The Obama administration today said 28 states, utilities and vehicle manufactures, including General Motors, BMW AG and Nissan Motor Co., and EV charging firms have agreed to work together to jump-start the additional charging stations.
The corridors were required to be established by December under a 2015 highway law.
The White House said 24 state and local governments have agreed to buy hundreds of additional electric vehicles for government fleets and add new EV charging stations.
California will buy at least 150 zero-emission vehicles and provide EV charging at a minimum of 5 percent of state-owned parking spaces by 2020.
The city of Atlanta will add 300 charging stations at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport by the end of 2017.
Los Angeles agreed to nearly triple the city’s current plug-in electric fleet to 555 vehicles from about 200 by the end of 2017. Of those, 200 will be for the police department. The city is also adding another 500 stations by 2017.
One hurdle to the mass adoption of EVs has been the difficulty in finding places to recharge vehicles. In July, the White House said it was expanding a federal loan guarantee program to include companies building EV charging stations.
The U.S. Energy Department said in July that charging facilities are now an eligible technology for the program that can provide up to $4.5 billion in loan guarantees.
No loans have been made to EV charging projects yet, officials said.
Administration efforts come as U.S. EV sales have not met early expectations.
EV sales have fallen well below President Barack Obama’s goal of reaching 1 million by 2015.
U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz told Reuters in January that the country may hit the figure in three to four years with continuing improvements in battery technology, but he acknowledged low gasoline prices have hurt EV sales.
In August 2008, Obama set a goal of getting 1 million plug-in electric vehicles on the roads by 2015. Only about 520,000 electric cars have been sold in the U.S. since 2008. There are about 250 million cars and trucks on U.S. roads.
The White House has repeatedly tried to boost EV sales, including hiking the EV tax credit and converting it to a point-of-sale rebate, but the proposals have yet to pass Congress.
In August 2008, Obama set a goal of getting 1 million plug-in electric vehicles on the roads by 2015. Only about 520,000 electric cars have been sold in the U.S. since 2008. There are about 250 million cars and trucks on U.S. roads.
Set all the goals you want, ultimately the market will apply the appropriate bitch slap (even with Fed interference).
It is one of my favorite hobbies to taunt the true believers with real numbers. Since they tend to band together, their assumptions about the number of EVs on the road is hilarious. Try it sometime – it’s cathartic.
Eric,
What is “I could have invented n FTL drive”?
Typos!
Effen FTL drive…
Big galaxy; gotta be somewhere better. A Clover Free zone…
To jump start this wonderful program of electric vehicles, the first thing that needs to be done is taxing gas and diesel to put us on par with Europe. Sort of like the tobacco taxes.
Withholding highway money seems to work. Perhaps an additional $3 per gallon tax at the state level combined with another $2 increase in federal fuel taxes.
Next, we are going to need Federal advisers assigned to each and every auto dealership in the country. They will be able to assist in the decision process by checking the car buyer’s background for any anomalies and guide them through steps of obtaining EVs.
An additional tax on all traffic citations will assist in the identification of vehicles that still use IC propulsion and fund pollution/sobriety/safety/immigration checkpoints.
Mandatory home inspections by Census workers will be able to identify any dwellings that require electrical upgrades for home charging stations.
Did I leave anything off the list?
Hi T,
This is not funny, amigo! It’s exactly what they are going to do…
Got-damn it, I wish I had studied physics (and had another 40 or so IQ points)… so I could have invented an effen FTL drive to get the fuck off this rock.
Eric,
galgenhumor
“The fear of the weapon of humor was alive and well in Nazi Germany, and it was dangerous business. The legal code of the time reflected Joseph Goebbels’ interpretation of the political joke as “a remnant of liberalism” that threatened the Nazi state. Not only was joke-telling made illegal, but those who told jokes were labeled “asocial” – a segment of society frequently sent to concentration camps. Hitler’s second-in-command, Hermann Goering, referred to anti-Nazi humor as “an act against the will of the Fuehrer… and against the State and the Nazi Government,” and the crime was punishable by death. Article III, section 2 of the 1941 code (the Reichsgesetzblatt I) stated: “In cases where it is not specifically provided for, the death penalty will be imposed whenever the crime reveals an unusually low mentality or is especially serious for other reasons; in such cases the death penalty may also be imposed against juvenile criminals.” Since Nazi informants could be within earshot at any given moment, it was important to hold one’s tongue and suppress any witty desires. A Nazi prosecutor revealed that he determined the severity of punishment for a joke based on the following theory: “The better the joke, the more dangerous its effect, therefore, the greater punishment.”
In 1943, SS Commander Heinrich Himmler went even further in the fight against comical assaults on the Nazi authority when he issued an order making it a criminal act to name domesticated animals “Adolf.” Whereas all citizens living under Nazi rule were subject to these anti-humor laws, Jews were more likely to be sentenced to death while non-Jews typically received only brief prison terms or fines.
In Night, a memoir written by Elie Wiesel about his time in Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps, the author discussed humor in the concentration camps and the macabre forms it took:
In Treblinka, where a day’s food was some stale bread and a cup of rotting soup, one prisoner cautions a fellow inmate against gluttony. “Hey Moshe, don’t overeat. Think of us who will have to carry you.”
The fact that humor persisted in and out of concentration camps during the Nazi era despite potentially harsh repercussions demonstrates the vital role it plays in human resilience and survival. The inherently soothing and reassuring qualities that gallows humor confers seem to create a buffer of sorts between the sufferer and the source of the suffering. Without this buffer, the pain would be unremitting – the sadistic intention of the Nazi regime. That is what made it worth risking everything for.
Concentration camp jokes reflected an acute awareness of the dire conditions and tragic fate that awaited its denizens. Since such an awareness would naturally produce a state of profound depression, the fact that it produced an opportunity for brief pleasure indicates that the jokes served to counteract the effects of depression. In much the same way that the release of white blood cells is the body’s natural means of combating an intruding infection, gallows humor and humor in general could be the natural psychological means of combating an intruding depression.” http://psychcentral.com/lib/humor-as-weapon-shield-and-psychological-salve/
Eric,
“This is not funny, amigo!”
OK, how is this, Pollution, Immigration, Sobriety, and Safety Checkpoints?
Or PISS?
Yep. More subsidies for passenger railroads.