Behind the government-backed effort to create a national EV charging network

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The federal government is spending big to usher in an electric vehicle future. What ideas can make sure the money is well spent?

Transcript: An 'EV Native' Reflects On America's Electric Vehicle Future

Now ... we wanted to talk to what I'm going to call, essentially, an EV native. Someone who's grown up driving almost nothing but electric vehicles. And that is Alec Watson. His first car was an EV. It was a used Chevy Volt that he started driving to his first job back in 2015. He was his family's EV guinea pig, let's put it that way. And the experiment was a success. Because then his parents bought a Chevy Bolt. That's Bolt with a B.

CHAKRABARTI: I would say if you have a charger on your property, and we'll talk about that in a second. But Alec says that in the seven years he's owned an electric vehicle, the first time he charged it away from home, the very first time, was this year when he took a road trip from Illinois to Florida. He charged it up at stations run by Electrify America, a nationwide network of fast chargers that's owned by Volkswagen.

CHAKRABARTI: Now Electrify America. That network is owned by Volkswagen, as I mentioned, but it charged Alec's Hyundai just fine. That's because all EVs sold in the U.S. and ones, I should say, that are not made by Tesla now use the same standard plugs. So the equipment that handles this power is obviously bulky. It needs a lot of cooling. And fans. It's got massive power cables hooked up to it because it's literally basically, you can think of it like a small apartment building, it's all getting shoved into your car.

But we need to figure out ways to make that happen for neighborhoods with on-street parking, for multi residential situations. And also just lowering the cost for level two infrastructure. My very deeply held belief is that DC fast charging is great for long distance travel, but you shouldn't be forced into it. Because it is so much more convenient to charge your car at work or at home.

 

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Remove the extra fee for tags for hybrids and electric vehicles. If anything, they should pay less. No, I don’t own one nor plan to.

Trading one toxic pollution for Another! Failure!

Ensuring that all EVs adhere to a standard charge port or at least provide adapters. Similar to measures done for phone chargers over the years.

Letting the consumer decide what kind of vehicle they want to drive.

Trusting the government to spend the money properly? good luck with that.

1. Absolutely do NOT attempt to proverbially put a bandaid on a broken arm. Replace, upgrade, overhaul, and rework the entirety of the grid -- SOUP TO NUTS. (P.S. This is also a high-value nat-sec issue so there's even MORE value in its top priority.)

The government is snubbing Tesla . Something to be said about that. Corruption to the top

Don’t let the gov’t control the spending in the first place.

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