Despite Congress having allocated billions to building electric vehicle (EV) chargers across the United States at the behest of President Joe Biden, not a single charger has been built so far with the funds.
“Congress at the urging of the Biden administration agreed in 2021 to spend $7.5 billion to build tens of thousands of electric vehicle chargers across the country, aiming to appease anxious drivers while tackling climate change,” Politico reports. “Two years later, the program has yet to install a single charger.”
The $7.5 billion allocated for building EV chargers across the United States was a part of Biden’s landmark legislation that his administration has touted as one of its key victories in 2021. The bipartisan infrastructure package garnered support from 13 House Republicans and 19 Senate Republicans.
Though the infrastructure package vowed to transform the nation’s roads into a green energy success story, Politico revealed that the EV charging stations that were promised have yet to come to fruition:
Consumer demand for electric vehicles is rising in the United States, necessitating six times as many chargers on its roads by the end of the decade, according to federal estimates. But not a single charger funded by the bipartisan infrastructure law has come online and odds are they will not be able to start powering Americans’ vehicles until at least 2024. [Emphasis added]
Getting chargers up and running across the country is essential to reaching President Joe Biden’s goal of having half the vehicles sold in the United States be electric by the end of the decade — a key cog of his climate agenda. Americans consistently say the lack of charging infrastructure is one of the top reasons they won’t buy an electric car. [Emphasis added]
Today, the United States has just 180,000 EV chargers. The infrastructure package promised to boost the number of EV chargers to half a million by 2030.
Officials with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory have said, though, that half a million EV chargers will be far behind the 1.2 million that will be needed to meet EV charging demand by the start of the next decade.
As Breitbart News recently reported, U.S. car dealers have urged Biden to abandon his EV mandates and carbon emission regulations, which would effectively force all-electric cars on consumers, pointing to a widespread lack of demand among Americans.
That lack of demand comes as a Consumer Reports survey reveals that EVs have almost 80 percent more problems than gas-powered cars using traditional combustion engines.
Specifically, consumers have cited a lack of EV charging stations, issues with lithium-ion batteries, exterior and interior parts not fitting precisely, and engine failures as the key problems facing EVs.
