During an interview aired on Wednesday’s “PBS NewsHour,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg responded to a question on the slow pace of building EV charging stations and why nobody has been connected to the broadband Internet service that billions has been allocated for by stating that “the electric vehicle charger program was designed to put most chargers in in 2026, 2027, but the first few are already up and running.”
Co-host Geoff Bennett asked, “Seven billion dollars being allocated for electric vehicle charging stations across the country, only 44 stations have been built nationwide so far. $42 billion aimed at expanding broadband Internet service hasn’t connected a single household. Why not?”
Buttigieg answered, “Well, the electric vehicle charger program was designed to put most chargers in in 2026, 2027, but the first few are already up and running. We’re talking about a transformation to the way that American vehicles have been fueled and supported, the likes of which we haven’t seen in 100 years. And we made some specific, intentional choices, like making sure that we did that with made-in-America chargers versus just getting the cheapest equipment available from China. I think that was the right thing to do. Over time, we will see that that number will continue. We’ve already doubled to about 200,000 the number of publicly available chargers on President Biden’s watch. And I believe that we will meet or exceed President Biden’s target of having half-a-million chargers up by the end of this decade.”
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