Biden’s $7.5 billion investment in EV charging has only produced 7 stations in two years
Biden’s $7.5 billion investment in EV charging has only produced 7 stations in two years
The network of fast chargers promised by the Biden administration has had a painfully slow rollout.
Its staggering how intransigent the modern economy has become. You can assign vast fortunes to the goal of requisitioning materials and manpower for a given project, and it all just gets swallowed up by finance capitalism.
I'm old enough to remember watching the suburbs build out during the 80s, 90s, and 00s. Seven gas stations inside a few miles could go up in a couple of years. In fact, you'd typically see three or four gas stations competing on every major intersection. I could drive you around Sugar Land, TX and point you to a dozen gas stations that were built just during my time in High School. And for hundreds of thousands of dollars, not thousands of millions.
But that was an era of Growth Capitalism, where we couldn't possibly leave a single bare patch of dirt between Rosenberg and The Woodlands. Everything had to be paved. And we unleashed phenomenal human labor and material resources to accomplish it all. By contrast, we can't seem to build shit for shit now. Money just falls into some bottomless pit of bureaucracy and graft.
Nick Nigro, founder of Atlas Public Policy, said that some of the delays are to be expected. “State transportation agencies are the recipients of the money,” he said. “Nearly all of them had no experience deploying electric vehicle charging stations before this law was enacted.”
Nigro says that the process — states have to submit plans to the Biden administration for approval, solicit bids on the work, and then award funds — has taken much of the first two years since the funding was approved. “I expect it to go much faster in 2024,” he added.
We've got to pay a guy to pay a guy to pay a guy to pay a guy to do a thing.
But that was an era of Growth Capitalism, where we couldn't possibly leave a single bare patch of dirt between Rosenberg and The Woodlands. Everything had to be paved. And we unleashed phenomenal human labor and material resources to accomplish it all. By contrast, we can't seem to build shit for shit now. Money just falls into some bottomless pit of bureaucracy and graft.
Yeah, the reason that sprawl was able to work is that it was built around a Ponzi scheme.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Money just falls into some bottomless pit of
bureaucracyconsultancy and graftfixed that for you
I see now why the mafia likes construction so much. At least in Japan they build shit
"Behold the marvels of a so-called 'service' economy!!"
Btw this is a tangent but I think that the left, whatever the fuck that is, could do a whole lot better at redirecting that anarcho-capitalist/Reaganomics urge in westerners who blame government graft and arrive at the solution of "getting rid of government".
It's not particularly tricky to trace out a little mental network where you have [Big Business/Big Industry of choice], the government, and how they interact in a fairly vulgar way:
-
Big Business X uses their money to lobby the government for tax breaks, contracts, regulations that benefit their interests, subsidies and bailouts etc.
-
The government receives this money and provides a whole lot of kickbacks to Big Business X
-
Big Business X now has more money to spend on lobbying the government to get them to cough up more money
Wash, rinse, repeat.
It's a little bit more complicated than "Government bad!!" but if you can get one person to walk away from a discussion about this with the message "Business gives money to the government in order to get the government to give them more money so that they can give more money to the government so they will give more money to business..." and they start seeing it in their own lives - maybe it's Tesla, maybe it's Boeing, maybe it's Lehman Brothers - then I think that will help inoculate that person against the lopsided narrative that the problem is just "too much government" or "government corruption" and so therefore the solution is hyper-capitalism.
This is a cursed video that was recorded at a cursed conference by a cursed speaker from a cursed lineage with cursed politics but this kind of thought experiment can really shake people up and get them to start thinking about things systemically when it comes to politics and economics, and it fits into the angle for agitation which I'm describing.
It's a little bit more complicated than "Government bad!!" but if you can get one person to walk away from a discussion about this with the message "Business gives money to the government in order to get the government to give them more money so that they can give more money to the government so they will give more money to business..." and they start seeing it in their own lives - maybe it's Tesla, maybe it's Boeing, maybe it's Lehman Brothers - then I think that will help inoculate that person against the lopsided narrative that the problem is just "too much government" or "government corruption" and so therefore the solution is hyper-capitalism.
