Six months ago it made headlines that the Biden Administration’s $7.5 billion investment in electric vehicle charging stations - which aims to build 500,000 stations by 2030 - had thus completed building eight of them.
Not eighty thousand - eight hundreds - eighty - or even eighteen. Eight.
When confronted on this during a CBS appearance, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg defended the slow progress by saying that it would “take a while.” Even host Margaret Brennan had to withhold laughter.
At the current pace, Buttigieg could say that the administration meant to say they’d have 500,000 stations by 2300 and that would still be an optimistic forecast.
It’s been half a year since then, and apparently no one was embarrassed enough to at least pretend to ramp up production a bit, as the total still stands at eight charging stations.
REPORT: The Biden administration invested $7.5 billion into EV charging & produced just *8* charging stations over 4 years.
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) November 24, 2024
The Department of Transportation led by Pete Buttigieg is being mocked for the massive failure.
For comparison, a Tesla Supercharger costs less than… pic.twitter.com/G4MM7W6rkl
The response from the “fact checkers” on this has been nothing short of hilarious. FactCheck.org quoted Trump as saying that the Biden admin had wasted $9 billion - which they then tried to downplay as being “only” $7.5 billion, and somehow found an expert to quote that thinks the admin made great progress. “Michelle Levinson, senior manager of eMobility finance and policy at the World Resources Institute, told us the number of stations that are open right now represents ‘a small fraction of what the program is expected to accomplish’ and that in ‘terms of awarding funding, the Biden Administration has made good progress.’”
A small fraction indeed.
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