There has been a lot of talk today about the executive orders of President Joe Biden’s first day. An EO that has been promised for a long time paves the way for the mass adoption of electric vehicles. Joe has campaigned for a $ 5 billion plan to install half a million new EV charging stations by 2030. If it happens, it will certainly help alleviate the anxiety of the scope and provide the network with both consumers as well as car manufacturers. emission-free driving.
Of course, an executive order doesn’t have teeth without a budget to fund it, so it will need congressional support to get it. As it is one of the sticks of this administration’s plan for the future, it is likely that electric vehicles and clean energy will receive strong support from Congressional Dems and could clean up bipartisan favor with the promise of new jobs. The Biden plan envisions approximately one million new clean energy jobs created as a result.
In the United States, at the same time, it is estimated that there are 111,000 gas stations. That number is lower than I thought it would be, as gas stations are basically everywhere. Most gas stations have between 4 and 16 bombs, right? Our current electric vehicle charging infrastructure includes 28,726 individual stations, although only 4,336 of these stations include a fast DC charge, required for long distance travel. Of these fast DC power stations, Tesla accounts for only 1/4 of them, and cannot be used to charge any other than Tesla.
The electric charging infrastructure is pretty solid these days, as you can easily do an EV across the country or commute to almost every major city. I live in Nevada and there are large strips of the state that are not accessible by electric vehicle. And for people who don’t have the ability to charge at night, for example, anyone who lives in an apartment building or anyone who needs to park their car on the street, it’s not a viable enough technology for driving. daily.
The main advantage that gasoline has right now is the ability to steer the vehicle in any direction and you will now be able to get anywhere, as there are gas stations basically everywhere. Even in the most remote areas of the country, you can count on a gas station close enough that when the low-energy light comes on, you can get to the next one.
G / O Media may receive a commission
As many have stated in the comments section of dozens of blogs I’ve written, the only thing holding them back from buying and electric is the lack of charging infrastructure. Well, 46 calls you to shut up or shut up.
Since the Biden plan doesn’t specify, I guess the number 550,000 means individual chargers instead of places to charge, because I’m not sure it would make sense to have five times more places to plug in than fuel up. So, we will assume that Biden wants to match our gasoline infrastructure by installing 5 individual chargers at 110,000 different locations.
The current charging infrastructure is mainly based on shop and restaurant car parks, which is good enough. As long as we don’t resort to replacing all of our gas stations with refueling stations, it will probably be fine. However, to truly make lasting change, Biden’s policy should focus on low-income neighborhoods, multi-family housing facilities, and parking lots for business and industrial parks. Anyway, any place where a car is forced to sit for hours is a good place to charge. Equip the headlights with EV chargers. Equip parking meters with EV chargers.
One of the things I like most about driving an electric vehicle is that I rarely need to get out of my way to charge, because I can “fill up” at night while I sleep. The only time I need to use fast charging is during long road trips. In this case, our interstate infrastructure is already quite well developed by private companies. Given the opportunity, I would love to see the Biden plan continue to expand cargo infrastructure to smaller rural communities and state roads.
As it stands, you can get most places with the current EV infrastructure we have, but if you’re trying to get to your cousin’s place in rural Idaho or North Dakota, you’re going to have a hard time. Hopefully, by making electric car chargers as ubiquitous as gas stations, this problem of anxiety and usability will disappear completely. With more charging stations, we can reduce so-called electron deserts.
With basically all car manufacturers leaning sharply towards an electric future over the next decade, this expansion of infrastructure will drive the demand needed to maintain not only incoming electric models, but subsequent growth. Biden has expressed his desire for the United States to be competitive with China in adopting electric vehicles, largely without support for the many automakers with manufacturing facilities here. China already has half a million public plugs of electric vehicles, so this 2030 expansion plan would only take us to China’s 2021 levels.
Viouslybviament the better The plan is to force all Americans to live in megacities and invest in bullet technology and moving sidewalks. But this is not a utopia, and people are not willing to give up their personal mobility or the opportunity to exacerbate climate problems by living at the desert-urban interface (this is the WUI, look for it), so that we must play by the rules of the existing system. If you have to keep your cars and your journeys ridiculously long and your desire to travel through the wild and empty lands of this country by car, of course, let’s make it a reality in a clean way. And why not create a whole mess of jobs along the way?
When it comes to keeping our promise to increase our recharging infrastructure over a decade, there is no such thing as excess. Are there 550,000 extravagant and impossible new chargers? No, is it ambitious? Just the right amount.