Dem
51
GOP
49
This is a little bit inside baseball, but it's also a pretty good illustration of how hard it is for a presidential administration to achieve change in the world, even once legislation has been approved by Congress.
The subject here is environmentalism, and more specifically electric vehicles. When it comes to combating climate change, Democrats (and pro-environment people round the world) are really hoping that cars and trucks that do not use gas will be a major part of the solution. After all, gas-powered vehicles are responsible for about 20% of all CO2 emissions. Politically, the sexy part of this change is making it easier for people to buy electric vehicles. After all, nearly all American adults drive a car, and if the White House can help them get into a shiny, new, less-polluting EV by covering a big chunk of the purchase price, that is very, very noticeable.
However, there's another big piece of the equation that's also important, even though it's much less sexy. EVs are not a viable choice for drivers unless... they can be charged with reasonable ease. For those who are not familiar, even with the fastest chargers available, a fully electric vehicle requires between 45 minutes and 3 hours for a full charge, which will afford between 100 and 500 miles of travel, depending on the car. Slower chargers take between 4 and 12 hours to achieve the same, while the slowest form of charging, namely plugging into a regular electric outlet, takes between 12 and 36 hours.
The most convenient option, for those who have the money and the facilities, is a home charger. Home chargers are almost invariably in the middle group above, and thus take 4 to 12 hours for a full charge. That works well for someone who just plugs in when they get home, and lets the charger do its magic while they sleep at night. This option is also good news for the electrical grid, as it means drawing power at the time when demand is otherwise fairly low.
For many EV owners, however, a home charger is not an option. The most common problem is that they live in an apartment or other domicile where installing a charger is not plausible. On top of this, every EV owner, even those with a home charger, needs a public charger sometimes—like, for example, when they are taking a long (or long-ish) trip.
The people who wrote the Inflation Reduction Act did their homework, and so were aware of the need for chargers. The bill contains funding for both home and public chargers. However, very little of that money has been spent so far. Consequently, the Biden administration just announced a bunch of measures designed to encourage the construction of more charging infrastructure. Among the provisions is a very liberal redefinition of "nonurban," which makes funding for more EV chargers available to roughly two-thirds of Americans.
Of course, that means that one-third of Americans are still excluded, mostly those living in areas that are really non-urban. You know, places like West Virginia, where Billy Bubba's farm and Jim Bob's restaurant "Eats" are still not eligible for government EV-charger assistance. Because if there's anywhere you're going to see hundreds of Teslas whizzing around, it's Wheeling, WV, right? Wasn't it John Denver who sang:
Country roads, take me home
To the place I belong
West Virginia, in my Tesla
Take me home, country roads
We're pretty sure that's the lyric.
In any case, just as soon as the Biden administration had issued the new guidelines—which, again, were aimed at expanding eligibility—Sen. Joe Manchin (?-WV) blew a gasket, and issued a statement that reads, in part:
The Administration just will not stop ignoring the law in pursuit of its radical climate agenda—no matter the cost. This proposed guidance completely spits in the face of rural America with a brand-new interpretation that makes close to the entire country eligible for a credit that was designed to help drive investment in fueling infrastructure for electric, hydrogen, or natural-gas powered vehicles in rural and low-income areas where private businesses can't or won't invest. This proposed guidance ensures that rural Americans will remain stuck at the end of the investment line, the exact problem this tax credit was supposed to address, choosing to give hand-outs to those that don't need it while ignoring its responsibility to provide a hand up to rural communities at risk of being left behind. This proposal is just another example in a long line of this Administration's attempts to force electric vehicles on Americans and spend money that Congress didn't account for and doesn't have in the budget.
As per usual, Manchin is very good at complaining, not so good at proposing constructive solutions to problems. Note, by the way, that while the Democrats controlled the Senate, he could have had enough money for West Virginia to build two chargers for every resident. He chose not to play ball, of course. That is actually a bit odd because gasoline-powered cars do not use his favorite fossil fuel: coal. On the other hand, EVs can run on coal because the electricity used to charge them in many places is still generated by burning his favorite fossil fuel. While coal has no long-term future, in the short term (which is all politicians ever think about) more EVs mean more coal will be mined than if he manages to block their widespread adoption. More coal being mined means more work for the coal miners in his state. Seems odd he has missed that.
Eventually, whether the West Virginia senator likes it or not, the EV-charger money will start to flow. But even then, there's plenty of room for things to turn sideways. California is well ahead of Washington when it comes to this issue, and in particular, when it comes to lavishing money on the companies (and there are dozens of them) that build public EV-charging stations. As a result, the infrastructure expanded pretty quickly.
And yet, despite all the money and enthusiasm from the state government, the Golden State's charging network is basically a fiasco, as The Los Angeles Times reported just last week. Nobody even knows exactly how many public chargers the state has; the federal government thinks the number is around 40,000, while the state government thinks it's more like 80,000. That's a rather sizable difference.
The biggest problem, however—and this is something that every EV driver in California knows, and presumably most EV drivers in other states, too—is that there is clearly much more profit in building charging stations than there is in operating them. As a consequence, chargers are out of order all the time. According to the Times, between 20% and 30% of the state's public chargers are out of service at any given moment. And since it's usage that causes them to break, it means that the most-needed chargers are the ones most likely to be unavailable.
You can see the "perfect storm" that has emerged here. More and more people are buying EVs, and they are competing for a set of public chargers that is not growing substantially in number, at the moment. That makes it harder to get access to a charger, and it also means the chargers are overtaxed, leading to breakdowns. That leaves even fewer chargers for EV drivers, leading to even more overtaxing, leading to even more breakdowns. Rinse and repeat. It's problematic enough, from a practicality standpoint, if a person has to set aside 2 or 3 or 4 "charging hours" every week, just to remain mobile. It's rather worse if a person also has to set aside 1 or 2 or 3 "waiting to charge hours," in addition. Most people are clever enough to do some sort of practice run before committing to an electric vehicle, and many of those—when they see what kind of hassles they are in for—decide the time is not so right, after all.
Eventually, all of these wrinkles will presumably be ironed out. But not without overcoming many and varied political and logistical obstacles. Governing is hard. (Z)