Sure, you can see it. But there's nothing you can really do about it at a national level.
At a more local level, we see that kind of graft, but the best any locality can really do is just "Say No!" to everything offered up by the municipal government. That doesn't get you a healthy economy or a functional government, it just gets people finding elaborate back-doors for funneling money outside democratic institutions. Case in point, the Texas takeover of HISD after over a decade of failing to take it over and privatize it through well-financed conservatives running in local elections. Rather than deal with a bunch of intransigent locals who refuse to see their education system carved up and sold off, the state just seizes the entire school district and staffs it with industry flaks of the Governor's choosing.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
-
"fed govt creates framework for doing [x], tells states to make rules about [x], state distributes funds to local agencies (counties, cities, etc) to implement [x] while following rules". two years is about how long it takes to get all that done in prep of any actual construction.
also, what an unfortunate last name for that guy
two years is about how long it takes to get all that done in prep of any actual construction
This isn't a revolutionary new idea. We've had charging stations since the Obama Administration, we don't need to invent them from first principles.
Maybe they scrapped it all (or lost it) and started over. But if you look at the history of other big national projects (Mitt Romney's Big Dig, the current state of the NYC subway system, the California HSR project) you'll notice how you've got layer after layer of consultancy that saps all this money away doing busy work, while actual physical construction projects stall out for decades.
Seven stations over two years isn't even a pilot program. I'm curious to know where they even got the number seven from, as it seems abnormally high for a project that's still supposed to be in a planning stage. But, broadly speaking, we already have a large network of refueling stations distributed across the country. We just have an entirely privatized model that's openly hostile to EVs as competition.
also, what an unfortunate last name for that guy
Just look at that smile
We've got to pay a guy to pay a guy to pay a guy to pay a guy to do a thing.
gommulism
“I think a lot of people who are watching this are getting concerned about the timeline,” said Alexander Laska, deputy director for transportation and innovation at the center-left think tank Third Way.
center-left
Third Way
Can we just cut to the chase and call you Third Position already or are you expecting us to dance around it?
do the dance bro just do it please do the dance it'll be fun
President Biden has long vowed to build 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations in the United States by 2030
(The funding should be enough to build up to 20,000 charging spots or around 5,000 stations, according to analysis from the EV policy analyst group Atlas Public Policy.)
That's less than 5% holy shit. I knew the infrastructure and build back better stuff was over promising and under delivering but I wouldn't have guessed it was that bad.
No wonder we need to ban Chinese EVs. Our efficiency simply makes their products obsolete
I thought you deservedly editorialised the title but no. That's the actual title. Lmao
😄
But none of these are Elon Mungus approved so are they really free?
It ain't free until it's Tesla-proprietary
I heard there's a major power that's very competent in infrastructure and EVs, perhaps the US should ask them for help
I knew doing anything in the US is absurdly overpriced but 7.5 billion for 7 EV charging stations!
Imagine how fucking easy it would be to put charging stations at interstate rest areas, jesus christ.
there are. The problem is they're owned by Tesla
There are Tesla chargers at public rest areas? I'm talking about these puublicly owned ones: https://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WMH6QE_Interstate_80_Westbound_Rest_Area_Clinton_County_Pennsylvania
Does anyone know why the US is especially incompetent when it comes to infrastructure? Is it just capitalism or is something else going on?
It's not like we have any shortage of people who can build them, since the job market is so competitive. Is it just the government is too weak-willed?
there's absolutely some crazy levels of embezzlement happening all down the chain
Permanently Deleted
This is an excellent read on the subject https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/08/the-value-of-nothing-capital-versus-growth/
They don’t wanna do it and don’t care to fix that problem.
Is this yet another Buttigieg failure?
One billion dollar charging station is insane.
this is just an insane embarrassment
this is why I never buy the Biden stans' defense of him when they roll out a factoid like "Authorized some whatever amount of cash spent on thing" because in this country, spending money on public works doesn't mean shit anymore
damn capitalists
they ruined capitalism
What do you mean it's all graft!?