Much has been said today about President Joe Biden’s first day executive orders. An EO that has long been promised paves the way for the mass adoption of electric vehicles. Joe campaigned with a $ 5 billion plan to install half a million new EV charging stations by 2030. If that happens, it will certainly help to ease reach anxiety and provide network consumers and car manufacturers who need to trust emission-free driving.
Of course, an executive order has no strength without a budget to finance it, so it will need Congressional support to execute it. As one of the pillars of this government’s plan for the future, electric vehicles and clean energy are likely to receive serious support from Congressional Democrats and may obtain bipartisan favors with the promise of new jobs involved. Biden’s plan calls for about 1 million new clean energy jobs created as a result.
In the United States, at this very moment, there are an estimated 111,000 gas stations. That number is less than I imagined it would be, since gas stations are basically everywhere. Most gas stations have somewhere between 4 and 16 pumps, right? Our current EV charging infrastructure includes 28,726 individual stations, although only 4,336 of those stations include DC fast charging, which is required for long distance travel. Of these fast DC stations, Tesla accounts for only 1/4 of them and cannot be used to charge any non-Tesla.
The electric charging infrastructure is quite solid today, as you can easily take an EV across the country or travel in virtually any major city. I live in Nevada, and there are large areas of the state that are inaccessible by electric vehicles. And for people who do not have the ability to charge at night, for example, who live in an apartment building or who need to park their car on the street, it is not a very viable technology for the daily walk.
The main advantage that gasoline has in your favor now is the ability to point your vehicle in almost any direction and now you will get where you want to because there are petrol stations basically everywhere. Even in the most remote parts of the country, you can count on a gas station close enough so that when the low fuel light comes on, you can reach the next one.
G / O Media can receive a commission
As many have already stated in the comments section of dozens of blogs I wrote, the only thing that prevents them from buying and electrical is the lack of charging infrastructure. Well, 46 is asking you to stand up or shut up.
Since Biden’s plan does not specify, I suppose the number 550,000 means individual chargers, rather than places to load, because I’m not sure it would make sense to have five times as many places to connect as above fuel. Therefore, we will assume that Biden is looking to combine our gasoline infrastructure by installing something like 5 individual chargers in 110,000 different locations.
The current charging infrastructure is largely based on store and restaurant parking, which is good enough. As long as we don’t resort to replacing all of our gas stations with charging stations, it will probably be okay. To really make a lasting change, however, Biden’s policy must focus on low-income neighborhoods, multifamily housing facilities and parking lots for businesses and industrial parks. Anywhere a car is forced to stand still for hours at a time is a good place to load. Equip street lamps with EV chargers. Equip parking meters with EV chargers.
One of the things I really love about driving an electric vehicle is that I rarely need to go out of my way to charge, because I can “fill up” at night while I am sleeping. The only time I needed to use fast charging was during long trips. In this case, our interstate infrastructure is already well developed by private companies. Given the opportunity, I would love to see Biden’s plan continue to expand the loading infrastructure in smaller rural communities and state highways.
As it is, you can get to most places with the existing EV infrastructure we have, but if you’re trying to get to your cousin’s home 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, reach anxiety and usability problems will disappear completely. With more charging stations, we can shrink so-called electron deserts.
With basically all car manufacturers leaning heavily towards an electric future in the next decade, this expansion of infrastructure will bring with it the demand needed to sustain not only the incoming electric models, but greater growth beyond that. Biden expressed the desire that the United States be competitive with China in adopting electric vehicles, largely due to support for the many automakers with manufacturing facilities based here. China already has half a million public EV plugs installed, so this 2030 expansion plan would only take us to China’s 2021 levels.
Obviously the best The plan is to force all Americans to live in megacities and to invest in bullet train technology and mobile 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 living in the urban-wild interface (which is WUI, check), so we have to play by the rules of the system existing. If you absolutely must keep your cars and your paths ridiculously long and full of traffic, and your desire to drive across the deserted land of this country by car, then, by all means, let’s make it happen in a clean way. And why not create a mess of jobs along the way?
When it comes to delivering on a promise to increase our charging infrastructure over a decade, there is no such thing as overkill. Are 550,000 new chargers weird and impossible? No. Is it ambitious? Just the right amount.