Huawei officials said in 2024 alone it installed 100,000 fast chargers across China for its electric vehicles; by contrast, in 2021 the U.S. Congress allocated $7.5 billion toward a network of charging stations, but as of November this network had only 214 operational chargers across 12 states.
It’s a wonderful case of the feds can’t build them directly, so they give a bunch of money to the states, but they can’t build them directly either, so they give that money to local governments, who are under no obligation to actually spend it on the chargers, and there’s grift at every level.
Even ‘Electrify America’ which has built about 4k is a company that essentially exists as a punishment-deal for the automanufacturers. So they’re incentivised to build them, but much less so to actually maintain them or keep them reliably online.
lol
$35,000,000 per fast charger? I need to get on this government grift.
It’s a wonderful case of the feds can’t build them directly, so they give a bunch of money to the states, but they can’t build them directly either, so they give that money to local governments, who are under no obligation to actually spend it on the chargers, and there’s grift at every level.
Federalization is a fucking joke.
Even ‘Electrify America’ which has built about 4k is a company that essentially exists as a punishment-deal for the automanufacturers. So they’re incentivised to build them, but much less so to actually maintain them or keep them reliably online.