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White House, 35 States To Boost Electric Vehicle Charging Stations (cnbc.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: The White House said on Thursday it will establish 48 national electric-vehicle (EV) charging networks on nearly 25,000 miles of highways in 35 U.S. states. The Obama administration said 28 states, utilities and vehicle manufactures, including General Motors, BMW and Nissan Motor, 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.
For those of you stuck on this worn Fox-News-meme, here's the fuller story:
Soon after O began his job in the White-house, he consulted top economists for solutions to the then quickly tumbling economy.
Looking at past stimulus plans and results from multiple countries, the economists suggested a stimulus had to be quick to be effective. "Big" infrastructure projects often take too long to ramp up. Surveys, plan review & approval, environmental studies, zoning studies, etc. have to be done first. These can take more than a year.
Therefore, the concept of "shovel ready" was created to only fund public works projects that could be ramped up quickly.
It turned out those are hard to come by. Some went to fixing potholes and the like, which I witnessed happening in my area, but otherwise they had difficulty finding quick-turnaround public works projects.
Instead, much of the stimulus was used to fund State budgets so that teachers, cops, fire-fighters, etc. would be less likely to be let go. This kept money flowing in the economy. Some also went to investments in green energy companies, such as solar. Sure, some went under, but investing is like that: win some loose some. To focus only on those that went under, like Solyndra, is cherry-picking evidence. (I will agree the investment selection process was poorly managed, though.)
It turned out the Great Recession went on longer than expected such that big public works projects would have been useful. But nobody has a crystal ball. The federal estimates of recession duration and depth were consistent with those made by private company estimates, I would note.
They were reasonable actions based on what was known at the time.
Some pro-austerity people claim that deep recessions fix themselves such that stimuluses are not necessary, but I've seen no evidence of this, other than making life so dreadful that people riot and war, which certainly stimulates economies, but kills.
Table-ized A.I.
Why add lots of charging stations at airports? When people are leaving their cars for multiple days, they don't need a 240v charger or anything fancy. All that's needed is a simple electrical outlet. Even a Tesla could recharge fully in four days from a standard wall outlet. Put your level-2 charging stations in places where people shop or work and will only be parked for a few hours. Put the level-3 charging stations along highways where people need to charge quickly.
Of course, the need for public charging stations decreases as the range of the cars increases. When the standard range is over 200 miles, most people can do all their non-travel charging at home. You don't need chargers at shopping centers and offices (though I still hear about people with crazy 100+ mile commutes). The real challenge is charging for people who don't have a garage. Focus on putting chargers at apartment complexes and on city streets where residents without garages park. Require charging as part of the permitting process for new apartments (we just did that in my town).