What’s the greatest fear of the owner of a purely electric car? Running out of juice, of course! Not even a tiny gasoline engine to chug on home or to the nearest gas station. This not only eliminates long trips but can induce a nervousness even around town dubbed “range anxiety.” But fear not; there’s an answer! Installing recharging facilities - and lots of ‘em because juicing up a car battery is a sloooooooow process. (Car owners, bring a book. Like “War and Peace.)
On Monday, reports the Washington Post, a coalition of companies including “Nissan, FedEx, PG&E and NRG Energy issued a report calling for billions of dollars in government aid to support the transition of the U.S. vehicle fleet to cars that run on batteries. The group is asking for $124 billion in government incentives over eight years including $13.5 billion for tax credits to build public charging stations.”
What shock! (Pardon the pun.) Aren’t government handouts, including corporate welfare, the answer to all problems? And everybody knows about the big fat surplus the Obama Administration is running. Meanwhile, buyers of electric cars are already getting a fat $7,500 write-off.
Message to electric car sellers and buyers about “range anxiety”: Sounds like a personal problem.
You sound upset with the government investing in charging stations. It is reasonable to think that 90% of charging will take place at home (hopefully at night). To take advantage of this existing infrastructure, it is entirely reasonable to support it with an occasional public charging network. I’m not sure we’ll need it to the extent the coalition is requesting and hopefully technology will catch up as the EV’s and PHEV’s become available. Most importantly, please consider the environmental, economic, and national security benefits when evaluating the opportunity. We are talking about displacing mostly foreign oil with cleaner, domestically-fueled electricity. Consider keeping hundreds of billions in our country instead of sending it to Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela, etc. After the latest Israel/Gaza war, we offered $400 million to rebuild Gaza partially because of our dependence on Middle Eastern oil. It costs over $100 million to buy a F-22 not to mention maintain and service. Then why is it so crazy to invest in alternatives means of fueling our vehicles? In doing so we deny our petrodollars to our enemy or in other words “drain the financial swamp of terrorism”. Thank you for your consideration.