My brother was a car guy, as are my two sons. The boys really like cars, know a great deal about them, can accurately recognize models at a great distance, and take great enjoyment from owning and driving the right car.
That’s not me. I don’t particularly like cars and I use them because I need them. So, I’m not really against the idea of electric cars—I’m just a little hesitant to buy one until they become practical. I understand enough about the technology to see current limitations, and I live in a part of the United States where I could probably find an antelope or a buffalo more easily than a charging station. That will change in time and I would bet money that an electric vehicle is in my future…it’s just a question of how distant that future is.
Someone needs to tell Washington this as our politicians all seem to believe that the saga of King Canute was a success story. To remind the education majors, King Canute had his ministers place his throne on the edge of the sea as the tide came in. In spite of Canute’s ordering the waters to recede, the tide kept moving inland, reaching the king’s knees before he gave up and decamped to dry ground. This was an object lesson in which the king was trying to teach his ministers that all power—even the king’s—is limited. Government seems to believe that simply passing a few new laws (or issuing new bureaucratic rules) will overcome the lack of technological breakthroughs.
Besides raising emissions standards to discourage production and sales of gas-powered vehicles, our government has allocated $7.5 billion to build half a million charging stations along the nation’s highway by 2030. Evidently, a Tesla behaves like the finches in my backyard, who won’t show up until you put food out for them. Since one of the big reasons people are reluctant to purchase EV’s is their fear being stranded along the highway from the lack of charging stations, increasing the number of charging stations should promote sales, right?
There is one large problem with the program, however: after two years and spending an incredible amount of money—the Department of Transportation is happy to announce that the program has produced eight more charging stations. That’s not a typo—they’ve made eight. There are hundreds in the process of being constructed, but despite the incredibly large budget, completion of half a million stations by the year 2030 is never going to happen. At the current rate of construction, in fact, we will reach that goal in only another 125,000 years. This gives us something to look forward to.
Before we look at the reasons why the government can’t seem to build charging stations, we should look at why the private sector isn’t meeting the demand. The answer, of course, is that building charging stations is not profitable enough to attract investment. There aren’t enough electric vehicles on the road, the owners of the few existing vehicles tend to charge their vehicles at home, and the profit margin is so low that commercial establishments can’t charge enough for their use to recoup the investment necessary to install the equipment. The only reason that any establishment would make the investment is to increase traffic volume and, so far, there just aren’t enough EV’s on the road to generate enough business to merit the investment.
The Department of Transportation is encouraging states to apply for that $7.5 billion, but while every state eagerly indicated it wanted the money, fewer than half have even requested that companies submit bids for the construction of the charging stations. And there are some valid reasons why the states are moving so slowly.
It seems that the allocation of the money has to be approved by the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council—the body that makes sure that the funds spent ensure that the "voices, perspectives, and lived realities of communities with environmental justice concerns are heard in the White House and reflected in federal policies, investments, and decisions."
In other words, if you want to submit a bid to build one of those charging stations, your firm submitting the lowest bid does not mean you will get the contract. You will also have to "demonstrate how meaningful public involvement, inclusive of disadvantaged communities, will occur throughout a project’s life cycle."
Yes, the quotes are directly from the Department of Transportation documents.
I have this sneaky suspicion that paying taxes, providing jobs, and selling a valuable service at competitive prices will not qualify as “meaningful public involvement” to the bureaucrats at the Department of Transportation. Thankfully, the department gives guidelines on how to include "intentional outreach to underserved communities." A company submitting bids should include evidence of having hosted "games and contests," "visual preference surveys," or "neighborhood block parties", including proof that the grant recipient provide "multilingual staff or interpreters to interact with community members who use languages other than English."
While not absolutely required, the Department of Transportation also advises applicants to “promote local inclusive economic development and entrepreneurship such as the use of minority-owned businesses,”. To qualify, applicants can submit proposals to fund “support services to help train, place, and retain people in good-paying jobs or registered apprenticeships, with a focus on women, people of color and others that are underrepresented in infrastructure jobs.”
Can you imagine a small business staring at these nebulous “requirements” and then deciding to pursue the relative low profit that winning the bid would provide? Can you imagine actually sitting down and writing such a proposal? The end result would read more like a term paper for a sociology class than a proposal for a construction project.
So, don’t expect those half a million new government-built charging stations anytime soon. And by the way, that same White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council also oversees the funding for several hundred other government agencies, all of which are probably equally quagmired in endless and needless paperwork.
America will eventually get those half million charging stations, but that will happen because there will be sufficient public demand to incentivize the free market to produce them.
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