The USA is about to have a whole load more electric vehicle charging points installed, thanks to the approval of a large sum in funding from the government.
President Joe Biden’s administration has just given the green light to around $900 million (£780m) in funding to make sure that there’s electric chargers available across an area of around 53,000 miles of highway covering 35 states.
This is just the first instalment of a total of $5 billion (£4.3bn) that has been promised to help encourage Americans to start taking up electric vehicles.
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While that bill was bipartisan, the Biden Administration has delivered on it, and therefore deserves a bit of praise.
It’s all part of their wider goal to have more people using electric vehicles, alongside with their desire to build 500,000 electric vehicle chargers across the whole of the USA by 2030.
The desire is that eventually Americans will come around to the idea of ditching their petrol-powered cars because electric vehicles will become so much cheaper and easier to use.
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What’s more, there’s currently a tax credit of up to $7,500 (£6,500) for people who drive electric vehicles, too.
At the moment, there are around 41,000 public charging stations across the United States, boasting more than 100,000 charging outlets.
Obviously, that’s not enough given how many cars there are on the road in the USA.
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If the electric car is ever going to supplant cars that run on fossil fuels, there will have to be more electric charging points, just as there are with petrol stations.
Think about it – how often do you see a petrol station?
That’s what needs to become the case with electric vehicles if people are going to get on board.
Biden showed up at the North American International Auto Show this week in Detroit, Michigan to talk about the new funding, as well as to celebrate his Inflation Reduction Act, which includes billions of dollars of dedicated funding for clean energy projects, among other things.
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In order to receive the funding, the participating states had to set out a plan to ensure that the electric chargers are to be installed in convenient places, as well as being affordable and amenable to the largest number of people.
Some types of projects that only allow for the charging of one type of electric vehicle, such as the Tesla Supercharger network, will not receive federal cash.
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Topics: Cars, Joe Biden, Money, Technology, US News, Environment, Climate Change, Science
Tom Wood