No, Biden administration not spending billions of dollar on EV charging stations
No, Biden administration not spending billions of dollar on EV charging stations
(Web Desk) - As President Joe Biden’s term approaching its end, some social media posts are falsely claiming that his administration has spent billions of dollars on the construction of just a handful of electric vehicle charging stations.
The claims became more viral when multiple high-profile figures, including sitting members of Congress, promoted them.
The claims misrepresent funding set aside by the 2021 Infrastructure and Jobs Act for a national network of publicly available electric vehicle chargers. Biden has set a goal of creating 500,000 such chargers by 2030.
A closer look at the facts shows that the Biden administration spent $7.5 billion to build eight electric vehicle charging stations.
On fact check, it was found to be completely incorrect. The $7.5 billion figure refers to the total amount allocated through the 2021 law to build a network of charging stations across the US, not the amount that has already been spent.
There are currently 214 operational chargers in 12 states that have been funded through the law, with 24,800 projects underway across the country, according to the Federal Highway Administration.
A charger, often called a charging port, provides electric power to one vehicle at a time through a connector, which is plugged into the vehicle. Stations are physical locations that can have multiple chargers.
Also, when the rumours made it to the government circles, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg called the claims ‘false’ in a series of X posts.
“$7.5 billion has not been spent, nor anything like that,” he wrote, adding that federally funded chargers are built by individual states, not the federal government, and that most will be built in the second half of the 2020s.
By early this year, only four states - Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania and Hawaii - had opened electric stations.
There are currently more than 203,000 publicly available charging ports across the US, with nearly 1,000 being turned on every week, according to the agency. This is more than double the number available in 2021.
