period.